A delay cost a Cobb County school principal and counselor their jobs.
The school board voted Wednesday to fire Jerry Dority, who was principal at Tapp Middle School in Powder Springs, and counselor Yatta Collins.
Both had been recommended for termination by tribunals comprising three school board members. They were accused of failing to report an incident of suspected child sexual abuse to authorities in a timely manner.
Under state law, school employees and other professionals have 24 hours to tell police, prosecutors or state child protective services after learning of a possible incident. Both were arrested in early March and charged with failure to report child abuse.
School system records, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the Georgia Records Act, indicate a student told Collins on Jan. 30 that she tried to hang herself in her closet. The girl had marks on her neck, but would not explain herself to Collins, the records show. However, another student claimed that day that the girl had been sexually abused by her stepfather.
Collins told Dority that day, but waited two days to notify the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services. She asked the girl's mother on Jan. 30 to take the girl for a mental evaluation.
Collins informed DFCS on Feb. 1 after the student missed the next two days of school.
State law requires lower-level school employees to notify "the person in charge of the facility" if they suspect child abuse. Collins informed Dority about the suicide attempt immediately, but it's unclear from the records when she told the principal about the sex abuse allegation.
But a Cobb County police detective, who tried to investigate, complained later that Collins would not help her arrange interviews with students and even told her to leave.
Neither Collins nor Dority attended Wednesday's vote, and the school board did not discuss it publicly before voting on it and other matters discussed behind closed doors.
Cerrone Coker, a lawyer who represented Collins at her tribunal hearing, did not return several messages seeking comment.
In a statement to the school system, Dority, an educator for 28 years, doesn't say when she learned of the suspected abuse. But she apologized for a decision she acknowledged "was not the best one at the time" for the student's "safety and well-being."
"I made an error in judgment," Dority wrote. "At the time, I thought the attempted suicide was the most pressing matter." She said she should have focused on the reported reason for the suicide attempt.
"I love what I do as an educator, and my hope is that a bad judgment call will not cost me my life-long career as an educator," Dority wrote.
Both educators were charged with failure to report child abuse, a misdemeanor that can bring up to a year in jail. Georgia lawmakers this year voted to expand the mandate. When it becomes law July 1, just about anyone who works with children -- even volunteers -- could go to jail for failing to report suspected child abuse, which includes beatings, neglect and sexual abuse.
About the Author
