As a teacher and guidance counselor, I was a mandated reporter. I worked for 40 Years and had thousands of students most of whom were just fine, but a few weren't.

I am going to give you a few of the most extreme examples:

1) A teacher complained frequently about the odor surrounding a 7th grade girl. This was a low social economic school, and we frequently had kids change into their gym clothes while we washed their other clothing. This didn’t help. Our next suspect was her sneakers. I kept odor eater spray for just this thing. Still a serious odor so I called the visiting nurse back then we didn’t have a school nurse. She came took one whiff and told me what she suspected so we called DCF to get her seen by a doctor. She had a very bad case of gonorrhea. DCF took over completely. She was put in a foster home and went to a different school.

2) 12 year old girl entered 6th grade very pregnant. Her 12 year old boyfriend was the father so nothing to report until she returned to school to tell us her punishment for getting pregnant was to have the baby naturally. No epidural or even any pain medication at all. The parent thought this was fine, and that it would discourage her from having sex again! DCF did not agree. Their family was put on close supervision, and parents were ordered to attend parenting classes.

3) A very nice girl came and asked if she could take a nap on the couch in my office in place of PE. I asked if she was sick. She said no she hadn’t gotten any sleep because her parents threw her out of the house, and she just hid in the woods behind her house that night, and she was too scared to sleep. DCF thought her parents needed parenting classes to learn more appropriate consequences if she misbehaved.

The last two are the worst. They also called for the involvement of law enforcement as well as DCF.

4) This starts with a young lady I will call Amy. In 6th and 7th grade, she was not a very good student, and she was frequently in trouble. Then 8th grade started and she was making good grades and she never got in trouble. I called her in to congratulate her on the great improvement. I asked her how she had done it. She told me it was because of her new friend we will call Judy. Judy was here living with her father because she was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend in another state. She was also doing well. Everything looked good for Amy and Judy. Then in November Judy and another friend came in to tell me what happened over Thanksgiving break. All three girls were spending the night with Judy and her father. He took all three girls for a ride in his pick up truck. He pulled off the road into a field that could not be seen from the road, and said he needed to talk to Amy about something. He told the other two to stay in the truck and listen to music. They got curious when it seemed to be taking a long time so they looked out the back window of the truck and saw Amy and Judy’s father having sex in the back of the truck. I called Amy in and asked her if it was true. She said yes and it was wonderful. She said that all school year so far he had been rewarding her for good grades etc. with sex. Of course I had to call DCF. They connected my call to the sheriff’s office. Two deputies came and spoke to all three girls separately with the DCF official. Here is the outcome. Amy’s grades went way down and she was getting in trouble again. Her inappropriate lover ended up in jail for several years as he had prior offenses. Judy had to go back and live with her mother And her abusive boyfriend. The third girl got additional counseling from DCF. This was one case where I almost felt bad for doing the right thing, Because everyone was hurt by it, but several years later when she was an adult Amy came to see me. She knew I had felt bad about hurting her even if it was the right thing to do. She wanted me to know she was upset for a while but ended up doing very well, and she wanted to thank me for getting her out of the situation.

The last one 5) was a 7th grade boy we will call Scott. Scott came to school after missing several days with some serious bruises visible on his arms. He didn’t come to see me but several other kids from his bus did. They said he told them his step dad beat him with a belt so I called him in to talk about it. He told me he let some kids come in their house when his parents weren’t home which he was not allowed to do. They broke an ash tray and stole some CD’s so Scott got in trouble. The punishment was he was instructed to take off all of his clothes and his step dad beat him over his entire body including genitals with a leather belt. He showed me bruises up and down his legs and on his back. I then called for the principal and school resource officer (both men) I left my office while Scott showed them the rest of the bruises. The resource officer called the city police who came to take a report and photograph the bruises. They left to get a warrant to arrest the step father which they did before school was out. We then called the mother and DCF. The mother was very angry that Scott showed anyone the bruises. DCF told her Scott could go home with her as long as she didn’t let her husband back in the house if he got out on bail. She absolutely refused and told DCF to just take Scott, she didn’t want him. He heard this, and tears were running down his face. Step-father got sentencted to three years. Scott went to a therapeutic foster home, and I guess mom went home to wait for her husband. This one broke my heart. I hear that Scott is now still struggling with this as a young man.

I also made other minor calls but these are the ones that really stuck with me. Luckily, these things didn’t happen every day!