RAPE IS NOT REALLY ABOUT SEX

One of NAPTA's Founders Shares Source of Relentless Energy
I left teaching in the early 1970's to start a family. When I attempted to return to my chosen profession, there were no teaching positions. I began a business career. Several years later, a Vice President of the corporation for which I worked raped me. I left business soon after that, believing I was not designed for that “game”. I didn’t bother to report him because I knew I would lose my job. I realized rape was about power, and accepted that my journey in life was not about acquiring power, so I needed to redirect. I simply moved on, figuring I would eventually get back into teaching - the moral world, where power trips would never be permitted at the expense of our children or in betrayal of the public trust. I blamed myself for being in the world focused on money rather than ideas and people. Everyone knows that power trips, money worship, inhumanity, selfishness, back stabbing, and deceit are expected in business.

Eventually, I went back to college and earned a Masters' degree in Reading, enthused that I could return to the world where I felt people like me belong. Disillusionment was not a strong enough word to describe what I experienced encountering the administration at Avoca School District - power trips, money worship, incessant lying, brutal competition, inhumanity, selfishness, back stabbing, and deceit. I, like so many others, and to the detriment of our children, had severely misjudged the world of education, buying into the facade that fools so many people on a regular basis. In comparison, business was child's play; what I found in education was hard core, deeply infiltrated, sinister, darkness.

What may surprise you is that the psychological rape I experienced in education was significantly more painful than the physical rape I had experienced previously, the reason being that I am a person who values ideas over objects. I was able to move on after a short period of depression, when it was my body that was violated. The abuse I experienced at Avoca School District pierced my soul both because it meant our children were at risk and because it meant that all my gifts were valueless in this world of teaching. In order to progress, I found that I needed that sense of closure about which I had often heard spoken by rape victims. Their mantra is "We need to get our lives back."

Abused teachers have the same need if they are fortunate enough to rise above the despair that imprisons them and recognize it. Getting our lives back means attaching meaning to our suffering; therefore, forcing change upon this corrupt institution is a powerful avenue for healing. We must follow our emotional compasses and turn these horrendous experiences into something good. This is something that was simply not possible prior to the Internet. We were all too isolated, licking our wounds, with little hope for support or even understanding. This couldn't have happened to us, reverberated throughout our psyches. We began to adopt other's perceptions of our situations, as virtually no one else around us had been through this hell. We lost touch with our souls. And in time we blamed ourselves, the ultimate goal for the abuser so that they have no consequences to bear.

With the exception of those on the administration track, I believe that teaching is disproportionately filled with people who care more about ideas and humanity or they wouldn’t chose this low paying profession. Therefore, psychological rape, coupled with the nature of the typical teacher, and the inability for the world to believe us, has been devastating.

My union attorney told me not to bother trying to fight this. He had represented many other teachers who felt just as I did. They wanted to expose this. They were disgusted. But no one could stop this as the system was way too powerful and employed teachers are too intimidated to stand in support of us. Unions gave this same advice to nearly every teacher who joined NAPTA. Not one teacher heard the union, with all their power, and all their money, give a sense of hope that teacher abuse would ever stop. The union's advise was, "Give up, that is the way it is."

As Winston Churchill said, "Never, never, never quit." We expect to discover thousands of teachers who will speak publicly once they see there is hope.

Right now, speak out and the system will definitely attempt to torture you. But only with speaking out will it ever change. Administrations have had unlimited funds to cover this up. Reporters do not have the funds to investigate this. Lawyers will not wade through the carefully cluttered records created to bury teachers without substantial fees that teachers cannot afford. Also, lawyers are not versed on the tactics of the law to protect teachers' as it is financially foolish. In addition, there are no laws to protect teachers, as there are to protect most workers. Decades ago, realizing the hours of work required to be a good teacher, legislatures across the country designated teachers as "Professionals," grouped with doctors and lawyers. Therefore, teachers can not ask for overtime pay, and they are not eligible for protection by the Department of Labor. As "professionals," teachers, in theory, can depend on their "high salaries" to obtain legal help, just as lawyers and doctors do. As extra protection, legislatures then decided to keep teacher salaries insultingly low.

Knowledge of how to defend administrations, however, makes business sense. Therefore, prior to the Internet, our nation existed of scattered, wounded abused teachers without a voice and frightened teachers focusing only on keeping their jobs.

This WAS true, particularly since our unions apparently wanted it to be true. We are going to create a NEW truth. United, teachers can expose teacher abuse and take back their power. Remember, we were the teachers who changed children's lives; we can use that spiritual power to rise above this toxic world as we pull the curtain open for all to see. "Dorothy, you always had it in you."

Teachers need closure and justice, and NAPTA intends to carve a path so that can finally happen. In the meantime, we can serve as a support for weary souls who have had nowhere to turn.

After you return to, and complete reading our introductory page, I urge you to start with BACKGROUND where the teacher stories are located on this site. That way the rest of the material will be easier to comprehend. As you read these stories, listen to the despair. Many abused teachers are like hamsters in wheels trying to seek justice, trying to be heard. Their lives are put on hold as they expend their energy and money in an endeavor that up until now has been hopeless.

Also, be sure to keep visiting our site. It is still under construction. Keep coming back and watch our power grow. We have faith that it will, because there are hundreds of thousands of teachers gainfully employed with holes in their hearts, knowing that they sold their souls to keep their jobs or to stay out of the line of fire, knowing that they are cheating the children by remaining silent. They have paid a price that will no longer need to be paid now that NAPTA is exposing the truth. They have given far too much money to unions who have sold them out; they have given far too much of their souls as they froze in terror in a job that bullied them into submission. They may still have their jobs, but one day they will have their souls back too. That is our dream.

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INTRODUCTION