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Lamar Lewis was starting over.
The year leading up to his new job as assistant principal had been tough, with two knee replacement surgeries. He couldn't drive for the longest time, and got around with a walker, then a cane, then a limp. He gained 200 pounds and then lost it, though at 6 feet 4 and 340 pounds he is still an oversized man.
He was so excited when he took the job at South Iredell High near Troutman in January 2008, he asked his wife, Rae, to help him decorate his office.
They hung up his framed bachelor's degree in political science and criminal justice from Gardner-Webb University and his master's in school administration from Grand Canyon University. They displayed family photographs, and decorated bulletin boards in blue and gold fabric, the school colors. They covered the wall-to-wall carpet with an Oriental rug, and added a new lamp and a desktop waterfall.
Lewis, who is now 40, learned his way around the halls, got to know teachers and came to recognize most students. He said he felt at home.
But a couple of months into the job, in March 2008, his plans for a future in education crashed down around him. A 16-year-old student accused Lewis of leading her into his office in the middle of the school day, trying to kiss her and performing a sex act.
Did he do it? Or was an innocent man falsely branded as a child molester?
The charge against Lewis is one of hundreds brought against educators every year, devastating the lives of the accused and the accusers, their families and their schools. Just last month, a teacher at Smith Academy of International Languages in Charlotte was charged with raping a student, and counselors were called on to talk with other students.
In Lewis' case, a teacher at South Iredell High said she saw the girl crying in a hall on March 10, 2008, and asked why. In a handwritten statement to police, teacher Paula Troutman said the girl told her, "Mr. Lewis had made sexual advances toward me.... It was in his office and there was proof on the carpet."
The girl, in a written statement to police, said the incident happened five days earlier. She said she was in the cafeteria and put her agenda on top of a cabinet. She said Lewis picked it up and she chased him around the cafeteria, trying to get it back. Shortly afterward, Lewis was called to her classroom to remove three unruly boys and the girl said he told her to leave the classroom, too.
"He sent the students to the office and I walked with him to his office without saying a word," she wrote. "We walked in his office and he took black construction paper and taped it over his window on the door."
They talked briefly, she said, then he tried to kiss her. She said she pushed him off, he grabbed her and masturbated in front of her. She later changed her story, telling a detective she performed oral sex on him.
A grand jury indicted Lewis and he gave up his job. He said he would rather have been charged with murder or robbery.
What was on the videos
A school video shows Lewis and the girl talking in the cafeteria, but the video does not show her chasing him as she said. Another video shows Lewis and the girl talking in a hall. Police claimed a third video shows them entering his office together, but the video doesn't show that. The video shows each of them entering the student center, then walking out of view. The girl returns into view about 25 minutes later, and Lewis a couple of minutes after that.
The girl told police they spent those 25 minutes together.
Lewis said he went into his office alone, then to a meeting with construction workers, and assumed the girl went down the hall to see a counselor or out the back door. Asked why she would accuse him, he speculated she was trying to get back at him because he suspended a friend of hers.
Nine police officers showed up at Lewis' house in March 2008 to arrest him.
The numbers, the climate
Around 3 million teachers work in public schools across America. No one keeps national statistics on the number accused of abuse.
A 2007 investigation by the Associated Press found that 2,570 educators in the United States were sanctioned between 2001 and 2005 because of allegations of sexual misconduct. The AP concluded that most instances of sexual abuse in schools either are not reported or the schools quietly let the abusers go to avoid scandal.
Greg Lawler, a Colorado attorney who has defended more than 2,000 teachers accused of abuse, said there's been an increase in false accusations against teachers in the past 25 years.
Since the passage of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act in 1973, schools are required to follow procedures when a student reports physical or sexual abuse. The law is needed to protect students, Lawler said, but he believes that in the culture of today's classrooms it enables students to get rid of teachers they don't like simply by leveling charges.
"It is the biggest risk any educator faces," said Lawler, author of "Guilty Until Proven Innocent." "Laws that were created as a protective shield to encourage children to come forward, that shield is then turned into a sword in the case of a student who, for one reason or another, wants to get back at a teacher."
Although there are no U.S. statistics to support Lawler's findings, a teachers union study in Great Britain found that of 1,782 allegations of abuse, 96 resulted in prosecution.
Even if evidence shows a teacher didn't abuse a student, the teacher's reputation is often ruined.
Once accused, forever accused.
Case postponed and dropped
For a year, Lewis said, he hid out at home, afraid to answer his door, afraid of women. If he went out on errands and someone looked his way, he said he wondered if they were thinking that he was the guy who did it.
Every time his case was called for trial, Rae took a day off her job as a schoolteacher in Mecklenburg County and joined her husband in court. Each time, the case was postponed. Lewis said he survived on borrowed money, Prozac, his faith in God and a seething anger to see his reputation restored.
In April 2009, the same girl accused a male teacher of misconduct, but principal Dale Dixon said in an interview that the accusation had no merit.
Shortly afterward, an assistant district attorney dropped the charges against Lewis, ruling that "the physical evidence was inconsistent with the victim's statement." Troutman Police Chief Matthew Selves said at the time that he disagreed with dropping the charges.
He declined to discuss the case. The assistant district attorney, school officials and the girl's father also declined.
"This man at least deserves some kind of apology," Lewis' attorney Ken Darty said. "His life has been absolutely ruined, and the school through no effort of their own did anything to prevent it. When you have a student, and the student makes an allegation, a lot of schools have zero tolerance and quickly and abruptly act, and I understand that. But at some point, you need to give the teacher some respect."
Darty sent the Iredell school system a demand letter, threatening to sue for wrongful termination and breech of contract. Lewis filed a complaint in August with the EEOC, alleging racial discrimination on the grounds that the other teacher, who is white, was not suspended, but allowed to continue teaching. Lewis, who is black, was suspended during the investigation. The girl is white.
In his EEOC complaint, Lewis said he found in his personnel file a note from an assistant superintendent stating that the other teacher was allowed to continue teaching because "they were not going to fall for the student's lies this time."
Figuring out a future
Did Lewis do it? Or was an innocent man falsely branded as a child molester? In a case like his, people may never know.
Darty said some think Lewis beat the system. Some people do think that. If you Google "Lamar Lewis," his name pops up on multiple Web sites, including badbadteacher.com and jailbeta.com, which promotes itself as "a chronicle of teachers behaving badly, teacher sex scandals, and other indiscretions."
Lewis said he's not sure he'll ever feel comfortable in a school again, though Rae thinks that's where he belongs. He's looking for jobs, working on his Ph.D., growing an organic garden, experimenting with new recipes and learning digital photography.
"I feel awful," he said last week. "I feel angry. I try to come to grips with it with my psychiatrist. I try to face it. I don't trust anybody any more."
Lamar Lewis is starting over again, but this time he doesn't know where.
