(Louisiana Illuminator) — What happens when the one who is supposed to report the abuse is the abuser?
Byron Humphrey was a teacher and wrestling coach at Albany High School in Livingston Parish. The school district terminated him on March 13. Five days later, the sheriff’s office arrested him for misdemeanor sexual battery of a student, and Humphreys bonded out the next morning for $25,000, WBRZ-TV reported.
More alleged victims came forward after his arrest made the news. By April 2, Humphrey faced three additional counts of indecent behavior with a juvenile and another count of sexual battery.
That sequence — arrest, publicity, additional victims — is not an anomaly. It is the architecture of a system that reacts to exposure rather than preventing harm.
In February, biology teacher Teddi Page at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans surrendered on a charge involving sexual relations between an educator and a student. Her background check had been clean, according to a WWL-TV report.
In Lafayette Parish, a Broussard Middle School Teacher of the Year Christie Oster was arrested on felony sex-crime charges with a minor, KATC-TV reported.
In St. Tammany Parish, special education paraprofessional Janine Rowell admitted to the physical and verbal abuse of two autistic siblings in 2022 at Woodlake Elementary in Mandeville, The Times-Picayune reported. In a lawsuit, the children’s parents claim the school system knew Rowell had been named in a similar case involving an autistic student in Jefferson Parish when she was hired.
Four cases. Four parishes. One infrastructure of failure.
Teachers are part of a child’s socialization process — agents of change, mother and father figures when children are away from home. The Bible says that those who teach will be judged not equally but more strictly because the influence carries a deeper obligation.
They are responsible for carrying a message of truth, not for becoming a catalyst for trauma and abuse. The Bible leaves no ambiguity about what it means to betray that trust with a child: Better a millstone around the neck and the sea than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.
Psychologist Jennifer Freyd, founder of the Center for Institutional Courage, calls this institutional betrayal. It’s the compounded harm that occurs when an institution responsible for a person’s care and protection becomes the vehicle of their violation and then fails to respond adequately.
In K–12 classrooms, the betrayal is absolute. The victims are children. The power asymmetry admits no negotiation, and the institution’s silence after the fact seals the wound shut with the blade still inside.
Louisiana was told. A 2024 Legislative Auditor’s report found that the state has no central registry tracking educators found to have abused or mistreated students. It has no consistent statewide process to automatically sanction or revoke teaching certifications in abuse cases short of a criminal conviction. Despite clarified mandatory-reporting laws, allegations against school personnel still may not be reported as required.
The state’s own auditor named the failure. The state chose to do nothing.
State law confirms the indifference. Louisiana’s educator-specific criminal statute caps a first offense of sexual conduct between an educator and a student at a misdemeanor — a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. An adult entrusted with a child’s formation can sexually violate that trust and face a penalty more in line with a low-level nonviolent offense than with the gravity of abusing a student.
Harsher penalties attach only on a second offense or when prosecutors elect to pursue broader child sex crime charges. This creates a discretionary gap where identical conduct can be punished with a wrist slap or as a serious felony, depending on which statute a prosecutor chooses.
Meanwhile, the state’s Teacher Bill of Rights and tenure protections provide detailed due process frameworks for accused educators. No parallel, enforceable framework guarantees state-level follow-up for the children they harmed. Louisiana protects the credentials of adults who harm children more vigorously than it protects the children.
Some of our children go to school to gain what they do not have at home. Some are coming from broken and traumatic situations only to be met with the same violence from teachers who use their position to prey on those same kids. We are leaving our children open to wolves in sheep’s clothing, those who are supposed to carry the best intentions but harbor the worst.
If we cannot trust our teachers with our children, who can we trust?
The answer is not to stop trusting. The answer is to stop leaving trust unguarded.
A statewide registry of educators with credible abuse findings. Automatic certification review upon arrest, not just conviction. Mandatory reporting enforcement with consequences, not symbolism. And a legislature willing to hold the adults inside these buildings to a standard at least as rigorous as the ones imposed on the children sitting at their desks.
Our children are watching. Some of them are waiting to be believed. The question is whether Louisiana will build a system worthy of hearing them, or whether we will keep asking wolves to guard what they have already devoured.
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Andrea Hagan is a criminology instructor at Loyola University New Orleans and the founder of Pattern Hunters LLC, a public scholarship platform that focuses on criminology, community engagement and accountability.
