When in Doubt, Pull Up to Your Computer and Pour It All Out

Office of the General Counsel
Department of Children and Families
1317 Winewood Blvd
Building 2, Room 204
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0700

8/4/2009

Dear Counselor:

I don't know the chain of command in the child-protection agency, but I found your name on the Web as the attorney for the child-protection district of Hillsborough County, and since your title sounds authoritative, I shall write you to see if you can intervene on the side of children's safety in Hillsborough County.

I enclose a letter to Sheriff Gee, Hillsborough County, regarding a strange assistant principal at King High School who called boys in his office, had them take off their shoes and socks behind closed doors, and popped their toes. I don't know if the child-protection investigators that work out of the Sheriff's office are part of the orthodox child-protection state apparatus or not. But in this toe-cracking case, I submit that they have done their job ill and betrayed the children's safety.

A teacher called me about two months ago and cited the situation saying one of the mothers of these boys was very upset and asked me what to do. I said to get in touch with the Secretary of Education, that the board and administration were not interested in the safety of children despite their political slogans but in presenting a picture to the public of how wonderful the board and administration run the schools, evidence to the contrary.

A few days ago the enclosed article appeared in the SPTimes. A similar one appeared in the Tribune.

The thing that astonished and upset me was the investigating agencies' response to this outrageous case of foot fetishism in the public schools pursued by a member of the administration for over two and a half years without the administration- oversight people's discovering it. All investigative efforts pooh-pooh the toe-cracking's significance, saying it did not rise to the level of assault.

Perhaps it doesn't, although I think making male students take off their shoes and socks in his office so that he could manipulate their feet for what I infer to be the supervisor's psychosexual gratification is assault in my book. It is certainly assault on the boys' psyches.

One of my grandsons called the behavior "sicko." And sicko it probably is: this behavior suggests pediatric pedophilia, yet not only the sheriff's department but also the attorney general's office misread the situation either from ignorance or pretended ignorance by saying it didn't rise to the level of assault, studiously avoiding mental assault. They kicked it over to the School Board for resolution.

Not a chance of concern about safety of the children from the School Board or administration.

The School Board of Hillsborough County and the Professional Standards Office have a history of using that office to cow teachers into silence about the way the higher-ups misrun the schools. The administration blows small gestures up or invents wrongdoing by teachers whole cloth to keep them subdued. They want the teachers and their students to provide the tax money for them to manipulate power and act like Lords of the Universe and to just tote that barge and lift that bale and shut up.

The administration and board caterwaul about student safety all the time on the political podium, but they let a case like this pass as innocuous fun behavior on the part of an administrator. Their main interest is to maintain the ignorance of the public on how they misrun the schools, use the Professional Standards office that is run by a home-ec- degreed woman to coerce teachers with the fear of losing their jobs, and insure that only laundered information gets fed the public by the Public Affairs Laundromat about the way the schools neglect the safety of children as this toe-cracker case well illustrates.

I think the blasé attitude toward this unhealthy administrative behavior constitutes discrimination against boys. Boys have to maintain stoic toughness when girls get to cry and complain. If boys complain, they get the label of sissies. That's probably why these boys put up with this toe-cracking invasion of their privacy and the integrity of their bodies for two and a half years while the on-site administrators such as the principal turned a blind eye. If girls were lured to behind closed doors to take off their shoes and socks so that what my grandson calls a "sicko" could manipulate their toes, I suggest that there would have been a different response to this unseemly behavior of an administrator who has been forgiven and allowed to go forward with the flowering of this pedophilia activity until it ends in lord knows what.

I have a grandson in the Hillsborough County school system, Counselor. For his sake and for the sake of the other boys in the school system in regard to whom the School Board that preaches child safety in prepared political statements on the board dais but does nothing when a perilous case of administrative behavior comes before them, that you discover a way to help these boys. I urge you to find an avenue to get this administrator referred to a psychiatrist for an evaluation of this psychosexual fetish so that the board can be forced to present these data to the public in order that the public can ascertain the degree to which the School Board exercises vigilance and protects the county's children's safety.

Thank you.

Respectfully,

Lee Drury De Cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708

c: Governor Crist