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James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Wednesday released a video that the Michigan American Federation of Teachers union went to court twice to try to hide.
It reveals how the union negotiated a $50,000 payout to a teacher who was accused of – but never charged with – sexual misconduct with a child.
The teacher’s identity has been withheld because there were no charges and he denied the accusations.
But the Michigan ATF went to court repeatedly trying to have the video presentation suppressed, O’Keefe explains. The judge ruled twice in favor of Project Veritas, he said.
The accusations were that the teacher, who had been dating the mother of the student, then about seven or eight years old, had come into the child’s room at night, and tried to remove her underwear, the video reveals.
Project Veritas reported, “Undercover footage of AFT Union Representative, Johnny Mickles, reveals how AFT and the Lake City Michigan school district defended the alleged child molesting teacher.”
It said redacted documents obtained from the union office “corroborate the events.”
And documents from the Lake City Area Schools confirm that, “It is alleged that [REDACTED] engaged in a course of inappropriate conduct with one of the District’s female students. (Jane Doe) who was aged 7 or 8 at the time…”
It was the third video in a series by Project Veritas, whose earlier work investigating situations in New Jersey resulted in the suspensions of David Perry, president of the Hamilton Township Education Association, and Kathleen Valencia, president of the Union City Education Association, for their comments on video.
Project Veritas reported both Democrats in New Jersey and Gov. Phil Murphy now want hearings to investigate the practices of the New Jersey Education Association.
In the latest, Project Veritas said a police report showed the incident occurred sometime in 2006, but was not reported until 2013 when the alleged victim happened to become a student of the teacher.
Mickles, who represented the teacher, corroborates this in a meeting with a Project Veritas undercover journalist:
“When the student got to his class… apparently all these memories she had suppressed came out… And she went to the superintendent and basically spilled her guts and the superintendent terminated the teacher.”
Project Veritas explains Mickles told how the superintendent wanted to terminate the teacher, but the union negotiated a resignation with the district which allowed him to keep his teaching certificate, and included six weeks’ pay and $50,000.
“He was terminated but we negotiated a resignation for him… he didn’t lose his [teaching] certification. … he got to be on leave until they drew up the settlement and then he got, like, the rest of the school year’s pay out… He got about six weeks of pay I think… and then he got a $50,000 pay out,” Mickles states.
Project Veritas also interviewed the unidentified teacher, who admitted there were accusations but denied doing anything.
“For the record, this former teacher was never charged and never arrested in this case. All we know is that the union, AFT Michigan, and the Lake City Area schools had a problem: A teacher was accused of a serious crime and the solution they came up with was to pay the teacher a bucket of money so he would just go away. If he wanted to go teach somewhere else, so be it,” said O’Keefe.
WND reported on the two earlier videos.
In one, a teachers union president confirmed the union protected a faculty member who had sex with a student.
“This file right here is from a teacher who had sex with a student. This file is about whether or not the teacher gets to keep his pension. Is he going to jail? No. How come? Because the child’s not pressing charges. There’s no proof.”
Those are the words of Kathleen Valencia, president of the Union City Education Association.
The video of Valencia:
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The first video in the series featured Hamilton Township Education Association President David Perry, who admitted that to protect accused teachers, he would “bend” the truth, change a “punch” to a “shove,” backdate statements, warn teachers to “not tell a soul” and stall proceedings to ensure security cameras record over a contested incident.
The first video:
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