ORLANDO, Fla. – One woman, the victim of sexual abuse by a teacher, hopes that she can begin to do something about the epidemic of sexual abuse that is rampant throughout the nation’s schools.

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The sad fact is one in 10 students between kindergarten and their senior year of high school will experience some form of sexual misconduct or abuse by a school employee. That equals nearly 4.5 million students during the K-12 years.

Andrea Clemens, a victim herself 30 years ago, fears those statistics might actually underestimate the problem because so many students are afraid to tell someone, let alone talk about it. Plus, school administrators and teachers’ unions have had a history of covering such incidents up. Rather than dealing with the problem, they quietly dismiss the offender, sending him or her off to another district without a word of warning to the new school. It’s commonly known as “passing the trash.”

Clemens notes that when teachers are finally caught committing sexual abuse they’ve worked at an average of three different school systems. Background checks, she said, often don’t uncover potentially problem teachers because these incidents are so underreported.

Clemens quickly points out that, “The vast majority of teachers are wonderful and amazing and have nothing but the best of intentions. But the bottom line is pedophiles find jobs where they have access to children.”

Not all of the bad ones are necessarily pedophiles or predators. She says many are trying to be cool and friends with the students, to be accepted. But some of those relationships can snowball into something inappropriate or criminal.

“But there’s nothing cut-and-dried about student sexual abuse and who is liable to commit it.”

Speaking from her own experience, she says, “This trauma happens and it doesn’t leave you. It stays with you for life. You move, you grow and you survive. But you’re forever changed from that…it’s such a violation of trust…everything in your future is affected because of it.”

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And she says it’s not just about male teachers abusing female students. She says there is a double standard that if this happens to a male student it is not supposed to be as bad as it is for females. But Clemens says research has found that as male victims grow up, they often have trouble with substance abuse, and with law and authority figures.

“They have a lot of difficulties and they may not recognize it at the time, but it’s very troubling.  And my heart goes out to the male victims.”

Clemens says she undertook writing her book, ‘Invisible Target,’ about her experience because “I knew that I had to document my story for myself just to kind of put it altogether and get it out of me and be done.”

She’s explored things like, “What did he do to lure me into this false sense of trust and betrayal?” and, “How did it work and why was I such an easy target?”

Clemens says as she was writing she found that she wasn’t writing it just for her.  She feels now that she has a duty and a responsibility to share with other people and train those in education how to recognize potential abuse. She says she’s gone from victim to activist and seeks to help break the cycle of educator abuse.

There are guides for teachers and administrators on how to handle this kind of abuse, she says, but there’s nothing written from the viewpoint of a victim. She’s searched and found only one other book that another victim has written, but other than that there are no resources or accounts for those involved in education who want to do something about this.

Her desire is to train school personnel what to look for because if they recognize what’s going on, intervention is possible. However, Clemens says schools don’t welcome her expertise and research, that they don’t want training. They fear she’ll be opening a Pandora’s box.

“They’re afraid and I don’t understand because they could be so proactive.”

She thinks training how to recognize and stop educator sexual abuse should be required of all teachers and administrators. Her goal is to approach colleges and universities that have teacher education schools and train those going into the teaching profession. Clemens says if the current teachers don’t want it then maybe she can reach education majors before they earn their teaching certificates.

Clemens hopes to have her book self-published by March of next year. To raise the $10,000 needed, she set up fund raising on Kickstarter, Inc., a global crowdfunding platform for projects such as ‘Invisible Target.’  She says she likes that because it is not asking for donations but the money contributed is an investment in her book. Everyone who donates will receive a signed copy of her book.

To find out more go to her Kickstarter page.

She is less than $2,500 short of her goal.