By Jerry PDX
Judge clears criminal record of Mitch Whitehurst, ex-teacher accused of decades of abuse
Updated Feb 06, 2019; Posted Feb 06, 2019
Mitch Whitehurst appears at Multnomah County Courthouse
By Eder Campuzano | The Oregonian/OregonLive
A former teacher who dodged several allegations of sexual misconduct during decades working in Portland schools had a 2014 misdemeanor harassment conviction, his only criminal offense, erased by a Multnomah County judge Wednesday.
Mitch Whitehurst pleaded guilty to committing that offense when he was a teacher at Faubion K-8 School. Whitehurst approached a co-worker and poked him in the anus, police records say, and Whitehurst admitted in court he offensively touched the man.
Whitehurst got his criminal slate wiped clean under an Oregon law that allows criminals to have misdemeanor convictions expunged, or set aside, after three years if they've complied with all terms of their sentences. Advocates argued his track record of subjecting students to sexual misconduct and lying about it should be grounds to keep his conviction in place.
Regardless, Whitehurst won't teach in public schools ever again, as his license was revoked in the wake of the harassment conviction. The conviction spurred an investigation by the state licensing agency, which stumbled into allegations of Whitehurst's alleged sexual misconduct going back as far as the 1983-84 school year.
Those allegations, and the school district's failure to act on them, were first brought to light by a 2017 Oregonian/OregonLive investigation, Benefit of the Doubt: How Portland Public Schools helped an educator evade sexual misconduct allegations.
Friday, October 11, 2019
Judge Clears Criminal Record of Mitch Whitehurst, Black Teacher Accused of Decades of Raping Young Girls
Whitehurst, who would not agree to be interviewed for that story, also declined to comment to The Oregonian/OregonLive on Wednesday. He did not speak during the hearing, and his attorney, Ethan Levy, said only a few words.
Benefit of the Doubt: How Portland Public Schools helped an educator evade sexual misconduct allegations
Records and interviews show that top officials in Portland Public Schools protected educator and coach Mitch Whitehurst at the expense of students. They ignored years of complaints and red flags about his conduct at four different schools.
Matthew Ellis, attorney for the co-worker Whitehurst poked, told Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Eric Dahlin the full spectrum of revelations should be considered when the court ruled on the expungement.
"We have far more information now about the underlying crime," Ellis said in court Wednesday.
Ellis argued that the state licensing agency's investigation and a second investigation by an independent team hired by the Portland school board proved the harassment incident wasn't an isolated case.
Whitehurst solicited sex from female students many times, beginning the first year he taught, those reports concluded. Ellis said Whitehurst had slapped the co-worker in the buttocks at least twice before, a fact that also appears in police reports filed in the wake of the incident.
Ellis credited The Oregonian's reporting for lighting a fire under the school district to reform systems that let the longtime Portland educator fall through the cracks.
[The system didn't let Whitehurst "fall through the cracks"; evil people helped an evil black man.]
"The buck may have stopped with no one, but the buck should stop here today," Ellis said, echoing one of the signature lines in a damning report on the school district's handling of Whitehurst.
The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office also issued a memorandum urging Dahlin to deny Whitehurst's request to expunge the conviction. The office, like Ellis, argued that the court should consider the entirety of Whitehurst's record beyond the harassment investigation and conviction.
But Dahlin told Ellis and the co-worker, both of whom appeared in court Wednesday, that he could only consider the harassment conviction and state law that allows a misdemeanor to be expunged if the defendant has complied with all conditions of his sentence.
"The idea is that if somebody makes a mistake … after a certain amount of time, they can have the slate wiped clean," Dahlin said.
Damning report shows Portland Public Schools disregard of sexual misconduct over decades
District officials' failure to stop educator Mitch Whitehurst and the district's lack of improvement in training and protocols to this day indicates an urgent need for Oregon's largest school district to overhaul how it handles sexual misconduct, the report says.
Dahlin told Ellis and Levi he would issue a preliminary ruling and allow either attorney to present a case against it. He was inclined to expunge Whitehurst's conviction.
The judge said he couldn't consider allegations of misconduct prior to his conviction that surfaced as officials at the school district, county or state level investigated Whitehurst. What's more, Dahlin said, he couldn't try to dissect the previous judge's reasoning for accepting Whitehurst's guilty plea to a low-level charge rather than something more serious.
"I don't know what the discussion was. I don't know what the thought was," Dahlin said.
The courtroom remained silent as Dahlin presented his ruling, save for the ringing of a cell phone in the middle of the hearing.
"For purposes of today, I don't think there's a reason for me to look beyond the conviction or to relitigate," Dahlin said.
Soon after, Dahlin announced his official decision to expunge Whitehurst's conviction and adjourned the session. Levi and Whitehurst left the courtroom almost immediately, declining to comment for this story.
Portland Public Schools admits retaliation against teacher who spoke out on sexual misconduct; will pay for lost wages
"This is evidence that Portland Public Schools violated my rights by engaging in the illegal practice of whistleblower retaliation. As the story told by (Portland Public Schools) begins to unravel, it becomes glaringly apparent that I was telling the truth all along," Caprice said.
The victim agreed to speak to The Oregonian/OregonLive through his attorney.
"I understand the court's ruling. I understand the court's reasoning," Ellis said. "I don't agree with it. But there's no arguing it."
But the two parties weren't the only ones in the courtroom.
A substitute teacher who the district admitted it retaliated against in 2012 for reporting that Whitehurst had demanded oral sex from her when she was his student in the 1980s sat near the back.
Caprice, who spoke on the condition that the newspaper only use her first name, said she was there in hopes of seeing Whitehurst held accountable for decades of abuse.
"Every single person who was responsible for this man dropped the ball," she said.
Investigators for the school board came to the same conclusion in their May 2018 report on Whitehurst. Caprice said she saw more of the same in the courtroom Wednesday.
"Everybody is saying, 'This is not my fault. This is not my problem,'" she said.
--Eder Campuzano | 503-221-4344
Do you have a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Eder at ecampuzano@oregonian.com or message either of the social accounts above.
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