Richard D. Lanum
Posted by: Webmaster in Charges Dismissed, Health/Gym/PE, ME-FV, Middle Schools, Ohio
Richard D. Lanum, 45, a substitute teacher at Edison Intermediate Middle School in Grandview Heights, Ohio has been charged with sexual imposition, a third-degree misdemeanor, on allegations that he patted an eighth-grade girl’s buttocks during gym class.
The alleged touching is said to have occurred during gym class on October 16 and the 13-year-old girl reported it to the school principal who called police.
Reportedly one other student witnessed the illicit touching.
Lanum, who has taught at the school 12 days over the past three years, has denied the allegations. School officials indicate he will not be used again until the case is resolved.
Lanum is scheduled to appear in Franklin County Municipal Court on November 20th.
3/14/08 - All Charges Dropped
All charges against Richard D. Lanum have been dropped.
The alleged victim didn’t want to testify and a report from Franklin County Children Services indicated there was no crime committed.
Charges against Lanum can NOT be refiled at a later date.
Reference:
Sex charge against ex-substitute dropped (3/14/08)
Substitute teacher accused of sexual imposition (10/25/07)
Your IP Address is:
66.235.124.5
Entries (RSS)
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Anon, I believe that one of the girls recanted. If she told Children Services it didn’t happen, then that is the reason for them finding the charge unsubstantiated. You also need to remember that this happened two days after the Columbus Dispatch started it series teachers abusing students and the TV news was covering teacher abuse stories. You would have to believe that under such scrutiny, they would make sure before finding me innocent. Also, if I had patted the girl’s buttocks, then she would have testified. I did not touch her on any other student. If you want a copy of the lie detector test, send me your email address. I have a myspace page and a facebook page or you can email me at richardlanum@yahoo.com Anon: what do you think should happen to the girl and her father for falsely accusing me?
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:39 am
Not so parent. Dwayne Smith openly admitted to molesting a girl in Worthington and FCCS did nothing and to this day has done nothing.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:26 am
If Franklin County Childrens’ Services examined the case and concluded that nothing happened, then I’d say it’s almost a certainty that nothing happened. FCCS is a very conservative organization, and they always err on the side of caution in these matters, if for no other reason than to protect themselves from the kind of lawsuits that I can only assume Mr. Lanum is planning.
Kids are vulnerable to abuse. They need protection. But they also confabulate. It is reckless to not take all possibilities into account, especially when so much is at stake.
April 21st, 2008 at 11:35 am
I am insulting the police officer for not doing his job adequately. Had he done his job, I would be a lot happier. Before destroying my life, he could have took an extra few minutes to question the other teacher in the gym.
April 20th, 2008 at 12:58 am
Beeba questioned the two girls who accused me and decided to charge me. He assumed I was guilty and he was not impartial. You must live in a fantasy world if you believe that all police officers are impartial every time. The only reason he questioned me before he charged me was because either he had to, he wanted a confession, or both. It was obvious to me that he had already judged me.
A decent person would have done a little more work before destroying a person. He could have talked to the other teacher in the classroom or the 4 other girls who were in the immediate proximity at the time the fictional incident. Do you think that questioning five people is to much work to prevent from ruining an innocent person’s life? Officer Beeba thought that questioning one extra person was too much. Officer Beeba did not care if I was innocent. While an officer does not have to care, a good person must care. A good police officer would have talked to me the same day. I don’t believe that Beeba is qualified to be a police officer because he does not care about people. I believe that Officer Beeba is judgmental, lazy and incompetent. He is definitely not a good person. I am a good person and I know what makes a person good.
Children Services were able to find the truth. Beeba could have too, if he were a good person. As an officer, he didn’t have to try, and he didn’t. Maybe someone heard the girls talking about framing me.
I taught for two years while serving in the Peace Corps. Nearly all of my students said that I was the best teacher ever. That was because I tried hard, did my best and I am considerate. I am a good teacher, a good person and I will put my character against Beeba, you are anyone else. I may be the most boring person on Earth, so I try hard to be a good person. I have absolutely no confidence in anything, except my character.
Your attack on my character is laughable. My actions and words are not whiny and not detrimental to my character. I see something that is wrong and I want to change it. I am fighting to prevent another teacher from getting destroyed by a lying girl and a lazy officer. That is what good responsible people do. You are attacking the victim who is depressed. What does that say about your character?
April 18th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Your situation is a unfortunate, and I can understand why you are upset, but attacking a police officer for doing his job is a good way to show your lack of character. The police are impartial. You are not. You are also not a police officer, do not know the training, policies or procedures or have ever put your life in danger for another human being. EVERY DAY. Your words are detrimental to your character just as much as the alleged actions that you were charged for (which I personally feel that you are innocent and the girls did lie) and insinuating that the police officer did not do his job, when you do not even know what it entails, is just your scapegoat to try to mend a bad situation. The police do not need to talk to all of the students. Just the parties involved and the person responsible for those parties. It appears that that was done. Also it does not matter who said what. As long as enough information is given to charge for the crime then that is it. It is not the police officers job to decide whether you are being honest or whether you are even guilty. They record the facts and then the courts and/or jury are to sort that out. If enough information was given by the girls to charge then that is the police officers responsibility. Any additional information from any of the students and witnesses, and your lie detector results do not matter for the charge. All of that information will be handled by the court to decide if you are innocent or not. Since the girls decided not to testify you are cleared of all charges so it never got to that step. If a claim is made to the police then they take appropriate action. Do not be upset because an immature girl doesn’t realize the gravity of the situation and taking it out on the police officer is you being whiny and making excuses for something that you had no control over. If you are truly innocent and feel your character was defamed then you would be suing the girls parents for defamation of character not posting on an obscure website to blame a police officer for doing his job that you do not understand fully. I do hope that you find employment, as this is an injustice, but with your words here today I hope that it is never with teaching or administering to students again.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
The truth by the wrongly accused,
My life was ruined by a girl’s false accusation, and an inept police officer who did less than the minimum amount of fair investigating.
On October 16, 2007 I was accused of patting a 13-year-old girl on the butt while I was substituting as a physical education teacher at Edison Intermediate Middle School in Grandview Heights. I did not take attendance so I do not know who is accusing me, except by name.
First of all, it is not normal for a 45 year-old man to wake up one morning and start groping little girls for the first time, and I did not. I have no history of touching little girls and I volunteered immediately to take a lie-detector test, which I later passed. Secondly, a pervert so stupid as to pat a girl’s butt in front of a 5 other girls and another teacher would certainly have a history. It was the only class of the day with another teacher in the gym.
It is important to note that the accuser lost her mother and sister in a car accident last year and that might be the reason why the principal, the police and the media were so reluctant to question the validity of the girl’s story and so eager to condemn me.
In the gym class, there were 4 workout stations and each had 6 students. I did not want any unnecessary conflicts so I let the students choose what groups they were in, so they were most likely all friends. One of the groups consisted of a small circle of 5 mini trampolines, and they played keep-away from the person in the middle. It was at this station that a girl accused me of patting her butt and her friend claimed to have witnessed it. The girl had no noticeable reaction in class and did not inform me, the other teacher or anyone else in the gym. More interesting is that the girl who claimed to have witnessed the groping of her friend, who had recently suffered a tragic loss, kept quiet and did not come to her defense. Neither of them warned their friends or mentioned the incident to anyone until after they returned to their homeroom.
After she and her friend returned to their homeroom, they informed their teacher. The girls had 10 minutes in the locker room and 4 minutes in the hall to discuss their accusation. According to the police report, Officer Beeba questioned only Principal Baeslack and the two girls. The girls stated that I was dressed in black, allowed them to call me Rich, that I made them do too many push ups (as instructed by the lesson plan). They also said that I did push ups with them (true) and that I looked down their shirts while they did push ups (not true).
Officer Beeba did not question the other four girls at the trampoline station, the other teacher in the gym or the other students who were next to me while we did push ups. He did not question the girls’ homeroom teacher, who would be more aware of the girls’ honesty and character than the principal. It did not seem strange to him that the girl and her witness did not tell me, complain at the time, react noticeably or tell the other teacher in the gym. He did not ask anyone if the girls were mad at me for another reason or if they overheard the girls talking about getting me into trouble. He did not remove me from class to protect the other students or question me while my memory was fresh. He did not have the police department investigator do his job. He did not wait for Children Services to investigate. He made no attempt to find out if I was being falsely accused.
I assumed that Principal Baeslack did not believe the allegation or he would have immediately removed me from class, instead of subjecting more girls to a butt-patting, teacher. I was not removed from class and I stayed until the final bell.
No one informed me of the complaint for two days. When I talked to Officer Beeba he said that he did not need to question the other teacher or any of the other students because he had enough to file the charge against me. I volunteered to take a lie-detector test but he dismissed the idea. While the color of my clothes made his police report (which is full of inaccuracies), he left out my willingness to take a lie-detector test. He also left that fact out while talking to the media. Most people find a polygraph test, and the willingness to take one, credible.
Fortunately, Children Services did a more thorough investigation and found the charge “unsubstantiated”. I assume that someone at Children Services actually investigated the charge and questioned the other four girls in the circle. Maybe one of the accusers confidentially told the truth. Fortunately, the two girls were unwilling to lie under oath and the charge was dropped. Fortunately, my wife, family and friends knew that I would never do such a thing.
Unfortunately, I had to quit teaching because of the media attention. Unfortunately, I could no longer pay rent and had to move back to Dayton with my mother, where I have gained 25 pounds and I am unempolyed. Unfortunately, I was too far away to reconcile my marriage and I am now divorced. Unfortunately, I am unable to get antidepressants and my depression is getting worse. Unfortunately, there is no repercussion for girls who lie about such things, or police officers who do less than the minimum amount of fair investigating.
A competent investigator would have seen at least one inconsistency in the girls’ story. During the last exercise of the day, I was stationary and in the middle of the gym. The students were free to do push ups anywhere in the gym. For me to be able to see down the accuser’s shirt, as stated in the police report, the accuser would have had to of positioned herself directly in front of me. Why would an angry and offended girl be so close to me when she could have been near a wall? A competent investigator would have found out that one of the girls invited me to participate in the keep-away activity. I refused because I was monitoring another group, but I later participated. Maybe the girl who invited me was the accuser and she became offended when I refused. I do not know. A minimum amount of fair investigating would have revealed this and might have found the truth and spared me the agony of being falsely accused.
I passed a lie detector test. The test was given by Douglas C. Wells A.C.P. member of the Academy of Certified Polygraphists, American Polygraph Assoc., Ohio Assoc. of Polygraph Examiners. I gave a copy to the Columbus Dispatch.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Mr. Lanum, I sympathize with you, but unfortunately, the police are not interested in the truth, they just want to pin as much BS as they can on anybody they can. They do not care what they do to their lives. This website’s webmaster operates in the same mode. They want to make sure they completely and thoroughly pass judgment on everyone that makes their website, and then if they are found not guilty or the case is dismissed, nothing but a token mention of it. This webmaster is into sensationalism, the same as the media is. They intend to destroy people’s good name, and for shame. I wish you nothing but good luck with whatever you do.
.
Webmaster’s note:
.
Apparently the person that made this comment failed to read for comprehension. Had they done so they would be aware of our belief that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. This belief is expressed clearly on the “About Badbadteacher.com” page accessible from every page on this site and repeated below in bold, in the hope that our anonymous reader might comprehend it at last:
.
In viewing the various pages which will comprise this site our readers are urged to always keep in mind that accusations are not proof of misconduct. Anyone can accuse another of practically any misconduct imaginable. This does not make it so unless and until the accusations are proven in a court of law.
Everyone is entitled to a presumption of innocence regardless of that for which they stand accused. Please keep this in mind.
Nothing published on this site should be construed as a statement of fact regarding guilt or innocence of anyone accused of anything PRIOR to the accused having their day in court which obviously includes a fair and completed trial.
.
What could be more clear?
March 22nd, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I took and passed a lie-detector test but the officer did not note that in his police report nor did the media report it. I was never alone with any of the students. The officer did not question the other teacher in the gym or 22 of the 24 students in the gym. He only asked the girl who lied and the girls best friend who said she witnessed it (who also lied). He made no attempt to find out the truth. My life is ruined.