Page 61 of Honorable Sins

"My family has concerns regarding what has been happening to children in your care for years," I correct.

A buzz of conversation starts around me and the chairman of the board has to raise his voice to be heard. "Please, save discussion amongst yourselves for the appropriate time."

The chatter dies down.

Mark gives me an earnest look. "I understand that what happened last week upset you Mrs. Fitzgerald, and it's possible we acted without as much forethought as we should have taken, but let me assure you and all the parents here that the administration and staff at St. Patrick's take student safety very seriously."

"No, you don't."

His mouth opens.

I keep talking. "If you did, we wouldn't be here."

I touch the screen on my iPad and the presentation monitor's screen lights up.

The first slide appears.

White background.

Black lettering.

STUDENT INCIDENT REPORTSLAST FIVE YEARS

"When JoAnn Young attempted to get me incident reports from both teachers and students that concerned her, they had mysteriously disappeared from the school's digital archives." She made the mistake of waiting to look for them until the following day. I give Mark a disparaging glance. "I am very good at retrieving deleted data."

I tap my tablet and the next slide replaces the first. It has a single number. 37.

"This is the number of complaints JoAnn was able to provide me from the archives for the last seven years." I switch to the next slide. No surprise over 80% of them were classified as resolved without parental participation. Not so the deleted records. "This is the number of complaints I unearthed from the deleted data."

The number on the screen is 148.

"Forty-three involving repeated offenders, twenty-six involving sexual language directed toward classmates, seventeen involving physical intimidation, and three involving violence. None of which were followed up on according to school protocols."

The room has become very quiet.

One of the board members leans forward. "Principal Bentley has always assured us that bullying is so minimal as to be nonexistent at the school."

The look I give Mark is withering.

He tugs at his shirt collar. "You're making more—"

"No." I cut him off. "You were aware of the problem and you ignored it."

He puffs up. "I assure you, I did not ignore our students' safety."

"No?" I ask

"No."

I enlarge a screenshot.

"I recovered the metadata."

Highlighted lines appear.

USER: MBENTLEY

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