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New Legislation to Address Grooming in Schools
A pair of Wisconsin lawmakers want to make it a crime for teachers to prey on their students.
Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, and Sen. Jesse James, R-Thorp, on Monday introduced legislation to make grooming a crime.
“Right now, many predators are able to evade accountability because Wisconsin does not have criminal penalties for grooming a child. Our bill changes that,” Nedweski said in a statement.
There are laws on the books that make it illegal for teachers to have sex with their students, and it has long been a crime for adults to have sex with children. But Wisconsin doesn’t have a specific grooming law.
Police in the state, in response to The Cap Times investigation into how Wisconsin schools deal with grooming, say the lack of a specific law hurts their investigation.
“This critically important piece of legislation will protect our state’s most important and vulnerable assets – our children,” James added.
The legislation defines grooming as a “course of conduct, pattern of behavior, or series of acts intended to condition, seduce, or entice a child for the purpose of sexual activity or exploitation.”
Nedweski and James say that includes sexualized conversations, inappropriate physical contact, digital communications designed to lure a child, and efforts to isolate a child from family or peers.
The Cap Times piece showed that 200 teachers were investigated by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction for grooming or sexual misconduct between 2018 and 2023. Some of them were allowed to walk away from those investigations by simply surrendering their teaching license. The Cap Times also reported that parents were never told.
“While the headlines have been focused on misconduct in schools, our bill is written with the understanding that these evils can happen anywhere,” James added.
The new legislation comes as James and other lawmakers are preparing a Senate hearing on Tuesday where they hope to question Wisconsin’s state superintendent about The Cap Times investigation.
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