Fish Out of Water

Poor turnout for Monday's meeting in Mashpee to discuss sexual abuse case

Mashpee parents, what the hell is wrong with you?

Less than a week ago, I sat in the Mashpee High School auditorium with hundreds of other parents to go over the details of the upcoming D.C. Travelers trip, an annual right of passage for Mashpee eighth graders, many of whom go to Washington D.C. as part of class trip that lasts for five days. It's a big event for the eighth graders that participate -- something they look forward to all year. In many cases they have older brothers and sisters who participated in the program.

For that event, the auditorium was packed - as it should have been - with parents eager to hear Mashpee teacher Brian Hyde, who heads the D.C. Travelers program, provide details about the trip and comb over the children's itinerary. Many of those in attendance were the students, as well.

Last night, however, was a different story.

On Monday night, the Mashpee schools held a meeting to discuss what's happening in the case of Stephen Weixler, an assistant coach to the girl's soccer team, and paraprofessional at the Mashpee Middle School, who was arraigned last week on statutory rape charges for engaging in oral sex with a 14-year old girl, a member of the team he was coaching.

The turnout for that was paltry. Well less than a hundred people sat in that same auditorium, and many of them were faculty and staff from the Mashpee schools.

It was an excellent opportunity for parents to learn more about what's happening. Police chief Rodney Collins spoke about the case at least as much as he could without compromising the investigation. He put rumors to rest about who knew what and when they knew. Superintendent Ann Bradshaw, Mashpee High principal Alan Winrow and Mashpee Middle School principal Stephen Babbitt all spoke. So did Beth Biro, whose Children's Cove center in Barnstable focuses on child sexual abuse. Biro's organization is helping the Mashpee schools develop a plan of action for how to deal with the fallout from this crisis.

There was plenty of time for questions and answers, and the questions sometimes were heated, as parents sought reassurances from the school administration that their children were safe and as parents sought to understand what had happened. Many of us were plainly still processing the shock and trauma of learning that a trusted school faculty member -- someone who went to this same school, only a few years ago -- has been revealed to be a pedophile who had taken advantage of one of our own.

Understandably, many of the parents in attendance last night were upset. This is something that very few of us ever prepare ourselves to deal with -- and at least according to Biro's statistics, it's something that we don't prepare our children to deal with nearly well enough.

But that so few parents bothered to show up at all last night is a sad indictment against the parents of Mashpee.

I guess it's different when it's a feel-good thing like the D.C. Travelers program -- when you expect your kid is going to have a good time. When you've been working towards sending your kid on this trip. Plying raffle tickets on neighbors, powering up the camera, telling them to enjoy their trip to see the sights of our nation's capital.

But when something bad happens, something that has so much stigma and shame attached to it still -- the sexual molestation of a child -- apparently many parents' reaction is to not get involved at all.

I'm sure many of the parents who didn't come last night had perfectly valid reasons -- maybe they were still busy with work, couldn't find someone to mind the kids. Whatever. Between the seventh and eighth grades alone, there should have been at least as many parents in that auditorium last night as showed up last week, if not more. The rumor mill has been buzzing since last Friday about this issue. The Mashpee school administration, in concert with the police department, clearly had hoped to put those rumors to rest last night.

I'm very happy and proud to have shared the venue with the concerned parents who came out last night.

I just wish that more had bothered to make an appearance, to hear straight from the horse's mouth about what the school administration is doing about this important issue, rather than getting rumors and innuendo from the other end of the horse.

As distasteful and horrific as it is to many of us to deal with this horrible tragedy that's hit our community, dealing with it is what has to be done.