T.R.’s favorite teacher has been arrested. He is accused of messing with a 14-year-old girl during private tutoring sessions. Facts are in short supply, but one piece of evidence cited by the police is a huge quantity of text messages between the teacher and the girl, some of them sexual in nature. Because I am the parent who lives far from school, rumors are also in short supply. I’m just not plugged into the right gossip chains.

T.R. said he didn’t believe it was true. That would be nice, particularly because a girl is safe rather than exploited. Because this teacher is one of T.’s heros, a man who managed to keep T. interested in math, who makes him look forward to school, who makes him laugh, I hope the teacher did not do this horrible thing. I also hope it isn’t true because I trusted this man with my child. If he did what he is accused of doing, he has betrayed my kid, if not at the despicable level he betrayed the girl. If it is true, my sense of my own ability to sort trustworthy people from scary people doesn’t work very well, and how am I supposed to protect my kid without functional judgment?

Whether the teacher is convicted or not, his life is over. He lives in the community where he teaches. His own daughter is roughly the same age as T., possibly a year or two older. I can’t imagine any of her friends getting to come to her house ever again. The school would be hard pressed to keep him, so there goes his career.

It all makes me angry and sad.