A ‘fetish playground’: Kansas law left Olathe 10-year-old vulnerable to stalking teacher

It’s utterly scandalous: Her fourth-grade classmates did a decidedly better job of protecting a 10-year-old Olathe girl from a teacher’s predatory behavior than did the school district — or state law.

After teaching in at least two Olathe elementary schools and one middle school, and incurring reports of inappropriate behavior in each stretching back to the 1990s, the now-retired teacher had been “living in this fetish playground for 31 years,” the girl’s mother said in an interview.

Her classmates last March alerted the girl, and their parents, to the fact that teacher James D. Loganbill had taken more than 200 photos and videos of her literally behind her back, allegedly for prurient motives.

Loganbill told police that he found the girl “sexually attractive.”

Remarkably, one 9-year-old classmate, before alerting adults, offered to switch seats with the girl to put some distance between her and the teacher.

If only the schools and the laws had done as much to keep the girl out of harm’s way.

The girl’s own parents weren’t notified by Meadow Lane Elementary School for a couple days after another parent called the principal about it. And they actually had to find out about it from their own daughter, who was warned of the teacher’s actions by her classmates at recess.

Moreover, the Olathe school district is accused of failing to act after multiple cheerleaders at Pioneer Trail Middle School made similar complaints about Loganbill some eight years earlier.

Yet just as disgraceful, the case has revealed a moon crater-sized hole in Kansas law: No criminal statute really fits this alleged crime. Loganbill has been charged with misdemeanor stalking, which doesn’t speak to child safety and, his attorney notes, requires that even an adult victim be aware that the stalking was going on.

Thus, the case has also made the girl’s parents into instant activists: Kansas Speaker of the House Ron Ryckman, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe, state Rep. Megan Lynn of Olathe and others have already joined with the girl’s family to craft legislation that would make a felony out of stalking anyone 14 years old or younger. Enhanced penalties might befall those who do so from a position of authority such as a teacher.

The girl’s mother told The Star Editorial Board that she’s eager to help push for the bill in the next legislative session that begins in January.

“We quickly learned that the laws just aren’t in place to protect these kids,” the mother said. “The laws in Kansas and Missouri are pretty behind the times as far as how these statutes are set up, and they’re really not set up to protect kids.

“Every day that this isn’t passed, more and more kids aren’t protected in our state. We’re definitely full steam ahead as far as passing the legislation.”

Adding urgency is the realization that this kind of degeneracy is more widespread than any of us would like to think.

“People from all over the country have reached out to us to share their stories of similar circumstances,” the mother said. One was a Seattle woman who had never told anyone the story of her own victimization by a teacher at age 12. She’s now 60.

Astoundingly, the Olathe 10-year-old wants to tell her story to lawmakers.

“We’re not stopping with just this,” her mother adds, noting that more legislation is needed for cases of child assault.

Among some 210 pictures and 31 videos of the girl on Loganbill’s phone and iPad, detectives found pictures of her at recess, eating lunch, walking down the hall and reading a book.

“I mean, all day he was videoing her and photographing her,” says her mother, who had heard so much disgusting detail that at one point, “I had to stop detectives from telling me things.” Among other things, her mom says, the teacher asked the girl for a massage, and to let him play with her hair.

Ryckman lauded the girl’s family members for their fortitude, and now their activism. But it hasn’t been easy by any means. In the three months between discovery and charges being filed, and with a committed stalker in the picture, the mother admits, “There were many nights that I slept on the floor in between all my kids’ bedrooms.”

The only ones losing sleep in the future ought to be the perpetrators.

The law — albeit shamefully late — should see to it.