English-language circuit in Asia begs for teachers, little screening

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This article was published 19/08/2006 (7286 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) – The English-teaching circuit in Asia is filled with transient foreigners, from backpackers needing to make quick cash to recent college graduates looking for experience.

Turnover is high and screening is minimal, opening windows for people with phoney credentials, or even those suspended from teaching at home – like John Mark Karr, the man who said he was with JonBenet Ramsey the night she was killed in her family’s basement 10 years ago in Colorado.

Karr taught for a few months in South Korea in 2002, in Honduras last year and at schools in Bangkok this year before his arrest. An online resume said he also worked as a private teacher and caregiver in Germany, the Netherlands and Costa Rica during the last five years.

Yet in April 2001, he had been arrested in California for possession of child pornography. He vanished after serving six months in jail and his teaching licence was suspended a year later.

Schools said there is no easy means of checking up on foreigners applying for jobs.

“A telephone interview, a resume and a picture of the candidate is all we have,” said Kim Soo-ho, an official at Englishwork, a teacher-recruiting agency in Seoul, South Korea.

“It is physically difficult to check the background of people when they are from overseas.”

Convicted sex offenders from various countries have popped up as English teachers in Asia.

Earlier this month, an Australian who taught English in Jakarta, Indonesia, was charged with molesting street children. He told police he videotaped at least 50 teenaged boys.

Another Australian teacher who faced sex allegations at home committed suicide last week in Indonesia, where he also was accused by human right activists of abusing children.

“It’s a very traditional pedophile strategy,” said Bernadette McMenamin, head of the Australian-based advocacy group Child Wise.

“If you want to sexually abuse children, what better job would there be?”

She said foreign teachers with criminal histories can easily stay beneath the radar because background information is not readily shared among countries, making the screening process difficult for even the most prestigious institutions. Karr taught Grade 1 for two weeks in June at one of Bangkok’s finest schools before he was fired for being too strict.

“People who are offenders of all sorts are being able to move anonymously across borders,” said Carmen Madrinan, executive director of Bangkok-based ECPAT International, a network of organizations working to fight commercial sexual exploitation of children.

She said the demand for English skills in Asia, especially in countries like Thailand where tourism drives the economy, puts pressure on schools to fill job vacancies quickly. But she said administrators are stuck because there is no easy way to verify credentials or check for criminal records.

Fake teaching documents also are cheap and easy to obtain in Asia, and there are jobs for the taking. Last year in Japan, there were 4,500 foreign language schools with nearly 14,000 teachers. South Korea had 12,000 native English-speakers teaching at private schools as of May.

Websites post openings at schools across Asia, making it easy for teachers to work short stints in one country before lining up a job and jumping to another, providing perfect cover for sex offenders on the run in a region infamous for sex tourism.

Education officials in Thailand have told local news media they will work with schools and police to tighten screening procedures. But Madrinan said even in the United States, where many safeguards are in place, sexual predators sometimes slip through the cracks.

“It’s a complicated issue,” she said.

“But when you are talking about a cross-jurisdiction and you have repeated offenders or you have offenders who are of a serious nature of crime, then you have to ask: ‘Should they be allowed to leave in the first place?”‘