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In This Church, Child Sexual Abuse Has Gone Unchecked for So Long That It Spans Generations

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A rural area off Highway 14 just north of the small town of Moorcroft, in eastern Wyoming They were pillars of their church, congregants in a little-known denomination that sets itself apart from the world and teaches that even the most unconscionable acts can be wiped away — not just forgiven, but forgotten and never spoken of again. So it went in a rural Wyoming church, where a man was accused of sexually abusing young girls hundreds of times in the pews during Sunday services. Though the preacher knew of the abuse, he never reported it to police, local prosecutors said. Instead, he told the man to seek therapy. In Minnesota, a man from the same faith admitted that he began entering the bedrooms of his daughter and son at night around the time each of them turned 12. He and his siblings grew up in the church and were sexually abused themselves, and then he repeated the abuse with his own children. And in Washington state, preachers knew a member of their congrega...
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I Got Access to Hundreds of Teacher Misconduct Complaints in California — and You Can Too

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Anna Vignet/KQED I was a new reporter at KQED in 2021 when former elementary teacher Joseph Brian Houg was sentenced to more than three decades in prison for sexually abusing 10 students. He’d taught at the same San Francisco Bay Area school for more than two decades. Were there warning signs?   I soon discovered parents on social media saying they had complained to school administrators for years about Houg. I also knew that schools could release such complaints if they were substantiated or if teachers were disciplined. So I filed public records requests with Houg’s school — something anyone can do.  I received 43 pages of records within a few months showing that parents had reported Houg to the principal at least four times since 2009. They complained about him for asking students to strip down to their underwear in his classroom in order to try on costumes for a play he was directing, and for coming into their changing room. They also complained about his touch...
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Texas State Takeover of Local School Districts Expands, Raising Concerns

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Newly appointed Beaumont ISD Superintendent Sandi Massey speaks during a school board meeting in Beaumont, Texas. Danielle Villasana for ProPublica No state has taken over as many local public school districts as Texas. Just since 2020, the Texas Education Agency has installed its own hand-picked leaders in eight districts. Four of those came this spring. At least another 10 are at risk of takeover, including, as of last week, the Austin Independent School District.  And to lead some of these districts, Texas is turning to a cadre of officials with ties to Mike Miles, the man the education agency chose in 2023 to oversee the Houston school district, the state’s largest. Miles is also a close ally of Mike Morath, Texas’ powerful education commissioner. Already, at least two of these new district leaders have started to adopt policies similar to the contentious reforms Miles has pursued in Houston. He has touted improved test scores under his charge. Houston ISD had n...
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A Low-Income Housing Program Is Pouring Billions Into Housing Many People Can’t Afford

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Illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source images via IRS and Flickr. On any given night, thousands of people sleep on the streets in Portland, Oregon. They seek shelter in tents, bushes and overpasses in a city that has struggled with one of the worst housing crises in the country. Portland, like many cities, has raced to increase its supply of affordable housing by turning to a federal program that’s existed since the 1980s: the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. It provides up to $15 billion worth of tax credits a year nationally to help developers build apartments. Portland supplemented the federal construction money with local dollars, creating incentives that were hard to turn down. But to meet the affordability requirements, all the developers needed to do in most cases was put rents within reach of someone earning 60% of median income, an earnings threshold that equates to about $75,000 annually for a family of four. It turns out that this amount of rent is ...
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