By Ben Fractenberg and Leslie Albrecht
DNAinfo Staff
QUEENS — Outraged parents at a Rego Park elementary school grilled schools chancellor Dennis Walcott on Friday about why a computer teacher who was arrested Thursday on sexual abuse charges was hired even though he had a history of inappropriately touching students.
"It's like a cover-up," said P.S. 174 dad Steven Katz outside a meeting where Walcott fielded angry questions from about 300 parents. "Somebody had to know."
Teacher Wilbert Cortez, 49, was arrested on charges that he allegedly abused two students.
He had been disciplined in 2000 after the Special Commissioner of Investigation found that he inappropriately touched two students at P.S. 184 in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
Authorities disciplined Cortez by placing a letter in his personnel file, and he was then transferred to P.S. 174.
"Why didn't the principal know now?" said P.S. 174 dad Barry Campbell. "Why did it take so long?"
Campbell said the "very emotional" father of one of Cortez's alleged victims confronted Walcott at Friday's meeting, demanding to know why the P.S. 174 principal didn't seem to know about Cortez's history.
Walcott vowed after Friday's meeting to weed out and fire other DOE employees who have substantiated cases of inappropriately touching children in their personnel files. Walcott said the DOE would comb through personnel files going back to 2000.
"We have to make sure we find out who those bad people are and that we remove those bad people," Walcott said. "Moving forward any individual that's involved in touching a child — and it's substantiated — will be removed."
The charged meeting was the second time this week Walcott was forced to answer questions from parents about why a DOE employee with a history of disturbing relationships children was working at a school.
On Monday, Walcott faced irate parents at P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side after a teacher's aide at the school was arrested on sexual abuse charges. In a grim parallel to the P.S. 174 case, the P.S. 87 aide had also been previously investigated by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for having a questionable relationship with a student.
Investigators determined that the aide, 56-year-old Gregory Atkins, acted inappropriately with the student, but he received only a verbal reprimand. Two years later, Atkins was hired at P.S. 87.
At P.S. 174 in Queens, one of the students involved in the 2000 investigation had told a teacher that Cortez touched him three times. But the teacher failed to report the troubling behavior to authorities, because, he later told investigators, he didn't want to ruin Cortez's career.
