John Metallo, after three months as an interim administrator at Berne-Knox-Westerlo’s secondary school, has resigned. A group of girls and their mothers want people to know why.

Four of the girls, all of them middle-school students and all of them beautiful, came to The Enterprise newsroom this week, each with her mother, to talk about their experiences since Metallo came to BKW in October; his resignation was accepted by the school board last week.

The Enterprise is withholding their names to protect them. They will be addressed as students 1, 2, 3, and 4.

“Kids call him The Creeper,” said Student 2 of Metallo. “He follows you to class and looks over your shoulder.”

Isn’t that what a school administrator does?

“It’s the way he does it,” says Student 3. “It’s shady.”

She demonstrates on Student 4, sitting beside her, with long hair, reaching to her waist. Student 3 strokes Student 4’s hair, caressing it with her fingertips to the bottom of the strands.

Student 3’s mother said of her daughter, “She usually wears her hair in a ponytail and he stroked it all the way down.” Student 3 nodded ascent.

Student 2 then illustrates the way she says Metallo would fondle her shoulder-length hair.

The girls said this would happen often — at their tables in the lunchroom, in the hallways, during class — to targeted girls. “He would only go to the girls’ tables and do it,” said Student 2 of the cafeteria. “He would go up to our table and her table,” she said, pointing to Student 4.

“He’d approach our table every day,” confirmed Student 4.

All four students said they couldn’t eat their lunches without worrying that Metallo would touch their hair or rub their shoulders.

Student 1 then demonstrates on her friend, Student 2, the way he would stand behind her and rub her shoulders.

“It makes you feel uncomfortable,” said Student 2.

“They are still at an innocent age,” Student 1’s mother said of middle-school girls who might feel something was amiss in being touched by an older man that way but may not have the wherewithal to define or confront it.

“At that age,” agreed Student 4’s mother, “they’re not that aware. They knew it felt bad.”

Student 2 sensed it wasn’t just students who could be made uncomfortable by Metallo. She and Student 4 referenced their teacher. “He would come into our class two or three times a week and make her uncomfortable,” said Student 2.

“You could tell by her tone of voice and how she moved that it made her uncomfortable,” said Student 4.

Student 1 then recounted a time when she felt afraid. “I was walking down the hall with a girlfriend to go to the bathroom, a bathroom by the gym, and he started to follow me,” said Student 1. “He said, ‘You look nice today.’”

She explained what bothered her was the way he said it.  She went down the hallway to another bathroom instead.

“You told me you felt scared,” recalled her mother.

“He never asked me for a hall pass,” said Student 1. Rather, she said, Metallo waited for her to come out and followed her all the way back to class as she ran ahead.

“His office was at the end of the hall,” said Student 2. “We’d move to the other side of the hallway if we saw him.”

Student 4 related a time she was walking with her girlfriend to a home-and-careers class when Metallo stopped her friend. “I turned and she wasn’t there. I heard him tell her, ‘I like your sweatshirt,’ and he gave her a dollar for wearing the sweatshirt and told her to buy a soda or candy.”

Student 4 recounted a similar incident when she was walking in a school corridor with a friend wearing a short-skirted outfit. He stopped her and said, “You look nice today,” said Student 4.

Student 1’s mother said, if the long-time trusted principal, Brian Corey, had said that, using his bright and even tone, it wouldn’t have had the same uncomfortable undertone.

Why didn’t the girls speak up?

Student 1 had spoken up, without results. “We told a teacher in the lunch cafeteria, and we asked if we could go to the office to talk. The teacher said that he would bring it up with Mr. Corey.”

When that didn’t happen, Student 1 and her friends walked to the office themselves, but the principal wasn’t there. “We weren’t comfortable with telling the secretaries. We said we wanted to talk. They said they’d call us back but they never did,” said Student 1.

Student 3, explaining her silence despite discomfort with Metallo, who was working at BKW as both interim assistant principal and athletic director, said, “I feel like he’d yell at me if I said something,”

“He’s the athletic director,” said Student 2. “I thought he’d kick me off the sport I was in.”

“It got to the point I believe these kids couldn’t even focus on their classroom work,” said Student 4’s mother.

Student 2 concurred, describing how hard it was to take a math test as Metallo was stroking her hair.

And Student 3 chimed in, “He stood in social studies class for 20 minutes, a few feet away, just watching me take a test.”

Revelations

The issue came to light for the parents when a group of the girls had gathered at one of their homes. One girl mentioned the behavior and the others all chimed in.

“I felt like a bad parent,” said the mother of Student 3, who was hosting the girls at her home. “I didn’t even know.” When a child comes home from school, she said, “You ask, ‘How was your test?’ or, ‘How was practice?’ You don’t say, ‘Did anyone make you feel uncomfortable?’”

“I thought it was just me and I felt like the only one,” said Student 2 before the girls started talking together that day. Then, all of their separate experiences and worries came tumbling out.

“I really didn’t understand what was going on,” said Student 1.

“We knew it wasn’t right,” agreed Student 4, “but didn’t know how to approach the situation.”

Student 3’s mother called the parents of the other girls. She was very upset and told her daughter, “If you’ve got these creepy little tingles that say this doesn’t feel right, you say, ‘Don’t touch me,’ — and go tell a teacher right away.”

Shaking her head, she went on, “You think they’re going to be safe at school.”

Student 3’s mother continued, “The scary part is, the more people talked to their kids, the more they found out. One child would name three or four other kids and those would also say inappropriate things they saw. This was not a small group of girls; it was turning into many kids feeling uncomfortable.”

On Dec. 8, a group of parents and their daughters met with the principal, Corey, who was on his way out of the district, having accepted a job as superintendent elsewhere, starting in January.

“He seemed concerned at the time,” said Student 2’s mother. “But, in the end, I don’t think he cared a bit.”

The girls noted that, after that, Metallo seemed to stay in his office more.

The issue languished for several weeks.

“It was upsetting to us as parents and the girls as well,” said Student 4’s mother. “This guy is freaking them out and they have to go to school every day.”

“Our kids were left hanging out to dry,” said Student 1’s mother.

The school board ultimately accepted Metallo’s resignation but the mothers feel more needs to be known. “It’s a problem for every school he goes to,” said Student 3’s mother. (See related story.) “Who’s checking this guy out? Some other little girl could be made to feel like this….It’s not enough just to have someone resign…

“These kids felt like this all year,” she said. “We didn’t know. They would hide. They knew it wasn’t right and they shouldn’t have to feel like that in school.”

Looking back over the last few months to sum up her feelings when Metallo was at the school, Student 4 said, “When he was there, I felt nervous and almost anxious. Now, the past few weeks have been fine and I feel safe.”

“I’m glad he’s gone,” agreed Student 3.

From now on, said Student 2, “I’ll probably tell someone if I’m uncomfortable.”

“This gave us an opportunity to talk to our girls,” said Student 3’s mother. “They know now that they can say, ‘Get your hands off me.’”

She stated the conviction forcefully: “We told the kids, you are in control of your body 100 percent of the time. I don’t care if it is the pope or the president, if anyone makes you feel uncomfortable, you tell them, get the hell off of me. If it feels wrong, it is wrong.”

“The whole fact that this man was even hired,” said Student 4’s mother, “makes me sick to my stomach.”