When the group tried reporting the situation to adults, one student told the Boston Globe they weren't taken seriously.
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A group of Rhode Island middle schoolers thought their teacher was a "creep," so they kept a log of all of his inappropriate interactions with girls in their class. Now, the teacher is on administrative leave and under investigation.
The group of Davisville Middle School boys in North Kingstown started the "pedo database" after watching their teacher ogle at girls in their class, giving them nicknames like "sweetheart" and "sunshine," and asking them to dance for him, The Boston Globe reported.
When the group tried reporting the situation, adults didn't take them seriously, one of them told the Globe. The teacher himself had even commented that he'd received complaints for decades without any action being taken against him, according to the Globe.
The Globe reported that one boy noted how uncomfortable his female peers were in class.
"Sometimes they'd laugh. Sometimes they just kind of just sit there awkwardly," the boy told the Globe. "Even the ones that said he was 'creepy' laughed because they were obviously not trying to tick him off or anything. So they're just fake laughing, awkwardly laughing."
After "other students noticed it too," the group decided in January 2021 to make a "pedo database" on Discord to gather "evidence" of his behavior, according to the Globe.
"This is now the official chat that we will later use as evidence against (the teacher) about pedophilia in case anything does come up in the future and we do turn out to be right," one boy wrote in the group chat, according to the Globe.
When classes went online due to the pandemic, they noted in the database when their teacher said, "You all love me so choose love," and "You gotta stand up and dance now." In another instance, he remarked everyone should be "in bathing suits tomorrow."
Once classes resumed in school, they tracked when the teacher teased or flirted with girls. One time, he asked a girl to take off her shoes and wiggle her toes, they told the Globe.
One boy told the Globe he felt bad for the girls "because sometimes it just seems like it was a humiliating thing."
"He'd play a song and he'd make one of them get up and dance," the student added.
In April 2022, the teacher was escorted out of school and placed on leave, according to the Globe. The interim superintendent said they were investigating allegations that the teacher stalked a pre-teen, middle school girl that he coached and been inappropriate with other girls, the Globe reported.
The family of the middle school girl, represented by attorney Timothy J. Conlon, said they reported the behavior to school officials and were met with "deliberate indifference," The Providence Journal reported. The teacher was removed from coaching middle schoolers in the area only after the family threatened to take out a restraining order on him, the Globe reported.
Once the public was asked to come forward with information, one of the middle school boys told his mother about the "pedo database," and they contacted Conlon. The log has since been shared with the US Attorney's Office, the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, and Families, the state education department, and the lawyer conducting the school's investigation, per the Globe.
"I did not ever think this would actually be used as evidence, but we always had it as if it was," the boy, now 15 and enrolled in high school, told the Globe. "So I'm glad that we did, even though it might have seemed like slightly stupid at times."
A spokesperson for Conlon did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
