The Innocent Justice Foundation | Helping Rescue Children From Abuse

Teacher/Accused Child Molester Groomed Adults as well as Children

In the Tennessean, reporter Janell Ross asks and explains why no child victim or adult came forward to report long-time teacher and Belle-Meade, TN resident Louis Levine over the 30 years he allegedly abused children and took videotape evidence of it.� Federal law enforcement charged Levine, 52, last week of producing 400 videotapes which he kept padlocked in his bedroom.

Michelle Nowell, a new resident in 2000, was unaware that Levine gave out adult pornography to adults and candy to the children who attended his Halloween parties.� When her toddler and 4-year-old dumped out the bag they’d been given, the pornography spilled out too. (A pedophile’s best case scenario).

Nowell called the police. But when they arrived, no action was taken because no crime had been committed, police said. The magazines were given to adults.

Afterward, Nowell said, neighbors made her feel that she and her family had done something wrong, never mind supporting her in revealing the activity. She was the woman who called police on the infamous Levine Halloween party.

“Nobody liked us,” she said. “It was one time of the year when parents can come, men can get their pornography, and it’s OK. � Nobody wanted their kids to play with our kids. Nobody wanted to know us.”

In this way predators make adults accomplices. Anyone who does act on their suspicions is shunned. Adults fell easily into this trap by allowing themselves to be compromised. Once slipping down that slope, they were unlikely to ever call the police, because they themselves had been complicit.

This is often how child victims feel – somehow complicit. Often when they do tell, they are not believed and shunned.

Please report your suspicions to police. Please report your discovery of child sexual abuse images to police.

If more people had done this, and created an environment safe for their children to do so, 30 years’ worth of victims could have been saved from this most humiliating and violating abuse.