MARIETTA, Ga.,None — A former Cobb County high school counselor was cleared last week of sexual battery against a student, but he's still left with a revoked teaching certificate and no job.
"I want my license back," Frank Robinson told Channel 2's Ross Cavitt.
Two years after a Lassiter High School student said Robinson touched her inappropriately in his office, a Cobb County jury found him not guilty. In court, it was revealed that she made the allegations before Robinson could call her parents to let them know she was failing classes.
"There are students who know how to get rid of a teacher they don't like, and that has happened more times than you can imagine," attorney Warren Fortson told Cavitt.
Robinson, a much-loved counselor at Lassiter High, has said he wants to get back into the classroom. After the allegations, he was initially transferred, but then, his teaching certificate was revoked, and he wasn't allowed to visit the schools where his two sons attended.
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"I feel like I was brought in, pressured to resign, attacked, intimated," Robinson said.
He said he felt betrayed that school officials would take the girls' words over his, especially considering his long-unblemished record. He said the most difficult part was not being able to attend his son's basketball games.
According to the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, a teacher can reapply for a license three years after the date of the revocation.
"He's faced with bankruptcy when it's all over with, if he's still got a job," Fortson said.
But there may be a way around the three-year rule. Professional Standards Commission representative Kelly Henson said, "Any educator who feels he/she has a unique set of circumstances" can make an appeal to have a revocation hearing before the three-year mark. Robinson said he has yet a third lawyer hired to work on pursuing that.