Kansas Should Implement One Of Aaron Coleman’s Ideas — To Prevent Future Aaron Colemans

By Kelsey Baker, the Kansas Reflector

December 22, 2020

The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Kelsey Baker is a former Marine and served as a Uniformed Victims’ Advocate.

Nineteen-year-old Aaron Coleman, the Democratic representative-elect for the 37th District of Kansas, made headlines for confessing to spreading revenge porn in middle school and allegedly choking an ex-girlfriend. He made more of them when he promised a political hit on Gov. Laura Kelly after he won his election.

Coleman’s behavior continues to be so bad that, this week, several incoming legislators have called on him to resign. Others have called for his ouster when the new legislative session convenes.

I’m not involved in politics and I’ve never lived in Kansas, but Coleman said something in his defense that caught my attention. He admits that his bad behavior stems from a lack of early childhood education on healthy romantic relationships. That’s what I’ve come to believe about sexual violence, and Coleman confirms it. The fact that it’s someone who’s offended in the ways Coleman has only further convinces me that I’m right.

I was a Marine Corps logistics officer, and I also served as a Uniformed Victims Advocate, trained to assist victims of sexual assault. I witnessed what happens when young people — particularly young men — don’t have boundaries and expectations set out for them explicitly, before they arrived to bootcamp. The military’s population most at risk of being victims and perpetrators of sexual violence are servicemembers between 17-24 years old. For the civilian population, it’s 18-24.

Kansas — and the rest of the country — needs to teach grade school students about consent and healthy relationships to stop the development of the next Aaron Coleman. That Coleman can’t — or won’t — stop violating social and behavioral norms himself proves that trying to intervene and rewire someone when they’re well out of school and causing harm to others is much harder than preventing victimization in the first place with education.

A “healthy relationship” component of elementary school, junior high or high school isn’t a new idea. Groups like the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. have entire curricula already drafted with comprehensive, age appropriate sexual health education, including everything from anatomy to sexual orientation and consent. The Centers for Disease Control have a similar Safe Dates program that’s helped reduce intimate partner violence anywhere from 56% to 92% for students in the 8th and 9th grades.

But this isn’t uniform throughout Kansas. The state lacks a consensus among school boards about what’s taught in sex education. Lessons don’t even have to be medically accurate. The only requirement is that schools teach “physical education, which shall include instruction in health and human sexuality,” but how to navigate that sexuality — especially in a time of accountability thanks to the #MeToo movement — is absent from all of it, which might explain why 28% of victims are schoolchildren ages 11 to 17.

A similar patchwork persists throughout the country. Only eight states and Washington, D.C., teach anything about consent at all. Texas recently had the chance to add it to schools there but decided against it.

Kansas is one of 13 states that hasn’t adopted the child sexual abuse prevention law known as “Erin’s Law,” which mandates that all K-12 students be taught how to recognize child sexual abuse and seek help. Part of identifying encroachments is understanding boundaries.

The Kansas Association of School Boards dismissed this training as irrelevant and doesn’t take into account that students won’t learn if they don’t feel safe — or get suspended or expelled for harming someone else. A Healthy Relationship curriculum is as essential as any other instruction, and it can’t be a lesson left for parents. As Coleman proves, they either don’t teach it or aren’t effective in imparting this necessary guidance.

But unless another legislator picks up Coleman’s idea for consent and healthy romantic relationship lessons and pursues it, a much-needed curricula update will go with Coleman if he’s booted. Coleman’s the only legislator in Kansas I’ve seen voicing concerns about this on the record since his primary.

The state of Kansas owes it to Coleman’s victims to do something. Simply excluding him from his elected seat isn’t enough, if it even happens. But implementing his valid idea will benefit all children and young adults — and confirm to his victims that they deserved better.

Coleman’s idea — that healthy relationships can and should be taught, along with consent — must stay. But if legislators eject both him and his important insight, they should know that they’re failing to prevent another student from preying on others.

Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

The Kansas Reflector seeks to increase people's awareness of how decisions made by elected representatives and other public servants affect our day-to-day lives. We hope to empower and inspire greater participation in democracy throughout Kansas.