School secretary arrested

A Woodbridge High School employee surrendered himself to police Tuesday night at the Gar-Field station over an incident at the school where he was accused of propositioning a 14-year-old female student, said Detective Dennis Mangan, Prince William police spokesman.

Police charged Daniel Wayne Haman, 32, of 2910 Fox Lair Derive, Apt. 301, in Dale City, with soliciting a felony, Mangan said.

Haman, a secretary in the school office, is being held without bond and has a Jan. 7, 2003, preliminary hearing in Prince William County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, Mangan said.

Prince William School officials said Haman has been suspended, but could not comment further on the matter.

“The law is that we are only allowed to say that the man is an employee of Prince William County schools and he has been placed on administrative leave. His pay will be held in escrow pending the type of charges that may or may not be filed,” said Bonny Fayhe, Prince William Schools community relations information specialist.

Superintendent Edward L. Kelly said the school system has procedures in place to help prevent such occurrences, but sometimes systems, no matter how well designed, fail.

“We do the background checks to see if there’s been any history of misbehavior, whether or not there have been any arrests … those kinds of things. If there is any of that kind of information, we would not hire them,” Kelly said.

The spoiler in the equation, Kelly said, is unpredictable human behavior.

“Obviously it’s something we hate to see, but sometimes people do stupid things like this,” the superintendent said.

“We do the best we can to try and do a good check. The more checks that we make, the more we can predict that this kind of behavior is not going to be there, but there isn’t any way that we can guarantee that people aren’t going to do something stupid,” Kelly said.

Rick Fitzgerald, Prince William Schools director of personnel, said the background check for potential school employees goes well beyond typical.

“It’s a fairly extensive list about relationships with people, about character, about their involvement with drugs, alcohol, sexual abuse and criminal activity,” Fitzgerald said.

The school system takes applicants’ finger prints and checks with local and federal law enforcement agencies, Fitzgerald said.

“We do a CPS search, Child Protective Services lets us know if there are any background issues of which we should be aware,” he said.

“We call the most recent former supervisor and then we run, of course, the FBI and state police reports off of the fingerprints. We’re doing everything we can possibly do to ensure for the safety of these students and our own employees. There’s absolutely no doubt about it,” he said.

Fitzgerald said the problems within the school system may simply be representative of larger societal issues.

“I think you’re dealing with society in general in many respects. I think every business, when you reach a certain number of people around you, begins to be a projection of the society around them. It’s like a little microcosm,” Fitzgerald said.

In June 2001, an assistant football coach at Osbourn Park High School, Jimmy Kibble, who was 23 at the time, pleaded guilty to charges stemming from sexual contact with two students at the high school.

Nicole Brady, 29, a teacher at Osbourn High School, pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor last January in Prince William County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.

Last week, Michael Williams, 27, of Montclair, was charged with supplying alcohol to minors and contributing to the delinquency of minors after police learned that he had two 16-year-old girls come to his home to watch movies and drink beer.

Staff writer Keith Walker can be reached at (703) 878-8063.