During the Iran-Contra investigation, Fawn Hall proved a secretary with a high school education could out-think a room full of senators.
In the early 2000s, Hugh Gaughan proved a school janitor with a GED could out-investigate the HR department of a big city school system.
Cleveland is on many lists for least desirable places to live in America. One survey noted its poor weather, its usually crappy sports teams, and its generations of corruption turned off many to the idea of coming to live in or near the Mistake by the Lake. (At least you could light the Cuyahoga River on fire if it was cold.)
So Cleveland was a likely place for public employee union corruption. And Hugh, a custodian in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, found it in spades.
In the early 2000s, Hugh got off on the wrong foot with his new boss, a school principal named Beverly Valencic. Hugh said she got ticked off at him when she announced her royal highness and told him her first name was Beverly, and he gave the low-class pop-off reply, “Like the Beverly Hillbillies?”
In 2002, Hugh had to move a girl out of his way with a hand push so she wouldn’t get hurt by a large piece of furniture he was moving. His school principal Ms. Beverly decided to show she could call names, too, so she called Hugh a sex offender. Co-workers teased him unmercifully, so Hugh decided to defend himself.
Hugh sued principal Beverly Valencic for slandering him. He alleged other school employees wrongfully mocked him due to her slander. He pointed out he had molested no one and she reported him for no wrongdoing, like an educator is supposed to do if she or he suspects any potential abuse of children, so she knew what she had said about him was false. She paid him an undisclosed sum to settle the case out of court.
Hugh then did something much bigger. He determined to find real sex offenders and other felons in the Cleveland school system and expose them so they could be fired. Hugh had read one of my books and decided to be his own detective. He wanted to see if what I was telling people would work.
In 2003, Hugh got a copy of the list of employees in the school district (which is a public record), and matched them against the criminal records of Cuyahoga County.
The list of employees of any government agency (except groups like the CIA, who shield good people and a large number of sociopaths) is a public record. So are the salaries of these people. You are entitled to obtain this record on any agency you choose by filing a freedom of information request with the appropriate agent at the agency. Call them or check them out on the Internet to find out.
Hugh, who has epilepsy and Tourette’s syndrome, stutters occasionally and speaks with a tic. So people look down on him. But we at Sherlock Justice don’t measure a man’s smarts or his heart or his guts by his personal appearance or by his smoothness of speech. Hugh obtained the list of employees and went to work anyway.
Hugh found roughly 10 employees were either sexual predators or other felons who the school personnel officials had not screened properly or knowingly allowed into the school system due to cronyism (ties to unions or politicians or school system personnel). This was in violation of Ohio state law, which forbids the hiring and retention of felons in the schools.
Hugh turned over this list of felons to TV investigative reporter Carl Monday. In early 2004, Monday, after finding a dozen or so more convicted felons on the school payroll on his own, ran a TV program on the scandal on Cleveland TV, which provoked a major outcry, and won him an award for investigative reporting.
Hugh’s union “brothers” figured out Hugh was the confidential source behind the outings. They were displeased he turned in “good union brothers” because they were rapists or drug dealers or vicious thugs. They didn’t care Hugh was helping children. They “expressed concern” he was narcing out union members who happened to be felons.
Union men “express concern” a little differently than most people. Good union brothers started threatening Hugh with bodily harm. Hugh’s union was Laborers International Union Local 860, the union they featured in the movie “To Kill the Irishman.” The present union boss, Anthony Liberatore Jr. is the son of the union boss involved in the bomb hit on Danny Greene which was the inspiration for the movie.
Hugh Gaughan — he cared about protecting school kids from predators
So Hugh went to school district officials and asked for some form of whistleblower protection. The internal affairs A-hole who heard his request snarked, “Why don’t you get see if you can get it from Carl Monday?” Of course Hugh, not the internal affairs loser, outed the perps and by doing so showed up HR people and internal affairs people up as a stooges parasiting their salaries off of the taxpayers.
