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One of the students went home that day and told her father, who happened to be the Warwick school board president, Jay Hostetter. The other told her great-aunt, also a board member and a former president, Karen Malleus.
But Malleus discredited her grandniece, and Hostetter discouraged his daughter from testifying against Sheerer, according to a confidential investigation done for the school board by an area law firm.
Let off with just a warning, Sheerer, who also was the marching band director, then apparently continued his relationship with the girl until his arrest two years later. He now is serving a three- to nine-year sentence for the relationship.
In the report, obtained by this newspaper, the law firm concluded:
• Both Malleus and Hostetter acted inappropriately as school board members by impeding or discouraging the girls' testimony.
• Both should have resigned their positions because they could not act in the best interest of the school district and school community.
Though largely kept private until the release of this report, the two members' actions in this case ultimately may have cost one of them a seat on the board.
Hostetter was defeated last week in his quest for a four-year seat on the board, after he failed to get the GOP endorsement as a result of the findings of the law firm, an area Republican said.
However, Malleus still is a board member. She was not up for re-election this year.
In fact, Malleus recently was named to a district Professional Conduct Review Committee, set up to respond to reports of inappropriate contact between students and staff members at the district.
Warwick has had at least three such incidents with staff members. A part-time band instructor in the district was sentenced to probation earlier this year for engaging in a physical relationship with a student. Also, a science teacher resigned this spring amid allegations he was having a relationship with a student.
With regard to Sheerer, Malleus said, "I reported all information in an appropriate and timely manner. The administration is responsible for all investigations in our district."
"I will say that is from a long time ago, and the district is moving forward in a very positive way," added Malleus, an optometrist who has served on the board since 1997.
Sheerer, she noted, is serving his jail time.
"I hope all of the victims are moving forward with their lives," she said.
With regard to his involvement, Hostetter said the teacher denied the incident, and the girl's parents were informed about it but did not believe it.
That left his daughter in a difficult situation, said Hostetter, a Wilbur Chocolate employee who also has served on the board since 1997.
"It was her word against a respected teacher, another student and the parents of the student," he said. "The other student's parents (of Malleus' grandniece) said she was not going to come forward."
Hostetter also questioned the way the investigation was conducted.
"It was supposed to be an independent investigation, but it was done by the same law firm that advised the superintendent on how to handle the matter initially," he said.
The report
The findings about Hostetter and Malleus are detailed in a 59-page document. The local law firm Kegel Kelin Almy & Grimm did the investigation and prepared the report at the district's request after Sheerer's arrest in 2008.
Jeff Conrad, the Warwick area Republican party chairman, supplied the document to this newspaper.
Conrad said that district taxpayers paid for the report and should know about its contents and the actions of its school board members.
Indeed, the investigation and its findings prompted Conrad himself to run for a two-year seat on the school board, which he won last week.
"I don't want a board that will turn a blind eye to teacher impropriety," he said. "I can't stand for that."
An attorney in Lancaster, Conrad said local Republican committee members heard about the document and asked him to obtain a copy of it in June 2008, shortly after it was completed. Conrad said he requested the document from the board, but it refused to supply it.
Conrad said he then obtained the document from another source, whom he declined to identify.
He shared the findings of the document with the Warwick GOP committee, which subsequently decided not to endorse Hostetter in last spring's primary.
Hostetter did not get enough votes in the primary to appear on the Republican ballot in last week's election and unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat.
The document shows what the two board members heard back in 2006 about Sheerer, what they told district officials and what those officials did.
The document also includes statements the two girls gave to a Lititz Borough police detective about the 2006 incident, shortly after Sheerer's 2008 arrest.
What the girls saw
According to those police statements, Malleus' grandniece and Hostetter's daughter both finished work early in a third-period class on a Monday in January 2006. They were excused to go to the music area of the high school.
Malleus' grandniece went to the band room and heard noises coming from Sheerer's office.
Through an open blind on the office window, she saw Sheerer and the girl hugging and kissing, an act she later told police was a "deep, passionate, wedding-type kiss."
Malleus' grandniece ran and got Hostetter's daughter, saying, "You gotta come see this."
The two returned, and both looked into Sheerer's office and saw Sheerer and the student "in a full, make-out session," as one of the girls described it.
The two students quickly found a substitute teacher to witness what they had seen. But, by the time they all returned, Sheerer was alone in his office.
The substitute teacher told the girls to tell their parents what they saw. She also reported the incident the next day to district officials, who conducted interviews and an investigation into the matter.
What Malleus did
Malleus' grandniece told her parents what she saw in school when she got home that day. Her father called Malleus, who is his aunt. The girl then told Malleus what she had seen.
The girl felt Malleus "believed what she was saying, but couldn't believe that Mr. Sheerer would do such a thing. (The girl) remembered Karen told her that Mr. Sheerer could lose his job over this if this were reported and if it happened like she said it did. (The girl) insisted she was being truthful and it was exactly what she saw," according to the girl's 2008 statement to police.
When interviewed by district officials, the girl also told them about two previous incidents in 2005 involving the girl and Sheerer. In one, she said she heard the two talking in a large closet in the band room, and in another she had seen the girl looking sad, and possibly crying, when she emerged from Sheerer's office.
However, Malleus repeatedly raised concerns with district officials about her grandniece's credibility. She was not deterred by the fact that the other girl was corroborating her grandniece's description of the 2006 incident, the report noted.
She told school officials that the girl had a "vivid imagination" and had a "history of over-exaggerating her conclusions about others' conduct."
If the district was considering taking action against Sheerer based on the allegations by her grandniece, Malleus told officials: "I hope you're not relying on just that."
Malleus suggested instead that her grandniece may have seen Sheerer give the girl a "supportive kind of hug."
The girl's father told the district that Malleus told him she would "take care of it," according to handwritten notes from then-Principal Penny Mason, which are included in the report.
The girl's parents later said they did not want her to testify against Sheerer, should a disciplinary hearing be held.
A few days after the incident, Malleus asked her own son, who was a percussion instructor for the band at the time, about Sheerer and the girl.
Her son told Malleus that "everyone knows" that the girl had a crush on Sheerer. Sheerer's wife had even expressed concern to the son about how the girl was acting around her husband, the report said.
Malleus reported this to then-Superintendent Stephen Iovino, who said she should not involve herself any further in the investigation because she was a board member and the matter involved her family members.
The law firm noted that Malleus' behavior "impeded the school district's ability to address the allegations against Mr. Sheerer."
"Malleus displayed greater concern for (her grandniece's) credibility than for the critical importance of having the district vigorously attempt to learn what had happened in Mr. Sheerer's office," the firm noted.
What Hostetter did
In regard to his daughter, Hostetter told district officials that he was concerned about her happiness and worried that she would suffer fallout if she testified against Sheerer, according to the law firm report.
He also knew questions were being raised about the other witness's credibility and was concerned that would place a heavier burden on his daughter.
He told district officials that he did not want his daughter to testify at any hearing, the report noted.
The law firm took a dim view of this.
As a father, he was "understandably concerned about the well-being of his daughter," the report noted.
But the report also noted, "We believe a school board member has different and greater duties than an individual who is merely a parent of a student."
"It is disappointing to KKAG (the law firm) that a school board member — and indeed a board president — would not encourage his child to come forward and testify, and would go even further and apparently take steps preventing (or at the very least discouraging) that from happening."
What the district did
The district did not contact the police. It conducted its own investigation into the matter, talking to both girls about the incident.
Officials also spoke to Sheerer, who adamantly denied any misconduct.
And they talked to the student the girls saw kissing Sheerer, asking her what she did during the period when the girls saw her.
She initially denied being in Sheerer's office but, when told that did not match what others were saying, she began to cry, according to the report. She then admitted going to Sheerer's office to say hello to him.
Then, completely unprompted, the girl said, "Wait, did someone say they saw us kissing? That would be awful, he's 40, married and expecting a child. That would get him fired."
The district told the girl's parents they had received a report of inappropriate contact between their daughter and Sheerer.
The parents spoke to their daughter and later told school officials they were confident that nothing inappropriate was happening. They asked the district not to pursue the matter.
Warning, but no discipline
Iovino, the superintendent at the time, ultimately decided not to discipline Sheerer based on a number of factors, the report said.
These included: Malleus' concerns about her grandniece's credibility; the seriousness of the allegation against a teacher who had a clean record; Sheerer's and the girl's denial; and the desire of her parents to drop the matter.
But one of the important reasons was that Iovino "understood there was not a single witness to testify against Mr. Sheerer," the report noted.
According to a written report from Sheerer's personnel file included in the document, Sheerer was told to keep his office lights on, blinds open and door unlocked when meeting with students in the future.
"You are reminded and expected to maintain a professional relationship with students, staff and parents at all times," the report said.
Two years later, police found Sheerer and the student in the back seat of his car in the parking lot of a Friendly's restaurant in Manheim Township. Sheerer's zipper was down, and he at first said the girl was 19.
The girl admitted she was 17 and had been having an ongoing sexual relationship with the band director. She also admitted the two had numerous sexual encounters at the school and in cars parked in different municipalities.
The fallout
Other school board members later said they were not informed of the 2006 accusation against Sheerer at the time.
Last year, after Sheerer's arrest and after the report was completed at the request of then-superintendent John George, the school board replaced Hostetter as president.
Both girls still were upset about the incident two years later, when they finally talked to police about it, according to their 2008 statements.
Malleus' grandniece said she confronted Sheerer about the kissing incident shortly before she graduated in 2007.
She said that Sheerer told her he was sorry she had to see that, and that it was at a "very dark time in his life" when he was having marital problems. The girl said she and Sheerer both were crying during the conversation
Hostetter's daughter said it took her a long time to get over what she saw that day. She said she believed that Sheerer and the student eventually would be caught.
"I'm especially angry with both of them because not only were they acting inappropriate as a student-teacher, but that they were doing it in school," she told police.
