Teachers are supposed to be the people you and your children trust. A trust so sacred that, when it is broken, it can devastate a family.

"My teacher said he cared a lot about me, that he loved me," Amy Hestir-Davis said. "He saw me as an easy target with low self-esteem."

Hestir-Davis said she just wanted to be noticed. But her teacher crossed the line from mentor to predator.

"Whenever I'd babysit for him he'd take long drives from his house back to dropping me off at my own," Hestir-Davis said. "Sometimes I'd ride my bike to school in the spring. Then I'd ride my bike to his house after school and stay there until right before his wife would get off work at 5 p.m. and go home."

Now 40 years old, Amy Hestir-Davis is haunted by the details of her youth. She testified before a house committee meeting earlier this year where she said she had a year-long relationship with her seventh-grade teacher. A relationship so intense, Davis was fearful to share her secret.

"He had me convinced that it would ruin my life and my family's, who I certainly loved dearly. I would ruin his life. He would never teach in Missouri again and shame his family," she said. "And for some reason at the age of 13, 14, it was enough for me to be quiet."

Hestir-Davis said the relationship was sexual, which under Missouri law is statutory rape. But the teacher never faced charges and has no criminal record. Hestir-Davis said she never got justice.

The man Davis accuses of raping her 20 years ago continues to teach, but a new law would hold schools to a higher standard to keep this from happening. A new bill named after Hestir-Davis would require schools to report any complaints against teachers to the Department of Social Services.

"That will then make that information available to any hiring districts, so that they know if there are a number of complaints on a teacher," said Representative Jane Cunningham, who authored the bill.  

Cunningham said this new legislation would be the most comprehensive ever to protect students from suspect teachers. The Amy Hestir-Davis Student Protection Act would require schools to disclose teacher records to other districts.

"If a sending district does not tell the hiring district about the problems, they then are liable if there's a future lawsuit by the parents or the district that hired them," Cunningham said.

A 2007 state audit found 271 teachers with questionable backgrounds, ranging from sexual misconduct with a student to driving under the influence.

"We have examples of teachers that have stayed in the public school system for almost 20 years, complaint after complaint and just moving from district to district," Cunningham said.

State Auditor Susan Montee blames the wording of the law.

"It was clear the intent of the legislature was to have both criminal background checks and checks through the family care safety registry," Montee said. "That wasn't being done because the law was imprecise on how that would be done."

This means teachers with questionable backgrounds are still able to teach. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said it cleared all but one of the 271 teachers. Some educators KOMU talked to said the current law just doesn't make the grade.

"I don't think our background checks are thorough enough," Boonville High School teacher Jill Campbell said. "Look at the people that can still buy guns."

Along with the majority of teachers, Campbell has a clean record, but she agrees schools should dig deeper into a teacher's past.

"We can't send an unsafe teacher to another school," she said. "There should absolutely be punishment for doing so."

Other educators, though, think the bill still needs some tweaking. The Missouri State Teachers Association said "unsubstantiated complaints" will still follow teachers for their entire career. Complaints against teachers would be stored in a database and used for additional background checks through the Family Care Safety Registry. This information would not be available to the public. However, Hestir-Davis hopes the bill will prevent her nightmare from becoming another student's reality.

"To feel like, for the first time in my life, I have what is the darkest period of my life growing up and the worse thing that has ever happened to me in my life and make something good out of it to the benefit of other children here in Missouri," she said.

Until then, the sacred bond between teacher and student remains at risk of being broken.