The close-knit nature of small North Dakota communities can help officials catch teachers who molest students, but it also can intensify the pain of a sex scandal.

"Those kinds of things really hurt small towns a lot more than a bigger town," said Dave Ross, who was Oakes' mayor in the early 2000s when a student sex scandal shocked the community of 2,000. "Everybody knows everybody. You know these people. It really hurts, both ways."

From 2001 to 2005, the state revoked the licenses of six male North Dakota teachers accused of sexual misconduct, according to the Education Standards and Practices Board, the state's teacher licensing agency. North Dakota has about 10,000 licensed teachers.

Two of the six whose licenses were revoked were teachers in Oakes' school. In one of the other cases, the victim was 4 years old.

North Dakota's figures were gathered as part of a seven-month investigation in which Associated Press reporters sought records on teacher discipline in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Across the country, sexual misconduct allegations led states to take action against the licenses of 2,570 educators from 2001 through 2005. That figure includes licenses that were revoked, denied and surrendered. There are about 3 million public school teachers in the United States.

Young people were victims in at least 69 percent of the cases, and the large majority of those were students. Nine of 10 of the abusive educators were male, and at least 446 of the abusive teachers had multiple victims.

Criminal background checks for new teachers are among the requirements in place to protect North Dakota students, said Janet Welk, the director of state teacher licensing board.

Small towns, where "everyone knows everyone else," have inherent safeguards, she said. The small town rumor mill helped track down some of the suspected North Dakota teachers, she said.

The scandal in Oakes involved Harvey Wolff and James Kendall, teachers and basketball coaches who lost their teaching licenses in 2002.

A woman who said she was victimized by them while in high school wrote a letter in 2000 to the teacher licensing board, detailing her experiences and saying she was one of numerous "little girls sacrificed like so much worthless garbage."

The woman's letter suggests others knew what was going on - including one woman in the community who used binoculars to watch the high school student with a teacher - and refers to a school board meeting for which there is no written record.

"I went through hell because of all the rumors all over town and throughout the school," the woman wrote.

The letter prompted a criminal investigation but neither man was charged. State Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents say the case against Wolff was closed because of a lack of evidence. The case against Kendall also was closed without any charges filed.

In a March 2002 letter to the licensing board, Kendall wrote: "I do not admit anything that can be reasonably determined to be anyone's opinion, pretension, illusion, grandiosity, rumor or insinuation."

Assistant Attorney General Jon Byers, in a January 2002 e-mail to Welk, said officials had evidence against the two teachers but did not charge them, either because the deadline for doing so had passed or because the victims did not want to testify.

Byers also told Welk that the licensing board is not bound by the criminal deadline. "I do think it would be fairly easy (for the board) to prove the allegations," his e-mail said.

The licensing board can revoke a teacher's license even if the teacher is not convicted of a crime. The board is required to revoke the license of a teacher who has been convicted of a sex offense or a crime against a child.

Ross said the licensing board's decision in the Oakes case was a relief for the community.

"There were some that refused to believe it. Then there were others who believed it," he said. "It was kind of polarizing. You want to put it in the past and move forward."