I also feel like this teacher would understand that reporting would drag the whole family into a mess of legal issues that would only make their lives more difficult.
And nothing is going to happen, so not reporting isn't going to come back to bite the teacher
I'm with Cornflake on this one. Not only does that make the teacher a very unsympathetic character, it also isn't all that plausible.
I'm a former teacher. There is no way the idea of a "mess of legal issues" etc is going to stop me from reporting suspected abuse. As a teacher, you report it. You let social services deal with the rest, including making a judgement call as to whether it's better for the kids to keep the family together and help the parents from within the family*, rather than taking the kids away. That's a social worker's responsibility, not a teacher's.
*a lot of the time child abuse/neglect is the result of parents being utterly unable to cope, for whatever reasons (generally a ton of different factors impacting the whole family), and so the family can be helped without taking the kids away. The sort of abuse where one or both parents are just plain nasty also happens - it's up to social services to know the difference.
Don't forget that teachers get training in child protection, so they'll not only know the whole process of how stuff gets reported they will also know the possible outcomes of not reporting it, including knowing about actual cases where people had had suspicions but there was no coordinated system of reporting suspicions so no-one got the full picture until it was too late. Like the case of Fred and Rose West (serial killers) where lots of people had suspicions that something wasn't right but no-one was aware of the full extent of abuse their children were subjected to until after the police dug up the body of one of their daughters from under the patio.
The way stuff is reported in the UK: teachers will report any suspicions to a named child protection person (one in every school) - this ensures that any suspicions are reported to the same person so they can see if there's a pattern emerging (and avoiding the situation where several people had suspicions but never spoke to each other). The named person has additional child protection training and can do some further investigating, e.g. talking to the child in question to see if there is anything to be concerned about. Ordinary teachers aren't allowed to ask questions to the child, because asking leading questions at this stage can prevent police from getting a successful prosecution. Schools are strict about this - we have to report suspicions and listen to what kids tell us and, if they tell us anything worrying, report that. Don't ask any questions. Never, under any circumstances, promise to keep secrets for the child. The named person can ask questions, but they will be very careful what questions they ask and how they ask them (they've had training in it). When the named person has a concern, they will report it to social services - and to the police if they have reason to believe a child's in immediate danger. Also, it may not be abuse at home that's going on. It might be bullying in school or other things going on that's impacting the child, so the named person would find that out and deal with it accordingly.
The whole process is designed to make it easy for teachers to voice what may only be suspicions or a vague sense that something's not quite right and for the named person to be the one that builds up the wider picture and reports it to social services. The scenario of teachers keeping quiet because they don't want to rock any boats becomes a lot less plausible. They're not the one that's going to be rocking boats.
Additionally, if you're writing a conversation between a child and a teacher where the child's disclosing abuse, you will need to make sure the teacher's responses are accurate. For example if a child says "if I tell you something, do you promise to keep it a secret?" the response has to be "I can't promise to keep anything secret. If I think you might be in danger I have to tell someone." (or words to that effect) and never "yes". Teachers are taught this in initial teacher training, before we go in the classroom with kids. Note: if a kid clams up and says nothing after you say that, then that is something to have a chat with the named person about.
If your story's set in the 1980s or earlier, then it's a different matter because there wasn't a coordinated system for reporting concerns. Not one that was fit for purpose, anyway. But cases like Fred and Rose West changed all that (it's a good case study in how systems for reporting concerns, not only by teachers but also A&E staff and other services, can utterly fail if there's no process by which they can all communicate with each other).
Note: the exact procedures in the USA will likely be different to the UK, in terms of the stuff about who reports what concerns to whom - but it's evident from this thread that in the USA it's a legal requirement for teachers to report concerns. And there will be a system that teachers have to follow.
If you want the kid to have the conversation with the teacher, you could still do that, but maybe have something in the reporting process break down. If it's set in the USA you'd have to research what the exact procedure is and then figure out where the line of communication fails, resulting in nothing being done.
If it's set in the UK and you want the above, then my bitter, cynical answer would be that I once had a kid disclose abuse to me, I reported it to the named person, the named person said that they already knew about it and so did social services, but (in the named person's opinion) social services weren't much about it. I also heard worse things about the same kid's home situation from other teachers, all of which had been reported via the named person to social services. At this point I could blame social services, but on the other hand, they have a bloody difficult job to do and this was a situation where the whole family needed help, the mother as well as the children. Sometimes I wish there was a way they could just take a whole family and adopt them into some kind of supported accommodation where they all get looked after. (I think they maybe do that nowadays in some places.) Generally, situations like these are heartbreaking and there's no easy solution. But there are a lot of possible scenarios whereby the abuse gets reported but not enough or not the right things get done about it.
