That's all I'm saying. This very well could be a situation of a teacher abusing her position of power to coerce a student (and a minor) into having sex with her. Talking about teenage boys' or men's general attitude towards sex is counter productive in these cases. It may be that 99% of straight 17-year-old boys would enthusiastically jump at the chance to sleep with that woman. But it doesn't mean that this boy was enthusiastic. There are a lot of inherited attitudes about sexuality and gender and a lot of social pressures to enforce those attitudes, contributing to the idea that 17-year-old boys want to have sex all the time (and 17-year-old girls don't/ are being preyed upon). I think it's crucially important to put those attitudes aside in situations like these.
It moves the case into in the realm of a teacher who has the hots for students. Maybe she was preying upon students who were vulnerable and who were taken advantage of, maybe she happily responded to flirting signals from two guys who were looking to pick up any female they could, a teacher included. I would call the former predatory behavior, but not the latter. Again, you can --and should fire her -- for breaking the rules, but I'm not willing on just that information to condemn her as a sick, bad person who needs help, should be marked as a deviant, etc. I write this while in full agreement of your last paragraph.
it is also possible she was just a lonely young woman and that the young men she had sex with were manipulative and took advantage of her perhaps at a time when they knew she was vulnerable form a broken relationship. they were just horny young man who would rub up against anything, and knowing that she was vulnerable, took advantage of her, caring naught about her potentially losing her job and even going to jail, so long as they could satisfy their raging sexual urges. perhaps the young men seduced her. I feel awful for her. I hope she's allowed to have conjugal visits in prison and that she'll be able to continue to "teach" her students new things.
yeah, a healthy dose of sarcasm just to balance Demo's overly serious treatment of the subject. I'm more on your side of the issue that I think it's silly that now she's probably going to have an rape and assault conviction on her record for the rest of her life. good luck getting a job. she's a teacher. it's not like there's a whole lot else you can do with a teaching degree. her life is effectively ruined. and while I don't know this for a fact, and if the prosecution can establish that she manipulated and/or coerced the young men into having sex with her, then fine. but otherwise, I think this is a victimless crime, and blind adherence to laws without regard to the circumstances is effectively going to ruin a young person's life. like you, I agree she ought to be fired. but there's probably not much need for anything else here. it's statutory rape. not physical rape. she didn't physically force herself upon the young men. if the young men want to claim that she did, fine. press charges. but I don't think the state should just blindly press charges just because of age. these guys are grown men. not boys. at 18, any 45 year old cougar is free to manipulate her way into their pants, no problem. but if he's a month shy of 18, then it's rape!!! that's just stupid.
Isn't it a given that any teacher of any gender engaged in such incredibly terrible decision making and willful activity would be deeply troubled in some way?
I would think it is a matter of prosecutorial discretion. It is hard to say without knowing if state law makes that a mandatory charge in a case of student teacher sex. I think it is wrong to be dismissive about it. There are some lines that can't be crossed, and if they are crossed there are severe sanctions. In the case of a minor I would think the parents can push hard for it and make the prosecutors life miserable. Teaching should be a sacred trust that is done by highly trained committed and dedicated professionals. The teacher should have known and understood the risk prior to deciding to have sex with a student. So yes in some cases the punishment may seem especially harsh, but the offense is highly egregious even in a best possible scenario that it was the students idea.
A single, false statement has the potential to end a teacher's career. The way this act is being discussed is largely ignoring the relationship between the teacher and student(s). But there are lots of dynamics involved, and some of them can be damaging to the students. Depends on the circumstances. I know several teachers that have gone on to become trainers in the business world.
My son's school had an incident of sorts. A young married woman who was physically separated from her newlywed husband, who had been moved by his company several states away. She was pretty lonely, got involved in a couple of high school clubs as a teacher/supervisor, and gradually developed a friendship with one student that crossed the professional line. Nothing physical happened, but increasing flirtatious emails, not to mention frequent texts/conversations outside of class. It ended when the boy's parents discovered the emails. The teacher and administration had a hurried discussion, it was announced publicly that she was leaving the school immediately due to an inappropriate relationship with the student, and that was that. No details were announced (I only know them because my son knows the boy involved), no charges filed. But she'll never work in teaching again. Tough but I get it.
To add to this, when I was in HS there was a girl in my class of whom it was rumored that she was in a relationship with her thirty-something piano teacher. These rumors only grew when said teacher got a divorce. Even though there was no truth to the story, it still managed to severely harm both of their reputations.
There must have been something to their interaction that gave people the suspicion. That can happen to any adult who is an authority figure (e.g., boss). Gotta be very very careful of paying special attention to somebody whom you find attractive.
I have always remembered that incident as a cautionary tale about the possible consequences of gossip. I personally believe that the lies were a form of projection originating from the girl's jovial personality and attractiveness. She only got wind of those nasty rumors when they had eventually gotten back to her parents and they asked her up front if it were true or not. That must have been a fun dinner table convo...
Understood. That's the particularly dangerous situation for a boss, because it's very easy to respond in kind -- meaning that the supervisor is being particularly jovial with the attractive employee/studentwho is also particularly jovial. It's nothing more than responding in kind, but nonetheless that means a different interaction than with the other employees. People notice and they do not like. I had this happen to me once. Not in a sexual situation, it was a male employee. He quickly picked up on my cues for work expectations; I was pleased with how rapidly he learned and thought he had the most promise of the junior employees in the group. I tried to hide this belief but I wasn't as clever as I thought, and the group became resentful of the favorite. It was a bad dynamic that I only resolved by bending over backwards to convey to the others that they were doing well, that I was interested in their development, and then following through by changing my behavior. That was damaging enough -- and of course adding the sexual dynamic would have made it much, much worse.
Yet a man doing the same will be tarred quite easily as a predator. I just don't think there's the scientific data on female predatory sexual behavior to fully understand it. Male teachers are just "horndogs" out to bang any cheerleader but the females are "lonely" or trying to "mentor" the teens.
yeah, I hope there's some prosecutorial discretion allowed in this case. among other things, you have to look at the age of the students involved as well. there's quite a difference between a 14/15 year old student, and a 17 year old. I wasn't trying to be dismissive of the issue or the student/teacher trust. but it's a little different in high school than middle and elementary school. in high school, there's not quite as much trust nor respect as there is earlier on. but again, if the students feel like they were taken advantage of, then by all means, the prosecutor should press charges and prove in the court of law that the students were harmed by the teacher's behavior. I just don't think it should be an automatic. and if there was no harm done, then I believe a firing is sufficient punishment for the offense.
The bolded part is not true in all cases.We've had a couple local teachers move to other states.Files were sealed,there was no police record,so the perps taught in Florida,where they proceeded to do the same damn thing.
This teacher was fired from her job, with the public statement that she had an inappropriate relationship with the student. I suppose she could teach somewhere else if she leaves this job off her resume, I guess that is true. But if she lists that job and the prospective employer checks, the employer surely will be told that she was fired for cause.
My brother's club coach when he was in jr. high went on to coach a high school girls soccer team, and he got got caught having an affair with one of the girls. Don't think he's coached since.
from what I understand, Florida basically will employ a warm body as a teacher in schools they are so in demand in some areas.
There are a lot of places like that, I had a chance to get a math teaching job this semester (not in Florida) even though I have a whole year of school left ( not much math though mostly gen ed reqs) So my thoughts were if they would hire me at a job just below a real teachers pay things must be desperate. If that teacher did not say in a written statement that he/she had sex with a student then they could easily explain inappropriate in a way that makes them look like a victim. The previous school district will only provide minimal information due to liability with privacy laws. Getting a new job is probably not a huge problem if they left the license intact and no charges were filed/pursued.
Even if she leaves it off and manages to explain the gap, there's a variety of search engines that could bring it back on her. My wife worked at a place where someone got fired on her third day when someone concluded she was just too incompetent to have a degree from Oxford. Turns out, it made the news after someone at Kent State started thinking the same thing and made a few inquiries.
That makes an assumption that a public school administrator who is desperate for a teacher is going to any extraordinary means to vet a critical need applicant. A university is a whole different animal than a public school.