Sex between teachers and students
A few years ago, the talking point on radio was about two different cases of teachers having sex with underage school kids.
This happened in Victoria, Australia.
One case was about a man who was married and a PE teacher in a school. He was charged with sexual penetration with a minor (a girl). He was sentenced to 2 years minimum in jail.
Then there was a female teacher who also had sex with an underage student. She was charged and got a 3 year suspended sentence.
Both of them will never be able to work with children again and both are on the sex offenders list.
So, much was made of a seeming contradiction, with radio presenters saying that in her case if she’d been a man she would have been sentenced to jail.
I don’t agree.
I might add here that as a teacher I knew of both male and female teachers having sex with their students and was appalled by both genders involved in this sort of activity.
None of them ever got caught or were charged. The “victims” never brought charges.
I’ve known a male teacher who ended up marrying one of his students.
Are those “victims” traumatized. I guess they weren’t. They were usually in their final year and about to leave school.
But I still disapprove.
So back to the female who only got a suspended jail term. Her lawyer said there were lots of extenuating circumstances, one of which was that the boy initiated the relationship and said he never felt like a victim. But there were clearly others which we as the public don’t know about because we were not at the court case.
There’s no doubt that I became attracted to many of my older male students and they may have been attracted to me also, but I just had that ” taboo ” thought in my head all the time.
But do I think jail is appropriate? That depends on the age of the victim and the nature of the sexual relationship. Was the victim way too young, making it pedophilia, or was the older girl really touched in very unwanted ways. That’s different from consensual sex between older and younger people.
As for being in a position of trust and abusing that trust? They should be sacked for doing so. But not all cases can be equated with pedophilia.
Interested in your view however….
March 2nd, 2008 at 2:10 am
The whole idea is sick.