He did say 16, which IS lawful in most US states in non-teacher/student circumstances (and in most OECD countries IIRC)
HOWEVER…
The thing is, all that counts here IS the legal definition. In particular, for a teacher or other official who may find themselves In Loco Parentis relative to the minor, it is ethically beyond the pale to get sexually/romantically involved, nevermind how willing the minor, you are supposed to know better. So it is illegal and if the school knew or should have known they’d be liable.
So those that are okay with minor males having sex with their female teachers are also okay in general with students having sex with their current teachers? Enlisted soldiers having sex with their officers? Patients having sex with their current physicians? Inmates having sex with their prison guards? Suspects having sex with their arresting officers? After all, they can all consent, and any opposition to such relationship is strictly based on ‘legal’ stuff about ‘unequal relationships’ and ‘power imbalances’ and other new age mumbo jumbo. ( <<-----sarcasm italicised!)
There are plenty of young women who simply want casual sex without “importance” and there are plenty of young men who want sex to be meaningful. 1950s ideas of sex and gender don’t apply anymore, regardless of what you’ve been told in the movies.
I’m a dude. I had this one-night stand with a woman once, when I was young. I though she was pretty awesome. She had cool tattoos! I texted her a couple of days later, asking if she wanted to go for a beer. She declined, and told me straight up that the one-night stand was just a one-night stand. Turns out that she wasn’t in love with me at all. The whole thing meant nothing to her.
One doesn’t have to be “okay” with it in order to understand the hormonal imperatives of a 16 year old male. I had a big crush on my geometry teacher when I was that age. If I’d had the chance…
The Polanski case wasn’t an “emotional connection”. He drugged and then raped a thirteen-year-old, despite the fact that she told him no. :dubious: Jesus Christ.
I’m wondering how the “hey, cool, sex with [female] teacher” crowd feels about the Catholic priest scandal. “Hey, cool, sex with a priest”? Does it make any difference if the underage boy was gay?
And that has anything to do with this case how? Law enforcement was willing to overlook some kinds of sexual exploitation then, so we should just keep on ignoring it?
This case was about whether the school district knew or should have known about illegal activity of one of its employees and ignored it. It would be the same if it was a drug case rather than a sexual abuse case. If they knew, they are culpable. Also, did anybody notice she only served 6 months in jail? That seems an a very light sentence.
Suppose the kid had been killed because of gross negligence by the school: would the settlement have been any higher? To me it would seem that that being dead would have been at least 100 times as big a damage to the kid.
Why is no one talking about comparative negligence? It would seem to me that the teacher should be responsible for 90% of the damage and the school no more than 10%.
So I have I question: suppose this had gone to trial and you were on the jury: what size damages from the school would you support? I think $50,000 would be more than adequate.
I’m uncomfortable with relationships between any gender with that degree of power differential.
My interest in the topic stems from the fact that my own children are about to be teens and the penalties for a texted boob can be quite harsh. I think a rational debate on teen sexuality is important.
It’s often the case that hurting someone results in higher settlements and verdicts than killing them. Strange but true.
Some states have “joint and several” liability in cases like this, so comparative negligence (really “apportionment of fault”) would not matter. In any case, the school district settled, so they are on the hook for what they agreed to pay.
I’d have to hear the evidence of how the kid is doing, and what exactly the school district did wrong. Also, it matters whether punitive damages were available. Not knowing any of this, I’m happy to throw out a number. How about $1,000,000?
“In the lawsuit, attorneys for the former student alleged that school officials knew of his relationship with Whitehurst and failed to warn his family. The suit also claimed that a teaching colleague of Whitehurst’s was aware of the relationship and that school officials even questioned Whitehurst and the student when she became pregnant.”
The teacher is going to jail and has been found 100% responsible for her actions.
The school has decided to settle to avoid having to admit “they did wrong.” The suit was not about the teachers actions but about the schools.
Apologies in advance for the crudeness. Imagine a 60 year old male teacher fucking a kid up the arse. Now imagine the school knew about this. And didn’t tell or warn anybody. And two other kids were fucked up the arse as a result.
Do you still think that $50,000 would be more than adequate?
The teacher is a sex offender. The school protected her. $50,000 would be woefully inadequate. It wouldn’t even cover the lawyers fees. The boy is a dad now. On the hook for the rest of his life. Penn State paid out 93 million dollars to the victims for its part in the Sandusky debacle. (And no-one complained about that.) That’s about 3 million per person. In this case there isn’t just the boy: there is his kid as well. So two people, 6 million, seems about adequate to me.
Yes, it leads to some absurdities. Of course there’s almost no difference between someone aged 17 years and 364 days, and someone aged 18 years, and people mature at different rates. There are probably some 17-year-olds who are emotionally mature enough, and some 18-year-olds who aren’t.
But not having a law like that leads to far worse absurdities. We both agree that sex with a three-year-old is wrong and should be illegal, correct? And sex with a thirty-year-old is fine and should be legal? Well, then, there must be some point where it stops being illegal and starts being legal. Anywhere we draw that line will be wrong at least some of the time, but we have to draw it somewhere, or be wrong all the time.
That’s entirely the point most people are trying to make.
*Just because you felt that way theoretically, doesn’t mean it necessarily would’ve been the case had it happened in reality.
*Saying it did happen and you were okay with it, doesn’t hold true for every other male in the same position. Which has been said by several other guys in this thread.
*Would you feel differently if the gender roles were reversed? Or if it was your daughter? What if the perpetrator was a man against a boy? What about others in authority? Should we always make allowances for hot young things whenever the aggrieved party might be horny?
Lastly, of course the law is arbitrary. There has to be a cut-off line somewhere for it to function. Where would you advocates, who are against how it is now, suggest? How young should the limit be?