All of these were a long time before the Internet. . .
I volunteered at a middle school whose principal was later arrested for molesting students.
I worked with two women who said they had sex with teachers in high school.
When I was in high school I went on a summer study tour to Europe. One of the counselors (guides, teachers, whatever his official title was) was sent home for having sex with a student.
I also had a teacher who was widely rumored to be having sex with one of her students, although I think it was unlikely (I went to a Catholic school, and if they thought any lay teacher was having sex with a student, they would have been fired instantly.)
I won’t even get started about college, except to say that’s where I first heard the expression, “a lay for an A.”
As far as teachers go, I only heard rumors, no proof. There was the biology teacher who supposedly traded grades for sex. He was eventually fired, but only years after I started hearing the rumors. Then there was the gym teacher and coach who supposedly had sex with one of the girls on the soccer team. Instead of firing him, the school board moved him from the senior high school to the junior high. Yeah, nothing could go wrong there.
There was a really skeevy looking janitor in his early 20s who was known to be dating a 14-year-old classmate.
The biggest and most public scandal happened the year after I graduated. A female special-ed teacher invited her students over to her house for an end-of-year pool party. She ran to the store for snacks and when she got back she caught her husband having sex with one of her male students. She called the cops on him.
Our senior class president got a teacher pregnant, and they got married after he graduated. 30 something years later they’re still married. I won’t name names, but if you live in a certain part of the country you’ve probably heard of the guy.
No, we never heard of that happening at our school. Being a smaller private school (500 students) may make it less statistically likely.
As someone else mentioned, it was pretty evident that the teachers were not hired for their attractiveness. If anything, the older, the better. Very few men teachers.
No, but I worked at a state-run summer school where I discovered a person who was a teacher during the academic term attempting to start a sexual relationship with a minor. I reported it; I was let go. Go figure.
Sort of. A guy I knew casually (and was about the same age as me) started his teaching career at my former high school, started doing private tutoring for one of the students, and went to prison for molesting him. He was one of those uptight conservative Christians who didn’t even want to watch movies with nudity or cursing, so I wasn’t suprised at all.
Yes. The girl’s basketball coach at my high school in the 70s was pretty well known to be sleeping with many of the girls on his team. Word among us kids was that there was a set of twins on the team that were his favorites and one of them became pregnant at 15 and had a child that was his. He had a beard, and his nickname around the school was Pussyface.
He later got elected the first black Mayor of our little Southern town, but that accomplishment was overshadowed by the fact that he was a corrupt scumbag pedophile. He was ousted from the position sadly not because of his sexual proclivities, but due to numerous cases of mismanagement of city funds. Shortly after he was elected his home underwent a massive remodel, later proven to be at the taxpayer’s expense.
It was so common in schools around here, it ceased being news. Mostly older highschool girls (17or18) and younger coaches. There was one Middle school teacher and a 13 yo. He went to prison.
Yeah, me too. When I was in high school one of my former middle school teachers (male) was accused of molesting a few girls, including one of my neighbors, and another middle school teacher (female) was accused of soliciting underage girls on the internet. I don’t know what happened in the former case since it wasn’t resolved until after I graduated and left town, but the latter teacher was fired.
I think in the case of people like Pussyface, they present themselves as these dedicated, civic-minded, upstanding individuals, and they make such a good show of it that people just don’t want to believe the rumors, especially if it is coming from a bunch of kids. People want to believe in the image. But inevitably, if it goes on for enough years, and the offender gets more and more brazen and bold, those kids grow up and aren’t powerless anymore, so a combination of their own lust and greed and empowered victims usually brings them down.
A few offenders will of course remain under the radar because they never push it that far, but they are still just as gross.
I do think, and I am perfectly willing to admit I am wrong if someone can really break it down for me Crayola style, that there are more female offenders of this social taboo in the last 20 years joining the male ones that have likely always been there. I don’t know what the causes are, more female empowerment and with power comes abuse of power, no matter what your gender? Less sexual inhibition among women? These are just points I ponder in my own head and I am in no way trying ram my thoughts down anyone else’s throat.
I don’t think it was covered up so much as not spoken about. Today many parents first reaction is to call the media whereas back in the day they tried to protect their daughter’s reputation. Avoiding her being classed as promiscuous was far more important to them than seeing the teacher in jail.
The school also didn’t want a reputation for having predator teachers so they’d keep it quiet and transfer the teacher if it got too frequent.
In the case of female teachers and male students well the kid would just get a thumbs up. Even today it’s much rarer to go after a female teacher than a male one, cause “you know he wanted it”. I still remember a case where a 14 year old boy who was ordered to pay child support to his rapist who got pregnant.
Oddly enough, I don’t recall anything like this ever happening at any of the schools I attended, nor any of the schools in the entire district, nay in the whole area. And this was in a city of ~130,000 counting the burbs. Springfield, Illinois, 1980’s.
A girl in our high school was rumored to be dating an English teacher. He resigned (presumably so he could still be with her?) and 21 years later they’re still married.
One of my friends is a teacher and coach. He started dating one of his athletes right after she graduated. He couldn’t understand why her parents hated him so much. The relationship made me very uneasy. It didn’t last, thank goodness.
Also everything is national news these days. Back in the day, you could live your whole life in Georgia and never once hear about what’s going on in Oregon high schools. Now it’s “HOT FOR TEACHER!!!” news stories coast to coast because stories about sex get eyeballs.
We had at least one female student who was sleeping (or had slept) with a male gym teacher. She would have been 14 or 15 at the time. This was “known” among students. As far as I know, the gym teacher was still in place a few years later, so I guess it was never brought to the attention of the authorities.