In the early 1970s, I had a (male) teacher for English and language arts who was busted decades later for a nasty, protracted case of sexually abusing a 14-year old male student. He had risen up to be a superintendent in another state, so was able to fight a vicious retribution campaign, nearly destroying some people before finally caving and doing time. The investigation brought out additional transgressions he’d dodged over the years by moving on.
In the ensuing decades, a classmate of mine (who was in those English and LA classes) had become a teacher in the local schools. He was later busted for sexually abusing his male junior high students. I always wondered whether the classmate was another victim of the English teacher.
There were several male teachers about whom this was rumored; the strength of those rumors depended, of course, on who they were. There are two for whom I’m pretty sure it was true.
And we had a stereotypical lesbian gym teacher who hit on girls, although AFAIK she never, ahem, dated any of them. That kind of thing would still have been a boundary violation.
I never heard of any of this going on in my professional college program, either, although I had a classmate who would openly hit on pretty much any man in authority (I believed then and now that she was a victim of sexual abuse; interestingly, with our classmates, it worked the other way because she was so strongly disliked for other reasons) and there was a graduate student who supervised our practice lab, and he got in some pretty big trouble because he openly gave higher grades to pretty girls. :mad: He didn’t finish his Ph.D., and I wonder if this was why.
He grew up in a (very) small town in Oklahoma back in the late 40’s/early 50’s. His graduating HS class had maybe 25 students, and not all of them lived in town. He said that, not having much else to do on a Saturday night (or any other night, and even several of the daylight hours), the most common activity was f***ing. Of course, that didn’t stop when the students graduated, or stop with the students. He said that he only ever slept with one of the teachers.
I only knew of one female teacher, she was a flirt when I was in school and a couple of years after I got out she started partying with the kids doing drugs, sex just like she was a student. She was arrested. I knew of a few male teachers who were gay and targeted young gay men.
60s to mid 70s ---- 4 that I could swear to (1 female teacher with a female student, one female teacher with a male student, two male teachers with female students) in a court of law and 6 that were suspected. One girl in the class ahead of me married one of our teachers 6 months after graduation; he did not resign. In the cases I know for sure, the student was basically the aggressor in 3 of them; the other is kinda a coin-flip.
I had sex with a student teacher when I was in ninth grade. He was 19 so it didn’t seem so wrong at the time to me, as I was 15 and thought I was a grown ass woman. I’d had a crush on him all year and he took full advantage of that. I saw him again several years later. He never did make it as a teacher. I wonder why!
Not that I know of. There was one teacher (early 30s? clearly an adult to his 12-year-old) in junior high who was quite pretty and a little flirty with the older boys. We were scandalized when she danced with one of the boys during a school dance. There were always rumors that she had done more, but only rumors, AFAIK.
The drama teacher from my freshman year of HS (1970-71) did not return in my sophomore year. In the summer of ‘72, I performed in a Parks and Recreation production of The Music Man that he directed, and learned that he had been let go after allegations/accusations had surfaced that he had propositioned some of his male students, occasionally with some success.
Epilogue: in 1991, when I took a post-Navy job performing repairs and maintenance on lab equipment for Fisher Scientific, I was interviewed by a supervisor with the same last name. He saw from my resume where I had attended high school, and asked if I had known his cousin.
In the summer of 1974, my brother joined several members of his class on an educational trip to Europe (primarily Germany), accompanied by the geometry teacher/yearbook advisor, who was a Franciscan priest, and the German teacher, a nun in the order of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Welp, Father Max and Sister Liz fell in love on that fateful trip, and left behind the life of a religious shortly thereafter. By 1980, they had married and reproduced.
Turned out that the guy who was the junior varsity girls’ soccer coach and varsity girls’ volleyball team had had sex with multiple girls from the volleyball team. Don’t remember all the consequences, but I do know his wife divorced him, he lost custody of the kids, and his job/career as a teacher all within days of discovery.
No big teacher-student affair that I remember. There were however two teachers whose behaviour did raise eyebrows and would probably get them into trouble nowadays.
The first one was a male Physical Education teacher would would always stand in front of the communal showers to watch us (14 year-old boys) after class. I don’t remember him doing more than that, but he was always there, standing perfectly still, with his arms crossed, creepily staring at us.
The other was an English teacher who would not only openly ogle underage girls’ cleavage, but would actually make comments, gasp and pretend to drool.
The other notorious events I remember only involved students, including two geniuses who decided that the best place for a quickie was the toilets. The teachers toilets :smack:.
I think there are known examples going back to ancient Rome and Greece. The real puzzle is why people are shocked every single time it happens. If we have policies in place worldwide for dealing with it, it’s happening pretty frequently.
My brother used to claim that one particular female teacher got up to shenanigans sometimes with teenage boys, but I don’t think he was telling the truth. More wishful thinking if anything.
However, one of our science teachers, in his late 30s I think, was unusually close to an older student, who was 17 at the time, and he was fired at the end of that year, so I suspect that was what was rumoured. They remained close afterward, by which time she was 18, but that’s all I know.
This was in the 80s. I was a naive kid, I don’t think I found it all that scandalous; it was adults doing adult things and seemed fine from my perspective. Now I look back and am appalled.
I think in todays environment their is a quandary. Yes, a teacher is more likely to be fired or charged. The bad part of this is the kid and the family then will always have a reputation which with the internet, will be known forever.
So most likely this type of thing is best dealt with quietly. Maybe the parents go in and have a talk with the teacher.
I’d like to add that back when I was a teacher certain good looking young male teachers were always getting propositioned and hit on. Mostly notes getting passed. I dont know what they could do because even a note found in the trash could find its way to the principal or parents and he is in trouble whether guilty or not. One thing we did do was make sure certain students only had female teachers.
Mid 1960s, rural small town in PA. Young female 10th grade biology teacher had an ongoing thing with a student – a big, strong, good-loooking farm boy. All the kids knew; many of us were a bit jealous.
I didn’t really know him, but the drama teacher was caught having sex with a student. However, if not for the student/teacher thing, the student would have been of age in my state, and he was quite young.
I also had a cousin who was a school nurse (not in my town) who had an affair with an 18 year old student. Since he was legally an adult and flat out admitted he pursued her, they just fired her and she moved away.
But, while I do see the problems here, none of them to me are what the OP is likely talking about. They’re talking talking underage students.
There I don’t have any examples of sex, but I did know of rumors of teachers who were overly flirtatious or would give girls a pass if they were sexy. I remember a coach who spied on his female students while they dressed. I remember rumors about this being why a female teacher was fired, and a bunch of male students about how easy it was to pass this female teacher’s class if they flirted with her. And then I knew someone from a nearby school who for some reason confided to me about a teacher who you could flirt with and show him things and he would let you pass his class.
I think that covers pretty much all of my experience in the area. The only other stuff I can think involves teachers and college students.
As we now know, priests might be quietly reassigned. However, at my school, priests were only part-time teachers, and were assigned, unassigned and reassigned as their other duties dictated (actually, so were the nuns.)
Shortly after I finished high school, one of the young, hip teachers got fired because he was sleeping with one of his female students. This was early 1970s.