Today I was reading on CNN.com about a 26 year old P.E. teacher having sex with a young 14 year old male.
Taken Directly From CNN.com
"The latest case is out of Pennsylvania. Police say a 26-year-old P.E. teacher admitted to having sex with a 14-year-old student in the school’s parking lot.
Detectives from the Moon Township Police Department said they found nude pictures of Beth Ann Chester on the teen’s cell phone along with text messages.
Chester faces 14 charges, including three counts of sexual abuse of a child and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse."
My question to you is… Is the kid a hero? Should he be proud of the situation he is in? Should the father give the “way2go son!” speech of congratulatory success?
Would it be different if the sexes were switched? Would the girl need to be ashamed of herself and go into a depressive state? Would the father be completly upset and take his revenge upon the predator? Should the male teacher serve a harsher punishment?
I do see a point in the double standard with the repercussion’s being harsher if the role was reversed for the male sex-offender, whereas the female p.e. teacher should suffer a less-harsh punishment and the boy shouldn’t have a major emotional detachment from the world. In reality he should feel somewhat proud of the fact that after only 14 years of age he was able to “action”.
My question to you all… as this is my first post – what do you think? Does the double standard work? Or is it equally bad for both parties and scenerios?
I definitely think that the double standard should not apply.
The real question is, was the teacher in a position of administrative power over the student? If, so, Not Good. If not, did the school have regulations about teachers associating with students not in their direct hierarchy? If so, and those rules were broken, Not Good, but not even close to being as bad as having sex with someone you have administrative power over. If the teacher broke no school regulations, was it legal in that jurisdiction for a 26-year-old to have sex with a 14-year-old? If so, there should be no legal problem.
Now, given that there was legal permission, was the relationship actually good for both of them? That’s another question entirely.
I know I’m in the minority, and I’m male, but I can’t for a minute think that a female teacher seducing a young male student has anywhere NEAR the negative impact that a male teacher seducing a female student would. I think that the gender differences and the maturing process for each gender would simply cause confusion later in life for the male student, while the female student would undergo serious trust issues with males for the rest of her life.
Not that the female teacher should get a free pass, but that is why there is definitely a double standard and why women get punished less for these crimes…
At every school I ever went to the teachers were in a position of authority over all students. So even if the gym teacher couldn’t affect my grade I was expected to obey her.
Are there any schools out there that don’t specifically forbid student/teacher sexual relationships?
Marc
Well, plenty of colleges, and there is a sizable minority of incoming freshmen every year that are under 18 when they start. Likewise, bright high school students sometimes take a few college courses in high school. I wonder how those colleges would deal with it.
Of course a double standard should apply. Far less harm is done to the lad than if genders were reversed. The only reason for having a single standard is a misguided interpretation of sexual equality.
I would much rather my 14 year old son impregnates his 30 year old teacher then have a 30 year old teacher impregnate my 14 year old daughter.
Outside of that I find them both distasteful but admittedly less distasteful if the student is male. Perhaps because as a male I can remember teachers that I would have definitely engaged in certain acts with. Acts which I imagine I would look back fondly on had they happened.
There are plenty of 14-year-old girls in school who feel that way about certain male teachers; 14-year-olds of either gender think about that stuff all the time, but they’re not generally mature enough to make a responsible decision about having sex. It’s an abuse of position (and probably statutory rape) for the teacher to act on the 14-year-old child’s attraction. I really don’t see any difference based on the genders involved.
I think that a lot of the harm to a 14 year old child from having a sexual relationship with a 25 year old teacher is the stigma and emotional distress in the child’s mind over what has happened. The reality is that there is a little less stigma over a 14 year old boy with a 25 year old woman than vice versa, so there is arguably less harm. I realize that this is justifying the double-standard based on its own existence, but there it is: The reality is informed by the perception.
I totally agree. This is slightly off-target, but WHY are so many of these women sleeping with their students? They can’t get laid by people their own age??
I’m fairly sure the double standard exists (and shouldn’t), but is there somewhere we can get more than anecdotal evidence of, say, harsher sentancing of male teachers?
I think the double standard still exists–we frequently see evidence of that right here on the oh-so-enlightened board–but it shouldn’t. A 30-yo teacher with a 14-yo is statutory rape, plain and simple. It’s my understanding that young boys in such relationships are frequently harmed by them, which is no surprise to me. The “young boy tutored in the ways of love by beautiful older woman” meme is common, but fantasy is not the same thing as reality, and many people have fantasies they wouldn’t enjoy one bit in real life.
At the very least, I think such relationships damage the younger person (of either gender) by warping the natural development of their sexuality. Congratulating them on their ‘accomplishment’ would be a pretty awful way to handle the exploitation of a teenager by an adult in a position of trust and authority.
I don’t think it’s the case of there being so many, as much as we hear about most (literally) cases of female teachers molesting students because it’s an unusual crime. I’d be very surprised to learn that it’s not much more common for molestation to be commited by male teachers. Commonplace crimes are less likely to make the nightly news, after all. One of my childhood friends was molested by my male history teacher, but it sure as hell wasn’t on the news.