I don’t know if this is where this belongs, but I’ll start here in the hopes that somebody has some real information to bring to the table. Lacking that, I suspect we’ll get moved to IMHO.
So what have we got here? That story’s turned up in the news a few times now. A bit of Googling reveals the following tails:
(All were teachers or teacher’s aides unless otherwise noted)
Now, I don’t have to do a statistical analysis to see the trend here. Of the 39 cases I found just pokin’ around the Internet for a bit, 23 are from this year. And it’s only March.
Is there a trend here? Has some fundamental something changed in our population of teachers? And I was just born too late?*
Or is this something like child abuse that, although we never heard much about it before the 1970s, had been going on forever?
Is there another explanation?
*[sub]I know they describe the primary damage to the juvenile victims as being that of seeing an authority figure break the rules, but, sheesh, I grew up with Houston cops - I doubt I’d be any more damaged if Ms. Lopez had jumped my bones.[/sub]
In my senior year in high school (1969-1970), a female teacher had an affair with a male student in my class. I went to a dull, square, rural high school in Ohio. She was fired as soon as the school administration found out about it, but she was not arrested. If it happened in my boring high school, I’ve got to suspect that it was always occasionally happening but not appearing in the news. The only new thing, I suspect, is that it’s now considered news.
So then, Wendell, you’re of the lot that would guess this has been going on for quite some time, and has just recently become a focus of law enforcement and the media?
Similar thing to report to Wendell’s. Brand new teacher, just out of college, had affair with 8th grade student, a classmate of mine – we both had her for homeroom and English. She was fired but AFAIK not prosecuted. Didn’t seem to harm him in the slightest.
Heh, looking back on this kind of makes me wonder:
I remember when I was about 11 or 12 I used to have to have these tutoring lessons with a teachers aid. I distictly remember one time we we’re talking and I basically told her I was pissed at my Mom because she didn’t think I was old enough to stay at home alone for two days while she went out on a business trip.
The aid (who was quit attractive by the way) just looked at me with these “Fuck-me” eyes, she placed her hand on my leg and said “Well you can tell your Mom I’d be more than happy to take care of you.”
AT the time I knew something strange was going on here yet I was too youn to fully grasp what it was.
My WAG is that this has always gone on but cable news is honing its approach to 24 hours “news” broadcasting and others are following what seems to work.
Certain stories seem to be popular and this is one of them. Here are some others …
Scandals involving well known actors, actresses and sports gods. When the Michael Jackson case runs its’ course, someone else will get the spotlight.
Missing white girls between 7 and 13 are very popular. This is a terrible tragedy no matter who it happens to but you don’t see extensive coverage about missing black girls in Detroit or St. Louis on Fox.
Murdered pregnant wives are good. Unfortunately, this is a fairly common crime but cable news requires a handsome, well-to-do couple. We should have a sucessor to the Peterson story soon.
Good looking female teachers, teenage boys, embarrassed husbands - yeah, that works.
Off topic so I won’t go into it much (though it is an interesting discussion), but here is an interesting analysis of the “murder is leading cause of death among pregnatn women” issue.
I randomly clicked on the three “2005” cases above, but it’s only the third case in which the incident (teacher and student caught steaming up the car windows) actually happened this year. In the first case, the woman gave birth to the student’s child in June 2004; the story doesn’t make clear when she was actually busted. In the second case, the teacher was arrested in October 2004; the 2005 aspect of the case is that she made a plea deal this month.
Similarly, it could be that a lot of your 2005 cases aren’t so clearly “from” this year. You’d have to read the stories more closely to be sure there’s a 2005 trend.
It is interesting that in the reverse situation - male teacher, female student - a much louder ruckus is raised. Is it the mentality of “boys will be boys” that makes female teacher, male student less ruckus-worthy? Or perhaps the assumption that no boy can be forced to get it up if he doesn’t want to, therefore if he participated, he was willing?
Also, keep in mind that a lot of online news archives only make accessible stories that are relatively recent. For instance, newsday.com (source for the Rachelle Vantucci story) doesn’t seem to carry **any **pre-2005 stories in its online archive.
It has traditionally been seen as more important to protect the virginity, “virtue,” and “innocence” of young girls than that of young boys. I assume one major reason for this double standard, though not the only one, is that it’s the girls who could wind up pregnant.
Count me in the “nothing new under the sun” camp. Over two decades ago two of my teenaged buddies were carrying on rather obvious affairs with two women much older than they. And I had a rather small circle of friends.
While it may not have been appropriate, I do remember that my friends were utterly delighted by the situation.
I think that girls are still seen to be weak & in greater need of protection than boys are, regarldless of their age.
When one reads about a case like this (male teacher, female student) the publics reactions is “That poor sweet innocent darling. There is no way she could have been a willing participant - she’s been terribly victimized and scarred for life!”
When the roles are reversed the assumption is “Well, he’s a boy. Dern horn-dog knew what he was gitting into. Good for him, I say! Poor damn fool teacher just couldn’t resist him.”
Regardless of the ages, the perception is that the female is weaker & the male has more control.
