What victimless crime? The teacher shagged an underage student. That’s rape, period, end of statement. And rape sure as hell is NOT a victimless crime.
Age of consent laws vary by state, but in the majority of states 16 is the age, and that is the AoC in my state. Unless you have some kind of authoritative relationship (teacher, adoptive parent, military recruiter?) in which case the AoC is 18 at least in my state. Sexual contact with someone who is 16-17 by someone who is in an authoritative relationship is considered ‘child seduction’. Not the same thing as rape or child molestation, and it is a low class felony (I believe class D, as opposed to rape and child molestation which are class A and B felonies, felonies are graded A-D by severity here). A 50 year old can legally fuck as many 16 year olds as he/she wants, unless he is their step-parent or teacher.
Yes, avoided as in “not getting caught and probably completely disrupting the next two years of choir membership she (my daughter) had been planning on.”
Everyone please understand: I didn’t start this thread to learn about the ethics of the teacher’s behavior. My daughter’s plans for the next two years have been turned upside down, and she’s feeling like playing “what if?”
Did this actually happen?
FWIW, statutory rape is not the same thing as child seduction (since you mention statutory rape in the OP). Statutory rape (at least in my state) is sex with someone too old for it to be child molestation but not old enough for it to be consensual, so 14-15 here. Child seduction is sex with someone above the age of consent but not 18 by someone in an authoritative relationship.
But the AoC varies by state, it is 18 in a dozen or more states.
Yes. See post 18.
P.S. my state is listed in all of my posts. California.
There are areas here that can be considered grey, and those that are legally speaking black-and white.
When I was in HS, I had a GF that was 16 and I was 17, we were “active”. When I turned 18, most of my friends thought that what we had been doing legally, was no illegal. It doesn’t seem that this was the case looking back.
The admittedly questionable site http://www.ageofconsent.com/ohio.htm says:
(A) No person who is eighteen years of age or older shall engage in sexual conduct with another, who is not the spouse of the offender, when the offender knows the other person is thirteen years of age or older but less than sixteen years of age, or the offender is reckless in that regard.
(B) Whoever violates this section is guilty of corruption of a minor, a felony of the fourth degree. If the offender is less than four years older than the other person, corruption of a minor is a misdemeanor of the first degree.
It seems I was OK legally. She lost her V-card at 14 to another guy, who she is actually now married to, so I wasn’t some creep that took advantage of anything. I’m wondering though, if there are cases where sex between two people can be legal, but after one partner becomes “a year older”, if the sex can then be illegal.
Also, why does it seem that many of the women that get charged with this (the guys are just rapists, regardless of the situation it seems) seem to be attractive women that could get any guy their own age or at least one out of HS? I can see a media bias towards the attractive teachers that get caught for salacious reasons, but I never seem to see a homely teacher doing this sort of thing. I can clearly see why a horny HS kid would want to bang Ms Hottie, but why would she risk everything to get an immature kid in bed, when she can have a perfectly good one-nighter with her choice of guys on any given night?
I know that sex is a primal urge, but WTF ladies? There have to be countless young male teachers that get boners looking at their 16/17/18 Y.O. students that DO NOT act on those urges. What is the deal?
What is your daughter wondering or asking? If her teacher will or will not be charged? How are your daughter’s plans affected by questionable sex?
If it were up to me, I’d prosecute both teachers. Teaching is a position of public trust. There has to be an avoidance of even the appearance of impropriety. The fact that some people want to quibble over age as if it is some game where you are either “tagged” or “free” bothers me because these are teachers and students we are talking about here, not just ordinary citizens who met in a mall and have no real or implied social contract as exists in a teaching situation.
I worked in the California court system for about 25 years as a probation officer and saw numerous cases similar to this. The teachers involved invariably had personality disorders to some degree or another. The student victims were in varying degrees changed for life, some worse than others.
This seems to me to be a pretty personal situation, or at least one that might benefit from a modicum of privacy. Then I look at the OP’s username. Ooops.
WTF is your definition of “kissy-kissy time”? Kissing isn’t generally lewd behavior unless it involves genitalia.
Many states have such a rule built into their laws. As I stated upthread, in my state AoC is 16 but even under that it is OK as long as there isn’t more than a 4 year age difference.
FWIW, and although it is not exactly related to this particular case, I can see that things have changed quite a bit with time.
I am Spanish. There was something very interesting that happened in the 1960s in my city of birth (Albacete, at the time your epitome of small town where everybody knew everybody else and most definitely judged everybody else on their public behaviour). I wasn’t born yet, but my mother told me about it.
It involved a mathematics teacher in the High School of Albacete (yes, “the”. There was only one at the time 
). Very (in)famous, his nickname was “-1” because he had a habit of deducting points for wrong answers in tests, and quite a few times ended up handing negative marks But I digress.
Anyway – He was a widower, and after a few years of widowhood, he astounded everybody by getting married to one of his students, who was 16. Lots of gossip, of course, but it seems that their married life was extremely happy till he died some 20 years ago.
There were precisely zero legal consequences for him. Also, it was very interesting that nobody thought that the fact that the girl was 16 was anything special – the gossip was only because of the titillating possibility (well, I think almost certainty) that there had been quite a bit of hanky-panky going on before they suddenly and without warning tied the knot. But the gossip was centered on that, not on the age difference or the fact that the girl was 16.
I thought it was quite interesting. And I am almost sure that something like that would not be tolerated today. Which makes it even funnier, given that 1960s Spain was WAY more puritanical and tight-laced than nowadays (especially in small towns).
Just my 2 eurocent!
Normally not hard to follow, but (random anecdote time), one of my friends was training as a teacher; he was around 20, and met a nice girl in a nightclub (standard age of consent is 16, drinking age is 18 here). He dated her for a few weeks while finishing his course, then went on his first teaching placement.
Guess who was in the class of 16 year olds?
She hadn’t directly lied about her age, but they met in an environment supposedly restricted to those over 18, and she’d vaguely implied she was at college, an ambiguous term at best in the UK. Should my friend have been charged with a crime?
One of my old teachers left his wife for a 16 year old girl who dropped out of my old school in order to date him (she also dumped his son, who she had been dating, for him). Supposedly no crime was committed there, and he’s actually still teaching at my old school.
For the situation in the OP, how long after graduation is the teacher/student relationship still considered relevant in your area?
He here he should have been charged with a crime if he continued to have sex with her after she became one of his students. Want he did before that when she was over the AoC is not relevant.
As for the old teacher, no crime was committed if she was not his student any more. It is no longer a teacher/student relationship when one of them stops being the teacher or student. There is not time specified. Here is the relevant part of the law:
I don’t really see the downside for making it illegal for a teacher to have sex with their students. Is it that hard to see that its not a good idea to allow people with “supervisory or disciplinary power of any nature or in any capacity over” the student to have sex with them?
It’s July, the students - 18 or thereabouts - are graduated, no longer students. Schools’s out for summer… school’s out forever… When does it become open season on students? When do they stop being students for the purposes of prosecution? From the quote above, it sounds like it’s open season July 1st.
Of course, if the victim refuses to testify, you have the same situation as the rapper with the video a few years ago - without the statement or testimony of the “victim” there is not much of a case. Kissing may be questionable. If the arresting officer caught then in flagrante with hands or other parts in the inappropriate places (I assume from the charges) then that’s the extent of the prosecution - the moral of the story being, … get a room.
IANAL, but what’s the situation if a victim gives a statement then contradicts it on the stand or refuses to testify? Can a statement be used without the right to cross-examine? Can a statement from someone who contradicts it be used to convict?
IANAL again, but what are the rights of the schoolboard - assuming that July is not outside the “statute of limitations”, still not open season? Can they fire someone based on charges, or simply "reassign them to the rubber room if they are not actually convicted?
I think Manada Jo has it right - someone who an attraction to much younger people is looking for someone they can dominate or manipulate, they want to be in charge - particularly a much older woman. Depending on the extent of their weakness and manipulation, it can mess up the other person. The question (that perhaps only they can answer) is, was this a momentary weakness, or was it a targetted activity - like the guy who gets involved in a children’s club or charity because it puts them near their intended targets?
Once there is no supervisory or disciplinary power over the younger person the law has no say in the matter. Or if the student turns 18. Being creepy isn’t against the law.
A friend’s son (in PA) was out celebrating his 21st birthday with friends. However, as he had to work on his birthday and the day after, he was out the day before he turned 21.
He was caught. His prosecution was as vigorous as it would have been if he were 17.
It will depend largely on the laws of evidence of the particular jurisdiction. There may be ways to get the statement into evidence, but I would think it can be difficult. In Canada, there is a way to get some types of statements like this into evidence, but I’m not sure if that principle would apply here.
Again, will depend on the laws of the jurisdiction, but I would think that in most cases in North America, being a teacher is a professional activity, subject to some sort of professional discipline, based on the more relaxed civil standards of evidence - so even if there are no criminal charges, the school board is likely obliged to file a complaint with the relevant teachers’ professional body, which could result in the teacher losing her certificate.
If by, ‘ruin their life’, you mean, they won’t be able to teach any more, than I would have to say the teacher’s actions, are what ended their careers, not the enforcement of any law. If they find themselves unable to abide the, ‘don’t fuck the kids’, rule, then teaching is not meant for them anyway.
Who’s to say you weren’t just as able to drive a car, 2 weeks before, as on, your 16th birthday? All our rules and laws require a line, a parameter. Not entirely arbitrary, and we’ve all agreed to them.
So any argument that hinges on, ‘two weeks before’, or, ‘one day after’, is somewhat beyond silly.
“But You Honour, I’m only 10 days away from the statute of limitations expiring on that child rape/murder!”
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The “urges” are not nearly as strong as you might think: real teens are less attractive than TV teens, and context is everything–when kids are your stuents, they feel like cousins or something.
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There are “countless” young female teachers who also don’t have sex with their students.
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There are plenty of cases of sexual misconduct by male teachers–and remember that the overwhelming majority of teachers are female. They are just less interesting, so they don’t make the news.