When I was in 7th grade, my social studies teacher went on a “leave of absence” due to some accusations of impropriety with a minor (I’m thinking mid-late teens). He did come back.
However, a friend of mine went back to our hometown a few weeks ago and says she saw him in a bar with his new girlfriend, who was one of our classmates (I’m in my mid-twenties). While I don’t think he’s been after her since he had her in class, it kinda squicks me out.
Yikes. My husband sang in a boys chorus for several years as a boy, and the priest who ran the chorus was later accused of molesting several boys who were known to have grudges against him unrelated to any crime. No evidence was presented and the case was never tried.
But we didn’t buy it, and still don’t. If the guy was a predator, he would have been drawn to my husband like a moth to the flame. A vulnerable boy with an alcoholic dad, a struggling mom and a broken home would show up on a pedophile’s radar like nothing else. But nothing ever happened.
This priest was destroyed by hysteria, and never saw his day in court.
Oops, sorry for the hijack, and sorry to hear about your teacher.
Four years ago when I was in a teacher credential program, I was student teaching at a large SoCal high school. One of the English teachers I observed became something of a mentor to me. He was smart, insightful, dynamic, and extremely charasmatic. His students adored him, and I thought he was pretty cool too. And yet, he reminded me a little of a guy I knew several years previously who was something of a sociopath - all charm and no conscience. I shrugged it off and continued emailing and talking with him once I found a full time teaching job.
A couple of summers later, when I was teaching a round of summer school at his high school, I heard from the students that he’d been fired “for being a perv”. I asked around, and it seems a woman had come forward and accused him of forcing her into a relationship with him when she was his student back in the 70s.
It had been his third year teaching, he’d been going through a bad divorce, she was in her late teens, and back then maybe no one would have made a big deal about it. But she had a daughter who would have been in his class, and so she came forward and reported him to the police. The police put a wire on her and taped their conversation when she confronted him.
He admitted to it. That he’d coerced her. That they’d had sex at the school, his home, and hotels more than 200 times. And that he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong.
That’s what really got me. I mean, how many teachers 30 years ago got into unethical relationships with their students, consensual and otherwise? People do stupid things - stupid, hurtful, damaging things. Thirty years on, most of them have the balls to admit that what they’d done was wrong, maybe even to beg forgiveness.
Nope, not him.
So, he was fired on the spot, lost his credential, and was brought up on charges that were later thrown out, because the charges violated the statute of limitations. His wife still teaches at the same school.
Actually, the fact that he was a teacher having sex w/ his students bothers me more than anything other than the fact that the kid was “mentally challenged” (which I didn’t know when I originally posted).
But no, I don’t consider all men who have sex with minors to be “monsters”. Perverted, yes (I make no apologies for the term – I think it’s a perversion of the sex drive) if they’re mucking about with boys under, say, 17 or so. Criminal, sure – laws against sex with minors are perfectly justified. Immoral, you bet. But they’re not necessarily monsters.
Remember that fellow who was put in a holding cell w/ a guy who, it turns out, diddled him when he was kid (maybe more than that, I’m not familiar w/ the case) and he beat the guy senseless? I saw an interview w/ that young fellow’s mom. She was spouting about how this guy had “stolen [her son’s] manhood”. Huh? Stolen his manhood? I just don’t buy that. But she did – and I’ll be that young fellow’s troubles have a lot more to do w/ having a mother who reacts like that than whatever happened between him and the older man – unless the guy was tying him up and pointing a gun to his head.
I just wonder if these days we’re not too quick to mete out complete destruction on anyone who commits this particular crime. In some cases, it goes way beyond an eye for an eye. Having an encounter as a teen with an adult doesn’t destroy your life.
And Gfab, you have no way of knowing what my experience with this kind of thing is. Maybe one of my boys did have a sexual encounter with an older man as a teen. Maybe I did. I’m not the kind of person who would confirm either of those things on a message board if they were true. But some people are capable of forgiveness, y’know.
I fully acknowledge that sexual maturity is not a light switch that gets flipped on the morning of our 18th birthday. But Robert Sigler’s long-term actions to get his hands on this mentally-challenged 14-year-old don’t deserve much consideration in this light (no pun intended).
That said, I also deplore jailed, convicted criminals acting like they are suddenly empowered to act like 19th-century hanging judges.
Biggirl, I said ‘weird’ and ‘bad’ – there isn’t a word sufficient to describe that incident you mention.
And thank you, EJsGirl. I am even more sorry to hear about your priest – he sounds like an innocent man convicted by hysteria without due process.
Perhaps I should have been clearer in my post, but I was both shocked at the fact that I didn’t get any creepy vibe off the guy whatsoever, and shocked that I expected that I would have. It was like the first time I realized that someone I knew and considered a friend had been an IV drug user back in the day. I’m shocked that I still on some level expect people’s inner selves to be plastered across their foreheads or something.
I was a teacher. The only person that I did have an uncomfortable feeling about finally did get caught. She was having sex with one of her 17 year old students. I suspect that it was probably a pattern with her. There was nothing overtly sexual about her. In fact, she was one of our more religious teachers.
We lost two male teachers in one day because of sexual relationships with students. (This was in a small high school of about 450 students.) One was allowed to resign without charges being brought. The other had charges filed and I don’t remember if he served time or not. The last I heard, he was teaching in Texas.
Because we cannot know how vulnerable children are or how much damage a relationship will do, adults can’t just tell themselves that they may be doing some severely horny kid a favor by relieving her or his sexual tension. There has to be a line somewhere and it begins with adults having sex only with other consenting adults.
Yes, it may feel good to the kid and she or he may not suffer in the least. But responsible adults don’t take that chance.
And, of course, professional ethics do not allow teachers to become sexually involved with students.
Most pedophiles are heterosexual, but I’ll bet y’all already knew that.
My son picked up a paper one day that had a story with a headline something like, “Fireside [or something like that] Rapist Caught” (for some reason they always give the local rapists a sobriquet, once they get a good string going). Anyway, my son said, “Hey! That’s Paco!”
Paco–it took me a minute to remember–had been the bus driver when my kid was in grade school. Deep in the story it mentioned this, that he had several part-time jobs, including driving a school bus. In other words, at the time of his apprehension he was still driving a school bus. Really I thought it was kind of odd that the reporter or editor buried that detail. School bus driver by day, rapist by night–that’s the kind of headline I would probably have put on that story. Grade school bus driver arrested in series of rapes.
Catchy headline or no, the story grabbed my son–the kid was by then in middle school. Wow, someone he knew was the subject of an article written in the newspaper. Fame, and all that.
Paco (a nickname; this was also mentioned deep in the story) was best bus driver ever. All the kids liked him; he didn’t yell at them and every once in awhile he’d reverse the route so the kids at the end could pick their seats for a change. He gave plenty of warning about this, with a handwritten note for each kid on the bus, and there were about 30 of them. Real friendly guy. He always waved at all the mothers (and a couple of fathers) who were waiting with the kids to keep them out of harm’s way until they were safely aboard the bus.
:eek:
But surely that’s because most people are heterosexual, right? About ten percent of pedophiles are homosexual is what I’d guess.
Wait a second… if they’re pedophiles, then it’s likely that they’re neither gay or straight? If they’re attracted to children regardless of gender, they’re pedosexual instead, right? I guess some pedophiles are also attracted to adults, and then among those probably about 90 percent of them are straight.
I was in debate in 9th and 10th grade. I decided not to do it anymore. They got a new coach when I was in 11th grade, and from what I’ve heard he’s a very charismatic fellow. Anyway, I’ve heard that he “made out” with a then tenth-grade girl. She talked to one of her friends about it, and someone else overheard and reported it. There may have been a coverup within the school.
I do not know what exactly happened. The wording my friend used was “made out”, but that can mean a little or a lot. He also didn’t like talking about sex, so he may have been using the phrase as a euphemism.
We also had someone who substituted a lot, and rumor got around school that he was fired for watching porn in the teacher’s lounge. I’m not sure if that one’s true or not, but it was a very pervasive rumor.
My fifth grade (1982) teacher, member of a Catholic Teaching Order:
My school isn’t one of the ones listed so no idea if he was trying this there.
At least one of the other Brothers was suspected by other staff but apparently he kept getting shifted around schools before anything could be confirmed.
I disagree, because prayer has never been shown to have any effect.
What?
Not necessarily. Some people who seem creepy really aren’t, as threemae’s example shows. And some people who are creepy seem like they’re not, like your example of Ted Bundy.
But a lot of people seem creepy because they are creepy. There are a lot of subtle cues that we pick up on. Like if someone stares a bit too long at the kids at the pool or something.
So, on one hand, I agree with threemae that we shouldn’t always say “she should have known” when a woman finds out that her boyfriend is molesting her kid. But on the other hand, we’ve seen over and over that in many cases, there were clues that the woman chose to ignore.
When I was in high school (early '80s), I had a history teacher who was quite obviously attracted to the girls in the class. We used to joke about it.
He did things like move the good-looking girls to the very front of the class (us gangly boys went to the back); he volunteered to coach girl’s sports after school; and he was an aspiring authour - he wrote a series of books that he circulated photocopies of (never published) which were all about a handsome authority figure who solves crimes with the aid of a bevy of adorable teenage girls.
In fact, it was so obvious we never thought seriously about it - it was like a joke. Man, were we ignorant and naive! :eek:
Later, I heard he was quietly fired for having inappropriate relationships.
I tried to search for him on google, but couldn’t remember his exact name. I did find this story about my old junior high, Spectrum Alternative - written by someone who was obviously there after I was … and it is really sad; I liked that school when I was there, clearly it degenerated afterwards! :eek:
I was listening to a news show and heard about this. Pretty minor compared to some of the stories here, but he was my 6th grade teacher. I don’t feel icked out so much as weirded out.
It’s the first time I’ve had this close a connection to something like that. dangermom on the other hand grew up in (I swear this is true) a town that inspires soap-operas.
When I was working for a large state university, the college paper ran a story about a student who claimed that he was accosted by a man who brandished a weapon, forced the student into the bushes, and… fellated him at gunpoint. 
I used to go to schools all over the state getting water samples from the boiler rooms. High schools, junior high, and elementary. Each time I would show up, the first thing I’d do is stop at the front office to let the school administration know I was there, and what I was doing. 99% of the time I had no problem, just a thank you from the secretary, or principal, and then they’d either send me to the boiler room, or call a janitor to take me there.
The other one percent, I was treated as if I had just asked to be allowed to choose a child for kidnapping. Ranging from asking to see my driver’s license, to calling my boss to make sure that I was me, and not some nut off the street. (Yeah, and all nuts can tell you what kind of boilers you have, and which company’s chemical treatments you use. :rolleyes: )
I think that for many people, like threemae suggested, anything not normal becomes creepy or dangerous in their eyes. And I believe that most people who suffer under that label are innocent.
I don’t mean to say that Green Bean is wrong about how some people do give off subtle cues - just that often people don’t distinguish between a reaction to a subtle cue, and a reaction to someone who, say, had onions on their sub for lunch.
No offense intended, but I’d say the other one percent were doing their jobs. Asking for ID and calling the home office to verify sounds reasonable, even if the person asking for access to the campus can tell you all there is to know about boilers and knows what boiler the school is using.
I wouldn’t disagree, if
[ul]
[li]I hadn’t been told it was a special reaction because I looked ‘creepy.’[/li][li]the standard practice at this (and almost all other) school wasn’t to have the janitor escort all service workers to the boiler room and escort 'em out again[/li][li]there wasn’t a sign in/sign out sheet at the front desk for service techs[/li][li]I hadn’t called the school from the home office setting up the appointment for that day[/li][/ul]