I don’t ever recall hearing of instances of it until about 10-15 years or so I guess. Was it always around in such high numbers but largely un-reported, or is it a relatively new trend? If its a new thing, what is the reasoning behind the large number of examples these days? And if not a new thing, why didn’t stories of it get reported in the 60’s-80’s? I wouldn’t think the internet has anything to do with it, as most examples are students and teachers who are in the same class.
I don’t know, but I’m jealous. 
My personal theory is that it’s tied up with the sort of perpetual adolescence our culture is currently obsessed with.
For example, the idea that it’s normal and acceptable for someone to still be living at home well into their 20’s. More and more often, you find grownups, adults, acting like teenagers. Coupled with helicopter parenting, and you’ve got a full fledged phenomenon on your hands.
Now, we drop a teacher, usually a fairly new teacher, into this mix. She herself is in her 20’s, and is a product of this new cultural trend.
Her classroom is full of boy and girls that are (in high school anyways) not that much younger than herself, and so she finds it far to easy to identify with them. Or in the case of jr. high or late elementary school, you’ve got students that are the product of our already hyper-sexual culture, some of whom (such as Marie LaTourneau’s beau) are physically much more mature than would be considered average. They are young, attractive, and probably flirting their litte brains out.
Attractive young student+extended adolescence phenomenon+sexually charged young man+bold behavior due to cultural trends+inability to determine correct boundaries due to cultural trends= Hot Young 20something teacher banging students.
I’m sure it happens with older teachers as well… that one, I don’t have as clear cut a reasoning for, beyond being a sexual predator.
Explosion? Where? I feel like I’m the only one missing out here. :mad:
Darn; I’m sure there was some movie back in the 50s about an inappropriate teacher-student relationship (might have been just attraction, not sure), but just try to find one cite with only “teacher” “student” “movie” and “sex” to go on.
Well, why the “explosion” in priest/altarboy sex? The difference may be in the reporting, not the reality. Such matters used to be swept under the rug.
Good point, but the difference I think there is that the church supposedly knew about much of it and kept it quiet, which is why you didn’t hear of it. Did school principals do this in the past if it happened? I don’t know.
In sequential thread news, up until I bumped this, the thread after it was “What kind of stranger should I hook up with for casual sex?”
That was a bit off-putting.
Ding! Winner.
Back in the early 1960s my 6th grade teacher was arrested and sent to jail for molesting some of the boys in the class.
Never made the papers.
Today it would be the lead headline in the LA Times, and on the TV news.
I would speculate that it’s actually much rarer today than it was 20 years ago. In that past it was almost never reported and frankly I’m not sure it was viewed as all that taboo then. Consider these factors.
There was a major fear among male-on-male victims of coming forward. That stigma has been diminished today.
There was very little fretting over the idea of a male student seducing or being seduced by a female teacher. Few considered it a serious problem and it was a frequent topic of coming of age comedies and urban legends. Personally, I think the current fervor of it is a bit much.
The idea of a female student being with a young male teacher was not considered a good thing but it was rarely considered a a criminal issue. When I was in school the popular girls all were dating college and post-high school guys so the idea of one hooking up with a 20-something teacher was par for the course. Situations like that were often resolved by a father threatening a punch in the mouth instead of a criminal charge. The “older guy” drama wasn’t exactly a shock.
Today, with everyone being so litigious and these cases getting so much publicity I think teachers have been scared straight. While there will always be situations like this, it was treated much more casually in the past. I think that it was under-reported in the past more because it just wasn’t considered that wrong instead of being kept hush-hush out of modesty.
Getting a reliable statistical representation of such a thing is impossible, but I bet a poll of Dopers would indicate that students dating teachers was pretty damn common 15-20 years ago. I know there were at least 3 occasions when it happened while I was in high school and probably a dozen other rumors of dubious, though not impossible, couplings. There was also supposedly one teacher let go for fondling younger male students, but this was with junior high aged kids. It was never reported, so it the truthfulness of that it unclear. Likely the gay stigma played a role in that case, assuming the rumored cause of the firing was true.
There was a case of this in my high school (class of '85), a math teacher and a cheerleader. And not just a one-time hookup, either; they dated all summer, sunbathing together at the public pool and such. We kids all snickered but I don’t think the teacher faced any consequences.
I also vote for being undereported in the past. I taught high school from 1967-1970 and turned down sex with students twice. But I"m sure there were those who didn’t. And, while you didn’t read about it in the paper, it happend.
Hardly an explosion.
Between 1977 and 1979 I was sexually abused by a teacher in High School more than a dozen times. I wasn’t the only one.
Everybody knew what his game was. He was the head of the English Department and completely untouchable.
It is nothing new.
Trust me. :mad:
Cartooniverse
Same at my high school (1984) - the band teacher and a flute player were boinking. The teacher had to resign. That’s right, resign, he wasn’t fired outright. Absolutely no criminal repercussions. (I checked the Megan’s Law database. He’s not registered. Yes he still lives in the area. He’s still a band teacher, but at a community college) And the resignation was only because *this *year’s girl’s parents complained. Every previous year there was a girl with whom he was extra friendly. All the kids knew what was going on. Heck, we even jokingly made up a band council position called “head master” to refer to each year’s fling.
Today, he would have been run out of town on a rail in a front page trial. Back then, point, snicker, and whisper rude things. So I would say there’s been an explosion in reporting, but probably not an explosion in actual incidents.
I know three women who admitted to having sexual relationships with teachers way back when, one teacher and one principal who were busted for having sex with students (one made the news, one didn’t) and one woman teacher who was strongly rumored to be having sex with male students.
Not to mention a priest who was allegedly molesting altar boys.
And all this was more than 25 years ago.
When I was in 8th grade ('84-85), a female teacher was rumored to be sleeping with one or more male students. I think she got fired.
I graduated in 1996. My high school band teacher was married to a former student who was a senior when I was in seventh grade. He was in his mid-forties when I was a student.
Sophomore year, I hung out with a chick who supposedly had to transfer from another high school for sleeping with a teacher. Note that she had to transfer; the teacher apparently kept his job.
Nevermind.
I really don’t think it’s new, either. Some adults in positions of influence will try to have sex with teenagers. Teenagers, irrespective of the age of consent, can be very sexually attractive AND easily influenced by an older person. There will always be people who lack scruples who’ll act on that.
Back in the day there was only 3 networks with maybe 1 hour each of news, and 30 min. of local. Today there are many 24 hour cable news networks, as well as a lot of soft news and news like programs. That is a lot of programing to fill and sensation sells.