Posted on 11/10/2007 9:21:52 PM PST by SmithL
The maturity difference between a 13-year-old boy and his 25-year-old female teacher just isn't the same as it used to be in previous generations. They listen to the same music, watch the same movies, have similar MySpace pages...they are like peers today, whereas in an earlier time the difference in life experience and outlook would have been tremendous.
HA!
Check out the cover up in the major school districts like New York city, Boston, etc.
See how many teachers get moved from one district to the next, in stead of charges being filed.
See how many decades this has been going on.
Oh...and did I mention, I’m referring to homosexual sex with students?
Of course that’s only a crime if you’re Catholic.
Those are absurd too, and they aren’t crimes. ‘Zero tolerance policies’ (sheer idiocy) are enforced through administrative sanction—suspension of students—not booking the student, having a trial, and sending them to jail.
Administrative sanction—just what I’m advocating in the case of teacher/student sexual encounters that do not constitute statutory rape or any other generally applicable crime.
Ding ding, we have a winner! At least someone gets it.
Perhaps, though I'm somewhat leery of laws where small quantitative differences in facts make the difference between a major crime and a non-crime. If a teacher seduces a student a day after all his friends throw him a very public, but fake, "18th birthday" party when his real birthday is a few weeks off, should the teacher be massively punished for being deceived?
Frankly, I tend to think that adulthood is more dependent upon high school graduation or emancipation than it is upon age. Having some of the students in high schools be 'adults' while others are not can muddle many issues. There should be some age at which people can demand adulthood independent of their education or their parents' wishes, but I don't think that should happen routinely.
What about women who are not teachers who seduce men who are not students? What about them, huh! :)
Thats very true & I had not looked at it in that way. I don’t like the myspace stuff at all. But I don’t understand why if you know fully well its illegal to have sex with a minor child why you would do it. Lose your career & jail. I guess its the thrills ...
I can see logic there, however, our legal system deals best with the easily quantifiable, and legally we recognize adulthood at 18. It's not a perfect system, but so far, it's the best system overall.
Didn't the age used to be 21 in many states, though, but with some exceptions for emancipated or married children?
While age is quantifiable, things like high school graduation, emancipation, and marriage are hardly ambiguous.
No it's always (20th century and forward) been 18 when it comes to your responsibilities before the law, ie, you'd be tried as an adult at 18 and would not benefit in any way from minor status. Some privilages were withheld till 21, including the right to marry in many states. The law has always had that double tier of responsibilities before the law and rights granted.
While age is quantifiable, things like high school graduation, emancipation, and marriage are hardly ambiguous
I believe they are. I was in college before I was an adult, and I was very much an adolescent and not an adult, and I was just a couple of years ahead. There are many who enter college at even earlier ages. HS graduation isn't a good benchmark in my opinion.
No, the selection of comments indicated that some people doubted the woman's story. They did not say that ephebophile teachers shouldn't go to jail.
I think not regarding age to marry. Marriagable age has been tracking upward. The notion of sexual age of consent is derivative from marrigable age. If one goes back to the turn of the 20th century, most states had marriable age set at around 14, and statutory rape (or whatever equivalent charge was then current, usually with names mentioning ‘the morals of a minor’) defined as sex with someon below marriagable age.
For girls. Marriage age for males was usually between 18 and 21. You still this reflected in states like RI, OH, DE, MA, although most states have equalized the legal age to marry. Men (in this country at least) never married especially young.
Teachers have been abusing their students forever. It was going on when I was in school and probably forever. You are always going to have perverts attracted to professions that put them in a position of power over their victim of choice. Pedophiles go where the kids are.Sometimes it’s not even a matter of preferring kids to adults as much as it is a matter of not being able to find an adult that is interested in the teacher.
When I was in school, I knew of one woman who preyed on male students, but I knew of more than a few male teachers who were having sex with female students and other male teachers who were having sex with boys. As students, we always thought that the blame was shared equally because the kids knew what they were doing was wrong. Now, I see it a little differently, but I still put some of the blame on the students, if they are older than say 15.
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