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Teacher/student relationship

Mon, 05/11/2009 - 12:27
Submitted by worldurge

It has been about ten years since Mary Kay Letourneau was caught with her 12-year-old lover and student Villi.  Since then the media is glutting itself on teachers who have been caught with their students.  A 34-year-old female teacher from Florida, Janet Hughes, is one of the latest casualties.  She was caught with a 16-year-old male minor in the back of her van in a church parking lot by two police detectives who were there for an unrelated cause.  Her arrest occurred in April of 2007; her sentence will be July 9, 2009.  She could get from one to six years.  Not bad in today's criminal justice meat grinder.  Here's the stinger: After her release she is further sentenced to ten years of agonising sex offender probation, while a global-positioning device will be locked on her and four-times-a-year registration.  And most devastating of all: this lovely woman will be labled a "sexual predator" for life.

It's all on the Internet.  Google Janet Hughes and you can read all about it.

Okay: so she was a responsible adult in a position of authority.  But why the extremism?  I think it's totally unfair.  If anybody's a victim here, it's Janet. 

What has galvinized me to take up the banner of this woman's unfair treatment is the widespread cruelty of the majority of bloggers that have posted comments in the sphere of virtual discourse.  It is stunning.  And heartbreaking.  Hence, my participation for people being people regardless of "position of authority" and the age of consent Iron Curtain.

Ronnie

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Disagree strongly

NickN's picture
Mon, 05/11/2009 - 13:28
NickN

Ronnie,

I think you have to examine your motives for wishing to support adults having sex with children. In my view there is no excuse that makes a difference. As adults we are responsible for ensuring that the power-relations between adults and children allow children to grow up with out undue pressure and complication. The early and often commercialised (just look at advertising) sexualisation of children as objects for the adult gaze is hugely damaging in my view to the children and culture generally. 

Clearly, puberty is a marker in terms of a person's reproductive life and we are all born as sexual beings. But society MUST draw a line between the 'child' and the 'adult' to ensure that a child grows up with his or her sexuality free from adult control and manipulation; that means there must be an age-limit that is respected wholeheartedly by all adults. The fact that some teenagers are more mature in their thinking than some adults does not give the irresponsible adults a charter for having sex with under-age teens or children.

The age of consent is fixed as a societal norm to ensure that children are protected and adults are kept in their place. Arguments for and against what that age should be are a matter for debate within the political arena and, clearly, there is no 'correct' age between 15 and 18 and, for most countries, 16 is a good enough marker. However, it is weird in the extreme and irresponsible for mature adults to even wish to have sex with teenagers: the lack of maturity, the wish to have power over others and the wish to risk a younger person's emotional development is, in my view, abhorrent.

Sincerely,

Chu