What's behind today's epidemic of teacher-student sex?
What's behind today's epidemic of teacher-student sex?
Posted: March 22, 2006
1:00 am Eastern
By David Kupelian
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com
Editor's note: The following article, originally published in the March 2006 edition of Whistleblower magazine, was selected for top honors in the 2006 Amy Foundation Writing Awards program.
It was a bizarre and emotional courtroom scene, but one occurring with disturbing frequency these days. A popular middle school teacher, 43-year-old Pamela Diehl-Moore, had tearfully pleaded guilty to having sex with a child – a 13-year-old male student who had just completed 7th grade – and now stood before a Hackensack, N.J., judge awaiting sentencing.
And what would that sentence be? Considering all the intense media coverage of male sexual predators victimizing female children, one might expect a stiff prison term, accompanied by a withering rebuke.
But when New Jersey Superior Court Judge Bruce A. Gaeta opened his mouth, the words that came out did not express criticism of the teacher, nor acknowledge any damage she had done to her victim.
"I really don't see the harm that was done here," the judge proclaimed, "and certainly society doesn't need to be worried. I do not believe she is a sexual predator. It's just something between two people that clicked beyond the teacher-student relationship."
"Clicked"? With a 13-year-old?
"Maybe it was a way for him, once this happened, to satisfy his sexual needs," the judge added. "People mature at different rates." Gee thanks, Judge.
According to court transcripts, Gaeta summed up his shocking judicial leniency this way: "I don't see anything here that shows this young man has been psychologically damaged by her actions. And don't forget, this was mutual consent. Now certainly under the law, he is too young to legally consent, but that's what the law says. Some of the legislators should remember when they were that age. Maybe these ages have to be changed a little bit."
Translation: The 43-year-old teacher didn't really do anything wrong in having sex with a schoolboy, the kid wanted it, statutory rape laws are unrealistic and the age of consent should be lowered.
Oh, the sentence? Five years probation – no jail time.
In yet another recent court case, U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten in Kansas also questioned whether sex with kids was really bad.
"Where is the clear, credible evidence that underage sex is always injurious? If you tell me because it is illegal, I reject that," Marten said, according to the Associated Press.
Although most judges don't publicly sing the praises of statutory rape like these two – indeed, Judge Gaeta later came under the scrutiny of a judicial fitness review board – many regular Americans apparently agree with them. A lot of us just don't seem to think there's much of a problem when female teachers have sex with their male students.
"What is the deal lately with hot female teachers seducing their 13- to 16-year-old students?!" asked one blogger expressing the prevalent "what's-the-problem?" attitude: "I think the woman is getting off on the social taboo factor more than anything else. At least, that's what the expert psychologists say. I just wish I had a teacher stupid enough and bored enough in my grade school to make my pubescent dreams come true. If it wasn't illegal and there were no jilted husbands, it's almost a victimless crime."
And Bob Shoop, a Kansas State University education professor and expert witness in 30 court cases involving sexual abuse in schools, summed it up for the Associated Press this way: "I think our society sort of says to the boy: 'Congratulations, that's great. Everybody fantasizes about having a sexual relationship with an older woman.'"
As for the perpetrators themselves, often they just think they're expressing love.
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