Is There a Double Standard in Teacher Sex Abuse Cases?
Driving my son to school the other morning, I heard Louis & Floorwax, the morning radio show personalities on 103.5 FM in Denver discussing the double standard when it comes to female vs. male teachers getting the smackdown by the courts when they’ve sexually abused kids.
Women do get lighter sentences for having sex with teenage male students than do male teachers having sex with male students. Yet it’s beginning to change, especially with all the high profile cases we’ve been seeing in the news lately. The general public and court judges are beginning to realize that there is something wrong and damaging when a female teacher preys on a young man.
Katherine Ramsland, a forensic psychologist at DeSales University in Pennsylvania, says female offenders tend to be narcissistic and misguided.
“They tell themselves a story that fills their own needs and reframes a child as an adult,” she said. “They like to say it is true love, but they misunderstand the nature of a child’s ability to make mature decisions.”
“There is an attitude that boys cannot be victimized, but they can,” Ramsland said, pointing to three studies that indicate that up to 80 percent of male sex offenders had been abused by an older female.
What a scary statistic. Here is some other reading on the double standard in female sex offender cases:
So dear reader, what do you think?
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double standard, teacher-student affair, sex abuse, child abuse, sexual predator, female sexual predator
May 11th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Great links, good post.
May 13th, 2007 at 4:18 am
Sex….like religion….are the most dynamic aspects of human existence. And as such can both be very disruptive if improperly applied. Beleive me I’ve experienced both.
Religion and its influence nearly killed me….not because religion is bad…but because I did not understand or engage in it appropriately.
I’ve had simular expereinces with sexuality, whereby I was seduced by older women while in my early teens. While not as emotionaly or mentaly lethal as my more toxic religious expereinces ( religion has sex beat as far as importance and intensity) I must say it did feel strange despite my enjoyment of it. Very simular to when one expereiments with illicit drugs. You feel guilty for doing the drugs but…. the opiate rush you get does not prevent you from indulging in the activity.
So how disruptive is drug expermentation? Well it obviously depends on how aggressive the drug being expermented with is. Legaly speaking…being caught with tobacco is much less serious than being caught with crack cocaine. So are their effects on the brain. Hence the reason for the lighter sentances. Now, is this a double standard? Or is this taking into consideration the vast differences between drugs and their potential disruptive effects?
Men are much more aggressive than women sexualy. And should be penalized more severely than women for crossing sexual boundries of appropriateness.
This is no double standard….just a consideration of vast gender differences.