UKC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-26927378
So, a 26 year old drama teacher is caught getting up to no good with her 16/17 year old male student. Clearly unprofessional, but I'm not sure it's helpful to describe the offence as 'abuse' in the same way as say, the Savile scandal.

In reply to FrankBooth:

Abuse of a position of care, trust and authority? Language is quite the fluid and malleable thing, both can be called abuse without too much worry I should think.

In reply to FrankBooth:

Where you are in a position of responsibility, the age of consent becomes 18, FWIW.

Neil

In reply to FrankBooth:

Jesus Christ, when I was 16/17 it would have been a fantasy come true!

In reply to FrankBooth:

It's a fundemental abuse of trust.

In reply to FrankBooth:
More an abuse of trust I suppose. Everything is within consent apart from the teacher-pupil rule. I wouldn't brand her a monster.


I didn't know this.

In reply to FrankBooth:

Would it make any difference to your mind if it was a 26 year old male teacher with a 16 year old girl pupil?

In reply to FrankBooth:
Its not that hippocrocopig teacher again is it?

Im not clicking the Link this Close to DinnerTime in case its her again.

In reply to richyfenn:



No, me neither.
In truth, even if morally and legally wrong, I think a lot of guys would privately agree with Al on this! It's wrong to differentiate between the sexes, but I can't really believe that as a 17 year old lad, the 'victim' is likely to suffer any long-term trauma, whereas if the roles were reversed (17 yr old lass), it might be different - certainly more concern about exploiting emotional vulnerabilities, grooming, etc

In reply to Neil Williams:

That's interesting, never knew the age of consent changed.

I did find it amusing how they describe it as 'sex with a child' when the age of consent outside of this situation is 16 and therefore would have been legal.

In reply to Removed User:

I would imagine every teacher should know that, though, and not end up in the situation.

Neil

In reply to FrankBooth:


So you think that a 16 year old lad is more emotionally mature and less vulnerable than a 16 year old girl?

I would think that either would be pretty easy to manipulate and groom, particularly those who are already vulnerable, hence the law...

In reply to Al Evans:

hah!. genuinely found that funny. thanks for making me smile Al. in my school we only felt that way about the school nurse

In reply to tlm:



Sorry - didn't mean to give that impression. Truth is, at that age, it's very much down to the individuals, some can handle it, some can't and are susceptible to manipulation.

In reply to FrankBooth:


I don't see why it's wrong to take account of the obvious biological differences between the sexes. It is a biological fact that women get pregnant and men don't and therefore there is no reason to expect females to have the same attitudes to sex as males.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

We have contraception nowadays. And the vote.

Whatever next...

In reply to FrankBooth:

At 19 I spent time talking a (male) friend out of jumping off a motorway bridge due to his feelings about a similar relationship when he had been at school. Teenagers are vulnerable. Boys as well as girls. This kind of thing is abuse. The law was changed with good reason. No teacher is unaware of the rules.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:


In that case, we should take account of the fact that boys brains, in particular, the section that deals with emotions, develop more slowly than girls brains, thus leaving them much more emotionally vulnerable.

http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Boys_Girls/

But hey - I'll tell you what. Why don't we just include an element of not abusing a position of power in ALL teacher training, and tell ALL teachers, male or female, not to abuse this power with ANY pupil, male or female?

Oh. We already do.

In reply to tlm:
And morally, even if not legally, I would extend that to an 18 year old sixth former. Or even possibly a lecturer and uni student, though that one could be more blurred.

Pupil-teacher relationships *really* don't work.

Neil

In reply to graeme jackson:


Ha, in my schools the nurse always seemed about 600 years old, but Miss Littlewood, now there was a fit bit, I joined the natural history society extra curr just to get out in her company, but the plus was she introduced us to Stoney Middleton just to show us the warm spring well there, I never forgot that visit, later as a climber we used to go to it to wash on Sunday mornings and a guy with a bull with a ring in its nose always turned up saying it was the only place the bull would drink. We used to play saying drinking from it would make us immortal.
And of course it did, Ah, Miss Littlewood.

In reply to FrankBooth:

>Is it right to describe this offence sex-abuse?

Yes.

For all those saying/implying that the situation is in some way different because they think teenage boys are more likely to desire such a relationship: not identical, but something to think about regarding things being 'different' for boys because they're expected to want it,

youtube.com/watch?v=Ikd0ZYQoDko&

In reply to Blackmud:

Powerful video.

Linked to this, I seem to recall that in the case last year of the teacher and pupil going to France, the teacher was labelled weird and creepy despite the pupil saying that it was a consensual relationship - in that case the girl was under 16, if I remember rightly, but either way (male teacher/female teacher, male pupil/female pupil) it is, as others have said, an abuse of power.

In reply to Tall Clare:



I dunno, the outlandish concept that women might even enjoy sex if it doesn't fulfil God's purpose of procreation?

In reply to Tall Clare:

I dunno but it still seems ok for the (female) presenter on the gadget show to say 'If you want your wife/girlfriend to slap you round the face, buy her a pair of these' as a lighthearted joke.

Who knows what is next but equality is still a long long way off.

In reply to FrankBooth:

Yes, it's abuse. But the same way that not all murder is exactly the same, not all abuse is the same either.

In reply to FrankBooth:

Thats a pretty victorian view of sexulity. Men perps, women victims. I'm sure there are plenty of 16 year old girls (and younger) gagging for it from there older male teachers who wouldn't think they had been harmed by having sex with them. Thats why we have laws to prevent adults exploiting relationships of trust.

D

In reply to Al Evans:


Aye but its pretty clear an abuse of position..

Even in Uni's with over 18's this is a huge huge no no. You have to instantly own up and have no professional contact with them. There are so many supervisor student relationships its quite funny hearing them being so disapproving yet so many of the last generation were at it with their students...

We had one lecturer who left his wife for a PhD student.. married her, had kids, thenleft her for his MSc student, married her, had kids... in the end the Uni showed the door on the quiet..

But in the last few years it's really cracked down.

In reply to Tall Clare:



Yes, but there are millions of years of evolution which also influence sexual behaviour where contraception and voting did not exist. Females can only have a limited and relatively small number of offspring whereas males can have an almost unlimited number. You can wipe out many males and still have the same number of children in the next generation but if you lose females there will be proportionally fewer children. That means from an evolutionary perspective the species does best by protecting females from risk but exposing males to risk and competition so the 'best' genes are spread more widely.

In evolutionary terms it is not desirable for males and females to behave the same way, so they don't. It may conflict with social theories but that difference in behaviour is what we observe every day - for example far more men in prison than women.

That's not to say the teacher in question did nothing wrong or that teenage boys can necessarily deal with a relationship with an older women emotionally. Personally I think she should have been fired and barred from teaching but I don't think a criminal prosecution is necessary when the pupil is over the age of consent.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

But it impacts on their career.. the student may gain favour, may be harshly marked, may feel pressured.. had it been a 16 year old girl and a 60 year old bloke? or a 60 year old woman and 16 year old lad..

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Over the age of consent except in a scholastic environment.

If females are 'protected from risk' in this context why are women more likely to be the younger half of a couple?

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I call shenanigans.

(I did write a longer and more eloquent response, but to be quite frank I can't be arsed).

In reply to FrankBooth:


Technically it may be correct but on a spectrum from this (seemingly consensual relationship that would otherwise be legal but for abuse of position) through to some of the far more brutal crimes against immature children it doesn't seem like the most helpful informative description available.

jk

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:


Isn't that a bit of an outdated view? It isn't just about conception, you also have to ensure that your children live long enough to procreate in their own right in order to be successful from an evolutionary viewpoint. Human children are very dependent, and wouldn't manage on their own for about 10 years, and a pregnant woman with a hoard of 10 or so kids, spaced a year or so apart won't be very efficient at keeping them all alive on her own. Bringing children up successfully involves having other adults around to bring in the food.

Men have a strong evolutionary reason to invest time and effort in bringing up their own children to adulthood. Wildly spreading your seed may beget a lot of offspring but is more risky in terms of guaranteeing their growth to adulthood.

Staying around to hunt, fend off danger, teach them etc is a more guaranteed route to success.

In a population, you get a mixture of strategies for different men, with apparently, a mixture of strategies in women too - the idea of women being all love lorn and faithful turns out not to be quite so true either...

In reply to tlm:


I don't disagree with what you are saying. Although there are clearly a mixture of strategies this does not imply that men and women have the same set of strategies or that some strategies are not much more frequent than others.

In reply to Removed User:


Only in relation to positions of power, but it need not just be teacher pupil, it could also apply in other professions and voluntary roles.


A 16 year old is a child legally.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:


It seems older female teachers and young students is more common at the moment.. it seems almost a weekly occurrence in the news, especially in the US. maybe it always happened but its also been pretty good looking women...

In reply to IainRUK:

I do wonder if it makes the news more rather than it happening more. It is seen as more of a story than the other way.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:


But we really don't know at the moment. And it's hard to pick out what is genetic, what is learned behaviour, and what is what our preconceived ideas lead us to expect. You can trot stuff out, but you don't actually know. It's like saying men are taller than women - yes, they may well be on average, but height wouldn't be an effective way to split a group of people into male and female.

In reply to tlm:


It would be a lot better than nothing. Looking at the distributions you could split a group into 25% 'very probably female', 50% 'could be either' and 25% 'very probably male' fairly reliably based on height. Where anyone whose height was less than the mean for females was 'very probably female' and anyone whose height was greater than the mean for males was 'very probably male'.

Similarly if all you knew was 'has a conviction for violence' you could split a group up fairly reliably into 'almost certainly male' and 'could be either'.

I think we do know that men and women behave differently. Nobody would argue about this if we were discussing other mammal species like monkeys or cattle because it is so obvious.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:


I think what's odd is your application of this to the situation at hand, specifically the notion that a teenage boy might be more 'emotionally equipped' to deal with a relationship with someone a few years his senior than would a teenage girl, when a lot of evidence points to that not necessarily being the case.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I don't know if you saw my post but I will repeat the important bit. Boys and girls at that age are both vulnerable.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Yeah, to be honest I'd actually have thought teenage lads more vulnerable if anything.. at 16 many guys are basically a ball of testosterone with a fight it or f**k it drive.. certainly maturity wise most girls would be a few years more advanced.

In reply to Tall Clare:

I was just arguing against the principle of "it's wrong to differentiate between the sexes" and for a general assumption that boys and girls are likely to be different in a situation like this.

In reply to IainRUK:

Young men/teen age boys do tend to be less mature than their female peers, but I think men and boys tend to separate sex and emotion a bit more. Also, culturally there's just less shame associated with it for both parties, which probably makes it easier for young guys.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:


No one is arguing. However, I think you are making very unhelpful assumptions. For example, generally speaking, women are sexually attracted to men and men to women. However, there are plenty of people for whom this simply isn't true, so if you just always build a society where you assume this is the case, it is really unhelpful for those it is not true for.

There is so much overlap between women and men's behaviour that most of the time, the overlap is far, far bigger than the difference. And we don't know the cause of the difference. Both women and men behave in different ways now than they did 50 years ago. That isn't evolution, it is social change.

I'm not arguing that men and women are the same. I'm arguing that to act as though they are so different that they are separate (rather than well overlapped) is not helpful in any practical sense.

In reply to Donnie:


That's what they tell other blokes. I've seen enough men crying over women to have my doubts.

In reply to FrankBooth:

Christ, i would have been gagging to shag a fit 26 year old female teacher at that age and i can't see that it would have f*cked me up any more than i already was

Might even have learnt a thing or two…

In reply to tlm:


That's the whole point though, they are crying over a woman they have feelings for which is not the same as crying over a woman they have had sex with.

As you said above there is probably a huge overlap but if you were to take a random person from a sample of those who could happily enjoy the physical act of sex with absolutely no emotions attached and one who couldn't there would be a greater than average chance that the first would be male and the second female.

I do agree that we don't know how much of the differences between men and women are social or evolutionary or imagined but I also think that sometimes it is irrelevant what the cause of the difference is, if it exists then it needs to be acknowledged rather than just repeating over and over 'we are the same' till everyone agrees.

If you were to assume just for a minute that there is a difference, don't you think denying it in the pursuit of some utopian view of equality would likely be as damaging in the long run as exaggerating it? If so, surely it is better to take every case on its merits rather than try and force a one size fits all world view on everyone else because it is what you believe is fair?

In reply to FrankBooth:

Obviously abuse of trust, however the teacher has got off stupidly lightly compared with a male teacher in the same position.

Unfortunately, we (the courts and the Daily Mail) have the (sexist) attitude that an older male going out with a younger female (at or around or just under 16) is a creepy predator who is out to groom the defile any female out there and deserves to be put away forever, the slimy low-life scumbag, but switch the genders around and its somehow "OK" apart from breach of trust, and she's not even going to prison.

This attitude by both the courts and the papers is sexist to both genders. One am not amused.

In reply to Al Evans:


You will get 6 of the best for thoughts like that( if you are lucky)

In reply to Choss:


No, she's quite fit

In reply to spearing05:


What are you basing your idea here on? On your own expectations? On your own experience? On scientific study? How likely is it that a woman who has enjoyed meaningless sex would talk to you about it? After all, social expectation says that she should keep pretty quiet about it or risk being labelled a slapper.

For every heterosexual one night stand that happens, there are equal instances of men and women taking part.


But that is it. We are ALL different. You aren't the same as all other men. You might be closer in similarity to some women than you are to some men. Or you might be very unlike some women, or very unlike some men. You can probably picture, right now, in your minds eye, a man that you are very similar to and another that is your antithesis.


You are making the exact argument that I would make myself there. We should take each case on its own merits. We shouldn't make an assumption that all women are equal, or that all men are equal. We should make space to allow people to be individuals. A man might WANT to have custody of his kids after a divorce, or might WANT to bring up his new born baby and have leave from work to allow him to do so. Or maybe he might never want any children and will just want to sleep with lots of random other men, just for fun. Or he might be too wrapped up in his work for sex of any type.

Why should he be forced into one single mould?

In reply to tlm:
To be fair that's quite a poor article.

Apparently Men's brains aren't finished Developing till 30 so perhaps men shouldn't be allowed relationships until then?

Or perhaps an older man should be with a younger girl because of the descrepency?

None of this really makes any sense when it comes to morals at the moment.


PS: Odd this has turned into a gender debate when actually I think the O.P was driving at other things, like age and consent or willingness to participate.

To the O.P: There are in fact different classifications of the psychological condition that causes one to be attracted to a certain age range. It's not all paedophilia but that one word has stuck for whatever reason. I don't think many class this as the same as the Jimmy Saville abuses for the many differences. If we want to talk about the gender debate I suppose we could compare this to the man who ran off to France (but that might also include kidnapping?).

In reply to FrankBooth:

She's a 17 year old boy's wet dream, well fit.


http://www.iheartmyteacher.org/index.php?attachments/burgess-kelly-ann-mari...

In reply to tlm,

I would say I base that opinion on my experience, yes that's subjective and no it's not scientific but sometimes in life experience can be very valuable. Every car breakdown is unique but a good mechanic who can recognise certain similarities and thus diagnose a problem many times faster is more use than one who knows all the diagnostic tests but has no experience. It seems strange to me that in many areas of life we desire and trust experience but in others it seems to be a dirty word.

As regards taking every situation on it's own merit, surely that was what the OP asked but many have expressed the opinion that the black and white letter of the law is always correct as if in some way a days difference in age actually makes the difference between abuse and not. It seems that merely suggesting that there may be a difference between the way boys and girls react is an anathema to you yet if you are truly to judge each situation on its merit then an acknowledgement of all the differences needs to be made and assessed and one of those differences is gender. While there is a large overlap there are also statistically significant differences as T in E points out and any significant difference needs to be investigated before being dismissed. Forgive me if I'm reading you wrong but it seems that your view is because of the overlap the difference should be dismissed out of hand. Personally I'm off the opinion that it should be kept in mind as a possible influencing factor.

Obviously a law has to be black and white but it's application should allow for shades of grey and if one of those shades is the lad is likely to get kudos for the incident (and I'm not saying this is the case merely that it is a possibility) then this should be taken into account. An incident in your life that you look back on with a touch of pride is clearly less damaging than one that you look back on with disgust and regret. As the sentencing judge doesn't have the ability to know the lads future feelings there has to be an element of experienced based judgement, it is after all what we as society pays him to do. It is also right that as a society, each with our own experience we are able to question this.

In reply to tlm:


That's not what being open to the existence of statistical trends entails. My experience correlates with the trends spearing05 suggests. I haven't got the data to prove it, but there are thousands of areas in which you'd find a correlation between gender and behaviour or attitude. Then, you could argue about whether the correlation is purely socially conditioned or whether it's more fundamental.

I would always ask, if it's socially conditioned, then why does the conditioning work that way rather than the opposite way round?

In reply to John_Hat:

It reflects sexism in the judicial system - women get off lightly when convicted of the same crime as a man and juries are less likely to see them as a guilty party.

D

In reply to spearing05:


Very true. And yet my experience seems to be pretty different to yours. Should I go by your experience, or by my own when judging situations?

In reply to Jon Stewart:


Hmmmm... and mine doesn't.

In reply to Jim C:

No, I genuinely loved Miss Littlewood, I was heartbroken when she got engaged
She was kind and considerate as well as being fit, she had the enthusiasm of youth and went above and beyond the call of her duties (I think she may have been a student teacher). She ran the Natural History club and had complete pupil discipline in her lessons, a perfect teacher, a perfect fit bit

In reply to tlm:

Well I guess we'd have to ask a thousand people about their experiences and take the average.