It all seems so terribly familiar. A trusted, even respected or beloved teacher is accused of having a sexual relationship with a student. What used to shock us, but is now much too commonplace, is that the teacher is a woman. Their names become tabloid headlines: Mary K. Letourneau, Debra Lafave, Pamela Diehl-Moore and others. And now two more cases, both local. Jennifer Leigh Rice, a 31-year-old former Tacoma teacher, was charged with having sex with a 10-year-old boy who had been in her fourth-grade class. The boy's father says she lavished the boy with attention until she was told not to come to their house anymore. So she abducted the boy, police say, drove him to a highway rest stop outside Ellensburg and had sex with him. After her arrest in early August, Rice said she'd had sex with the boy four or five times, including once when she sneaked into his house as his parents slept. Earlier this year, former Tenino math teacher Dawn Welter, 38, was charged with second-degree sexual misconduct after spending the night at a motel with a 16-year-old female student. Her lawyer explained her relationship with the student as "horseplay that became sexual." The decadelong wave of sexual offenses committed by women — teachers in particular have exposed a cultural double standard: The public is more willing to accept the female abuser's claim that she had a "relationship" with the victim. And in cases in which the male is a teenager, the sexual abuse is more likely to be dismissed as a rite of passage. The questionable, yet overriding assumption, is that women predators are somehow different from men. "Men are demonized, women are diagnosed. Men are beasts, but women are troubled or mentally ill," said media scholar Matthew Felling in an interview with Fox News. In fact, accounts of women sexual offenders are often more titillating than harsh. Felling calls the news coverage of young, attractive teachers involved with their students "part crime drama, part Penthouse letter." About 25 percent of women and up to 17 percent of men say they experienced sexual abuse as children, ranging from seeing someone exposing themselves to intercourse. Boys are less likely to report abuse. Despite the troubling news accounts, the National Education Association says schools are still among the safest places for children to be. The number of cases of sexual abuse by teachers, male and female, is less than 10 percent of all sex crimes against minors. Rest of the article if you want to read it http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2003874026_predator10.html I have to agree with the article, a lot of times when someone is watching the news about sexual predators, the thought of a woman being the predator is not as disgusting as a guy being one. I was watching TV when they showed a picture of the woman teacher from Miami, my friends said "damn what a lucky guy!"
Gotta agree with the article too...if it's a male teacher it's a ruthless child abuser and if it's a female teacher, she's probably troubled. But yo, a 31 year old female teacher with a 10 year old kid...that's real pedophilia! -shock
A 10 years old boy?!?!?! And she had four or five times sex with him? I am wondering is he able to have sex in this age or to understand what sex is.
by doing that to a kid when they are that young is going to mentally scar him for life....i wonder if they did a study to examine whether the effects of doing things like this turn kids into serial rapist or sexual fiends when they get older...i'd really like to see a study on the kids to see how they turn out
^forreals. the sexually abused become the sexual abusers :/ i feel sad for these kids because without the right psychiatric help, this can really mess up the rest of their lives.
