Female sex teachers expose bad law

10-19-2010 National:

The increasing number of affirmed accusations against female school teachers for having consensual sex with under-age boys ought to bring the complex and often taboo subject of statutory rape under scrutiny.

Statutory rape is a broad, non-technical term for “rape” by way of legal statute. Its pretense is that adolescents under a certain age, usually between 14-18 depending on the state, are deemed unsuited to give consent to sexual relations of any kind and to anyone, not just older partners.

Given the average age of first-time intercourse is 17, the law has been broken by most without repercussion or public outcry.

The age of the partners in question, the age difference between partners, and whether the “offender” holds a position of authority, such as teachers and coaches, determine the severity of the crime and maximum sentence.

The overarching interest of creating a staunch, cut-and-dry legal statute aimed at protecting vulnerable youths and deterring potentially malevolent predators is understandable, but such blanket restrictions can turn victimless crimes into false calamities against humanity.

It defies sensibility to invoke the word “victim” when discussing the 14-year-old boy from Florida who endured the torturous agony of having consensual sex over and over again in the classroom, at home and in an SUV on the freeway with his reading teacher, a 23-year-old “firecracker” named Debra LaFave.

In 2004 LaFave followed the female sex-teacher pioneer, Mary K. Letourneau, and became perhaps the most infamous of sex teachers, largely due to Lafave’s barbie-doll looks and her documented sexual deviance.

The charges against her had a 30-year maximum prison sentence which reflect an overemphasis on generic content like age, rather than scaling age with the circumstances of the case.

The victimization propaganda fueling the public’s simplistic narrative on statutory rape is peddled by the courts, psychologists, social opinion leaders and Terri Miller, the president of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation in Nevada.

“This isn’t an affair; it’s abuse, and we have to shift the paradigm,” Miller told TIME magazine of female sex predators like LaFave. “We say, ‘Bully for the boy and his conquest of the geometry teacher,’ but that makes it harder for boys to vocalize their victimization.”

Statutory rape has haphazardly allowed consensual sex to become synonymous with violent, forcible rape, sexual abuse and assault. It should be apparent that the interchangeability of consensual sex and sexual abuse (i.e., rape) leads to misguided conclusions because they follow from false premises.

Finding the “victimization card” laughable does not require having a PhD in psychology. Despite what the boy’s father said about LaFave— “It’s a horrible, ugly thing that she’s done”—after the boy’s consummations with LaFave he was not overtaken by victimization, depression or thoughts of suicide. He was in an utter state of nirvana as he reflected on his provocative escapades with LaFave amongst his buddies, deliriously dumbstruck as to what he had done to deserve living out every boy’s fantasy.

If there is a victim here it is LaFave, a women whose bi-polar disorder and many other emotional and psychological handicaps subjected her, a mildly attractive women, to sexual relations with a 14-year-old kid. The boy, however, is quite the opposite of a “victim.” He’s what sane people and Creedence Clearwater Revival would call a fortunate son.

The infamous LaFave saga does not define all “female sex predator” cases; many involve legitimate manipulation and physical and mental abuse, often instigated by an adult holding a position of authority. Surely it is appropriate that LaFave, due to her professional obligations and position of power, pay the professional and social consequences of being barred from teaching and having to register as a sex offender, but current protocols of legal recourse are drastically out of bounds.

The same rule applies if the gender roles are switched. The circumstances of any inappropriate sexual relationship should guide the response, not numbers. For instance, if a 16-year-old girl is legally permitted to give consent and abort her fetus, it is not easily defended that such a person is legally prohibited from giving sexual consent to a much older man. This analogy is not perfect because statutory rape involves a second actor who is sometimes in a position of power over the consenter, but it is suggestive. ..Source.. by Mike Boylan, The Collegian, California State University, Fresno