Sex Education
A case of sex education gone too far. The New York Times (happy snaps to fellow summer schoolie Thao for this) has just reported the outcome of the case of Sandra Beth Giesel, who was convicted to a mere six months in jail for having sex with her 16 year old student. The article questions the abuse inflicted onto the teenager by these women and enlists the comments of various players in the issue, such as educators and members of education departments as well as psychological researchers. What I'd like to comment on is the impact of these relations between female teachers and their male students. The article sheds light on the litter of cases such as Lisa Lynette Clark, the 37 year-old teacher who married her 15 y/o student soon after finding out she was pregnant to him, and Silvia Johnson, a 40 y/o mother who gave her high school son's friends drugs and alcohol in an attempt to 'be cool' and in doing so, ending up boinking them too, and the apparent 'women having sex with teenage boys' is nothing new. Isn't it only in the last couple of months that these cases have been brought to light? Or has it always happened, and it's only now that they're being reported?
Not new? Scary, I have to admit. Especially when the issue of consent is brought into the picture. And the fact that most 15 year old boys are nearing their sexual peak at about the same time as most women nearing the age of 30. And then comes laws and ethics and morals and so on and so forth. This is why it's such a controversy - sexual relations between women up to 20 years older than the man (or is that boy?); its almost incestuous. Add the fact that she's his teacher and we've got a great storyline for the next episode of the Bold and the Beautiful. This was the case in the infamous relationship between Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, where Letourneau became obsessed with Fualaau while he was in the second grade at the school she was teaching. Their relationship became sexual before his 13th birthday and Letourneau became pregnant with his child, one which was born in jail while she was serving her sentence for apparent 'statutory rape' with Fualaau.
Gender-wise, these relationships seem to be a tad less controversial, according to anonymous sources in Wikipedia (see above, Mary Kay Letourneau), than that if it were between a male teacher and much younger female student. Is this because our patriarchical society is paradoxically hardened towards those committing the offence (the male teacher to the teenage girl) and those who are victimised by it (the teenage boy by the female teacher)? Notice how Giesel only received six months jail, whereas most paedophiles receive about five years or more - doesn't this say something? And why are paedophiles socially defined as male? Aren't these women paedophiles too?
What disturbs me is that these things don't just happen in America as we'd all like to think, but they're also home-grown. Who can forget the case of Jeff Sinclair, English teacher from Baulkham Hills High and 33 years older than his young female student, Nicole Shackle, developing a relationship before later ‘shacking up’ (pun intended) with her a few years after? And more recently, Karen Ellis, a PE teacher who was convicted of having sex on six counts with teenage boys under the consensual age of 16? Then there’s the question of profit in this article on Ellis – ‘Ellis and her victim, former student Benjamin Dunbar, will appear on Channel 9's 60 Minutes tomorrow in a $40,000 deal. It is believed Ben will receive the fee but the Herald Sun believes police will monitor the arrangement to ensure Ellis does not profit’. Is it because the offender is a full-fledged adult and henceforth should know what is right and wrong? Lack of profit plus jail term equals punishment, I believe.
posted by Unknown @ 10:05 pm
3 Comments:
Hay Maggie!
Here's the most exciting comment ever!!! haha ;)
I went to Baulkham Hills High where the apparently infamous "Sinclair and Shackle affair" played out.
In recent news, it seems that Sinclair has to go back to court (or has gone) to defend a $28000 payout after getting depressed following an investigation into the.. well... affair.
I may have recalled the following incorrectly but I heard someone on the radio say that in other places, his behaviour would have been severely punished (jail? fine?) but instead all he got was a slap on the wrist.
Purely from opinion, I think all of it is ew and wrong. Apart from the age thing, the pedophile thing, the illegality (if that's a word) etc, it's also adultery and affects family/ies. Most of these teachers were married when their affairs happened.
But, back to GENDER, you make an interesting point. Comparing Sinclair and Shackle to Letourneau and Fualaau, Sinclair was pretty much demonised in the press, allegedly leading to his depression because he couldn't handle being known as a disgraced teacher. On the other hand, Letourneau and Fualaau were put on a pedestal by Entertainment Tonight who ran a series on the couple as they prepared to marry. They were praised for enduring Letourneau's jail time for statutory rape among other things, and still being in "love". Hm...
that's it for now Maggie!!
Wow! Really? That's so bizarre that you went there.. Were you there when the whole affair was played out?
Yeah, I read about Sinclair and his bid to defend his $28 000 payout. What a turd. Honestly, he destroyed his family, not to mention Shackle's relationship with her parents and he expects a payout for his apparent depression?
I don't know - it's a very complex issue laced in the traditional ideas of love and the modern ideas of professionalism ie. 'hi I'm your teacher, let's boink'. But hey, let's hope the law plays out properly and refuses his payout.
Maybe I'm looking at this wrong way, especially when you look at the issue of gay and lesbian relationships - perhaps Shackle and Sinclair are just like any normal couple? That said, it's difficult to ignore the circumstances under which they met, which almost completely illegitimises their relationship altogether..
A very complex issue indeed Maggie!
I found it interesting that you picked up on the fact that these cases have had a lot of media attention in the last few months - I've also been following media coverage of female teachers having affairs with male students. There was also another incident, reported by the Daily Telegraph on 13 December, where a female substitute teacher (Natalina D'Addario, 36) has been accused of having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy from a Melbourne school between May and July of this year.
I guess part of what makes the issue so complex in a case where an older female is accused of sexual relations with a young male (rather than the other way around) is that it is more difficult to have sex with a boy without their "consent" - consent is pretty much assumed if penetration is able to occur due to the fact that a male needs to be erect. And to make things even more complicated, males are generally considered to be able to defend themselves quite adequately against females.
Obviously there are still the important moral issues and questions to consider, due to the fact that the female is in a position of authority and has a 'duty of care' as a teacher. So the assumption of consent is not the only issue at hand here, as you discussed.
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