Female Teacher-Male Student Sex Scandals

Washington, DC (TLS). The state of South Carolina has been shell-shocked in recent weeks by two high-profile sex scandals involving female teachers/school officials and under-age male students. The first of these incidents involved Ware Shoals High School in the small town of Ware Shoals, S.C., where a cheerleader coach by the name of Jill Moore was charged with giving alcohol to minors, contributing to the delinquency of minors, and taking 16-year-old female students with her for sexual trysts at local motels with two National Guardsmen. The second incident occurred last week when a middle school teacher in Clinton, S.C. by the name of Allena Williams Ward was charged with sexual activity with 14 and 15-year-old-boys.

Both of these incidents made international news.

In addition, both of these incidents occurred in small, religiously-oriented rural towns in the South--something that is normally not expected in the Bible belt. The town of Clinton is home to the prestigious Presbyterian College, which is a small, liberal arts college affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Ware Shoals is even smaller, having at one time been a thriving textile mill village in the days when cotton was king in the South. Religion was the centerpiece of these small towns and villages, and to this day they continue to be strongholds of Christian evangelicalism and conservative Republican politics.

So what's going on here? Why the seemingly sudden rash of sexual scandals involving female teachers and their students?

The phenomenon is not unique to the South but is nation-wide. Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, news reports have increasingly focused upon high-profile cases of liaisons between female teachers and young male students. Several of these resulted in prison sentences for the teachers involved. At least two resulted in pregnancies. One of these cases involved not only a pregnancy but an eventual marriage when the teacher was released from prison and when the student became an adult.

Further, a shocking U.S. Department of Education study issued in June of 2004 stated that at least 20% of male students had reported either verbal or physical sexual misconduct by female teachers.

Several theories have been postulated as to the reasons for these occurrences. My own gut feeling is that the lax mores of modern society leave it vulnerable to these kinds of inappropriate, and sometimes criminal, behaviors. The waning influence of religion and moral values is certainly a core factor.

However, the problem is much more complicated than that. As a special report issued in 2005 by U.S.A. Today indicates, these troubling cases can be laid at the feet of mental and emotional instability, pathological insecurity. a terribly deficient self-image, personality disorders, as well as a family history of sexual, emotional, verbal, and physical abuse. Most of the female perpetrators were being treated for depression and anxiety at the time of their arrest.

It should be pointed out that the vast majority of women who receive treatment for depression and anxiety are NOT involved in sexual activity with minors. However, these two disorders when added to a personality/developmental disorder, plus a history of abuse, can add up to a dangerous mixture that leads unstable persons to pursue intimate encounters with under-age persons--persons who reflect the emotional age of the adult perpetrator.

Thus, a 35-year-old teacher who is involved with a 15 year old boy may actually be only 15 years-old in emotional terms. She never matured emotionally to the point that she can have satisfying sexual relations with other adults.

The Liberty Sphere wishes in no way to provide an excuse for any adult who initiates sexual liaisons with under-age persons. The explanations postulated above are merely attempts to explain and understand the bizarre.

For the complete text of the U.S.A. Today special report on this subject in 2005, click here:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-29-women-sex-crimes_x.htm