Court OKs sex between teachers, 18-year-olds

Court OKs sex between teachers, 18-year-olds

www.msnbc.msn.com

SEATTLE - Washington state law does not bar teachers from having consensual sex with 18-year-old students, an appeals court ruled Tuesday in dismissing a case against a former high school choir teacher

(visit the link for the full news article)

If I was a high school or College teacher and desired young adults, WA. State would be the place to teach.

Something is wrong with this.

Maybe school's policies would deter this behavior, but the law insists that it's OK to seduce your students if they are at least 18 years of age.

I suppose you could lose your job by administration decision, but this may now lead to more suits against schools who penalize teachers for intimate relations between "Consenting adults".

What's next? Cogressional aids?

www.msnbc.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Allow have sex with an 18 year old student, yet you get fired for having sex with an 18 year old student. Weird.

so the law decides if 2 consenting adults can have sex ?.. has the law no murders or rapists to jail?

reply to post by fatdad


I always figured it was more of a policy issue than a legal one. It's inappropriate for educators to mess with their students just as it's inappropriate for employers to mess with employees.

Though, High School seniors even at 18 are not honestly considered adults by the schools administration. The 18 year olds themselves are probably the only ones who think they are adults. The parents dont, the teachers dont, the administration doesnt.

Yeah well Washington State can bite me. This is really an ethics issue. A teacher at an elementary school down the road had two children by a student before any body noticed. It was all over the news-but I can't even find a link. That's another thing about washington. Media and news just suddenly *disappears*. Now 5 years later I have to wonder if it was my town, or just occurring at the same time as something similar in my town/region. grrr. Ah...here it is. Teacher and student have baby WA

I suspect someone in IT.
This place is under cover pervert central. There is some good folks here too.

I am not surprised at all that a judge here would take this angle on the law. It may be the correct angle, and yet, this is an institution and an institutionary installment that children are bound to preschool to adulthood. There should be some sense of continuity.

Not to get off topic. I found this page here: Teacher Crimes dot Net

[edit on 14-1-2009 by HugmyRek]

[edit on 14-1-2009 by HugmyRek]

Consensual sex between 18-year-old students and teachers is an unethical act that should be penalized by the school; suggesting federal penalization of an act that is legal in any other case would be silly. Most universities within the United States deal with student-teacher relations this way, though admittedly some have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Oh come on, why so intolerant and ignorant?
The teacher wasnt seducing the 18 year old, she wasnt taking advantage of him just for sexual desire. One cannot choose where love is falling, and the court did notice that.

Originally posted by imd12c4funn
If I was a high school or College teacher and desired young adults, WA. State would be the place to teach.

Something is wrong with this.

Did you bother reading the entire article?

The state's code of professional conduct for teachers still prohibits any sexual advance toward or contact with pupils, whatever their age, and teachers can be fired for it.

The headline of the article is misleading. The Court did not okay teachers having sex with their 18-year-old students. State policy regarding this still stands. The court threw out charges of sexual-misconduct with a minor, since the alledged victim was not a minor.

A three-judge panel of the Washington Court of Appeals unanimously agreed that the case should be dismissed. While the law was written vaguely, a review of legislative history shows that lawmakers only intended to criminalize contact between teachers and 16- or 17-year-old students — not those over 18, the court said.

"The name of the statute is 'sexual misconduct with a minor,'" said Hirschfelder's attorney, Rob Hill, stressing that the state recognizes that an 18-year-old is no longer a minor.

Well that's the thing, because then you got teachers picking and choosing and plotting and waiting on a child to grow up so they can reap the crop. Talk about distracting. I just find it in very bad character. Have people no self control?

Your tax dollars at work. I wonder if this has anything to do with the senior year drop out rate?


[edit on 14-1-2009 by HugmyRek]

reply to post by SaviorComplex

they threw out the charge..

Ok, I'm clear. It makes sense to throw out a badly chosen charge. Will new or more appropriately labelled charges follow, I wonder.

For instance, my recently turned adult child is still deemed viable for social services due to his ongoing enrollment in mandatory education. It is a gray area. A gray area that is used all the time-by the government to ensure that late bloomers get their education before being thrust into the work force. They are still recieving social services. Why wouldn't they still recieve protection from teacher advances?

I'd love to find the legislation/law about why this is so. The parents or prosecutor (or whoever is 'bringing it' could still have a case under a different header.

Social security still goes to 18 year olds-in school.
Medical care still goes to 18 year olds in school

I imagine it is because of the parent's neccesary and continued role. Did the student live under a guardian's roof and was enrolled in school?

These things are based on a lingering childhood. Why would not sex with teachers while in the gray area apply much the same? I mean.... it is our structure that provides the gray area of the lingering childhood with federally funded services-indicating the 18 year old as still a child underwinged under the care of the administration. It is an 'assumption of minor status' But not here?

What if it was a consenting disabled student aged 23?


[edit on 14-1-2009 by HugmyRek]

Boy do these people that worry about sex between teachers and students have any idea what a college campus somtimes resembles?

Why is it people always want to punish or penalize others for having sex? You make massive assumptions about their relationship that in fact you know nothing about. Ive known just as many sexually predatory teenagers as i have adults. There has been no study showing that sex with someone is younger is harmful, or that sex with an older person is harmful to minors. Through almost the sum total of human history older people have hooked up with younger people, and now we would label all our forefathers and ancestors sick perverts. If some person, a VICTIM, cries foul, THEN you can move in to protect them, but in the meantime, these busybody laws forcing 17yo who have sex with their 15yo girlfriends to spend prison time similar to a violent rapist destroy many more lives than they benefit.

Originally posted by pexx421
Why is it people always want to punish or penalize others for having sex?

The point here is not that they had sex. If the 18 year-old had been a student at another school, there would be little problem here. However, the student in question was the teacher's student. That is a violation of the student-teacher relationship, and open to all sorts of unethical shenanigans.

Ok... so the court decided that the student wasn't a minor, seeing as how he was 18. 18 is the minimum age of consent in most states.
So that makes sense.
The article is misleadingly tilted to get a reaction (seeing the responses so far, it's pretty clear that it worked well. )
Policy states it shouldn't happen, but the law is clear on how it should be handled.

it might be OPEN to all sorts of unethical shenanigans, however that doesnt mean that every occurance IS unethical. The basis of our law is "innocent until proven guilty" however we prosecute all untraditional relationships as "guilty until proven innocent".

This has already been posted.