The other day I asked if other states had the problem of female teachers having sex with underage males and sure enough, it seems to be happening everywhere.
This an edited article from the May 30, 2009 Time magazine, telling us that Florida seems to have more problems with this phenomenon than other states. I'm kind of relieved to know that despite all of the local reports of this behavior this year Utah is not the female pervert-teacher capitol of the U.S.
The third item, and really most interesting, is a link to World Net Daily and their Big List of the cases of females who have been busted for sex with underage boys. I didn't count, but there must be a hundred or more, including some of the cases I've mentioned in my own state of Utah.
Time on the Florida cases (I edited this down for space):
Florida Epidemic: Teachers Sleeping with Students
By Tim Padgett / Miami Saturday, May. 30, 2009
Copyright © 2009 Time, Inc.
If you're the parent of a teenage boy in Florida, you probably muttered "Not again" while reading your morning newspaper this week. There on the front page was yet another case of an adult female teacher being arrested for admitting to having had sex with an underage male student. This time the alleged perp was Maria Guzman Hernandez, a 32-year-old instructor at the private Our Lady of Charity school in Hialeah; her victim was 15. But she just as well could have been the 34-year-old Jacksonville public-school science teacher arrested last month for allegedly having sex with a 14-year-old student, once in her SUV; the 32-year-old St. Petersburg teacher collared in March for allegedly "sexting" nude pictures of herself to an eighth-grade boy; or the 45-year-old teacher at a private Christian academy in South Daytona who was arrested days before for allegedly having sex with a boy from her class in various
Other female teachers in Florida have been booked for the same crime this year — and scores of others have been arrested or disciplined in the past few years for sexual misconduct with students, according to a recent investigation by the Orlando Sentinel, which noted the problem is rising in the state "among female educators in particular." A 2004 Education Department study found that about 10% of the nation's 50 million public-school students had experienced some kind of improper sexual attention from teachers and other school employees, and a 2007 Associated Press report indicated that men were involved almost 90% of the time.
But parents and prosecutors alike are nonetheless asking why the female version of pedagogue perversion seems more common on their peninsula compared with other places. "It certainly seems more prevalent, although we can't say for sure if it's worse than other large states," says Michael Sinacore, the Hillsborough County assistant state attorney. "None of us can really say why at this point."
After the principal at Our Lady of Charity (a private Catholic school that is not formally affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church) heard of the illicit relationship last week, she reported it to the state's Department of Children and Family Services. Police questioned Hernandez last weekend — after she returned from a trip to Disney World with the boy — and she made a taped confession, they say. She was charged with sexual battery on a minor, akin to statutory rape, but has not yet been arraigned.
One theory for the growing number of cases like these, says Sinacore, is what he calls "the more relaxed if not blurred boundary lines between teachers and students as teachers try to communicate with kids in this day and age." Today's kids, as the media have reported recently, are far less shy about innocent physical contact like hugging than their parents were as teens. That can be exploited by any male pervert overseeing a classroom. But it can also embolden predatory female teachers, whom experts say are often in emotionally needy states. "The trend with female offenders, more than males, is that they have emotional turmoil going on in their lives," says Sinacore.
It's no surprise that a Florida Congressman, U.S. Representative Adam Putnam, recently co-introduced a bill, the Student Protection Act, to set up a scholastic version of the national sex-offender database and prevent teachers like Lafave from getting classroom jobs in other districts or states. Whether or not the legislation passes, it's a sign of the emotional turmoil that women like her have wrought in their communities.
World Net Daily: The Big List
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