Is this the face of a sexual predator? Or is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
If this is what a sexual predator looks like, are you more or less likely to be outraged when you hear about high school teachers molesting high school students? Surely, it matters.
Several points pop off the page. We as a nation have decided that the law should not recognize any difference between men and women. Thus, a man molesting a female child is equivalent to a female molesting a male child. Moreover, we have decided that the student/teacher power imbalance makes any sexual activities between the two a crime… even if they were completely consensual. Next, we have defined the age of consent as 18. This number is more or less arbitrary. Many nations around the world define the age of sexual consent a few years younger.
The picture belongs to Alaina Ferguson, formerly a high school math teacher in Plano, Texas. She did not, as we read, pursue a high school student in order to have sex with him. She responded to an overture he made on a math test.
Anyway, now she is a registered sex offender and will spend the equivalent of four months in jail.
The New York Post reports:
A former high school teacher who admitted having sex with a 16-year-old student on a park bench and sending him steamy selfies was sentenced Thursday to 10 years of probation.
Alaina Ferguson, 25, was also fined $800 and sentenced to 120 days in jail – to be served two weeks per year over several years. She must also perform 150 hours of community service and register as a sex offender for 10 years after pleading guilty to charges of an improper relationship between a teacher and a student and indecency with a child by exposure, the Dallas Morning News reports.
Ferguson, a former algebra teacher at Plano Senior High School, was arrested in late 2016 after she and the teen started a relationship at the beginning of the school year after he wrote his Snapchat handle on a test and gave it to Ferguson, according to an arrest warrant obtained by The Post.
Apparently, high school has changed since my day. It would have been inconceivable for a high student to make a pass at an attractive teacher in the old days. One suspects that the boy in question had some indications that his overture would be accepted. One suspects that young Alaina had sent out some subtle signals to him.
What happened after they met? They had sex on a park bench. Excuse me. In public, in the open… what exactly were they doing? We don’t know. Then they had sex in his pickup truck: astroturf, anyone. But, they also had sex in Alaina’s fiance’s apartment, while he was out of town hunting.
Take that one in for a second. Young Alaina was engaged to be married. What is it with young women today that they feel compelled to grab for all the sex they can get, whenever, wherever, with whomever. It's not as though she was suffering from lack of sexual attention. One suspects that she is no longer engaged.
Shortly afterward, Ferguson met up with the teen in Lewisville, where they had sex on a park bench, according to an affidavit. They also had sex in the back of the teen’s pickup truck after a football game and in her fiancé’s apartment while he was out of town on a hunting trip.
And, of course, just to make it easy to prosecute her case, she sent along some nude photos of herself.
Ferguson, who also exchanged nude photos with the teen and supplied him alcohol during their two-month relationship, later called off her engagement. She resigned just two months after starting her job in August 2016, school officials said.
Naturally, the traumatized teen bragged about it all to his friends. Someone overheard it and reported them.
Ferguson told the victim that she knew their relationship was “not the right thing to do, but it felt right at the time,” according the arrest warrant.
Ferguson’s encounters with the teen also typically involved a game of beer pong. Other students at the school learned of her relationship with the teen after he started boasting about the illicit meetings.
“I heard the kid was just talking about it to his friends, and I guess a teacher or a student overheard it,” senior Andy Flores told KTVT. “She’s kind of good looking … so she’s attractive.”
One parent is quoted as saying that he is concerned to hear what was going on at the school:
One parent of a student at the school said he was shocked after learning of Ferguson’s arrest.
“That’s very concerning to hear you’re sending your child somewhere you think is safe,” parent James Bishop told KDFW. “You want them to learn and get a good education but not that kind.”
Safe? Do you believe that the boy was traumatized by the sex or by the fact that his verbal indiscretion caused his favorite algebra teacher to be fired, convicted and humiliated?
His real trauma is going to come later, it could be years or decades. But it will come. It will be when he realizes that his youthful indiscretion destroyed someone's life. That guilt will eat at him and it won't matter that it's the states doing
ReplyDeleteIt's been a long time since I was in high school, and my yearbooks are in storage, but I can't remember any young, attractive teachers. Now I did have an English teacher in 9th grade who'd been taught by my 7th-grade English teacher, but I don't remember her very well, these many years later.
ReplyDeleteBack in the hell raisin 70's there was a high school teacher dating/marrying a senior where I went to school. Another student friend of mine got into, erm, co-existed with a beautiful 24 year old school secretary and made no effort to hide it. We had a small contingent of younger hot teachers who had no problem getting a "rise" from the boy side of the student body....
ReplyDeleteSam L,
ReplyDeleteThere must have been a thing with English teachers. I had one that was very attractive and did not have a problems with being sexually enticing? 1960 One of the few classes I paid a bit of attention.
Whitney is right. I would add that the fact of being used possibly will lead to using themselves. It is the sex that matters and not the person. This is not a zero sum game.
dtrumpet
I know from my past experience as a psych tech working evenings while I was going to Seminary, that the "Victims" sometimes provoke these sexual events knowingly and enthusiatically. Not all the time by any means but sometimes. Often then, they are incredibly naive about what was going to happen to them. There are more than a few Lolita's out there including young Don Juans. Were much of this Teacher/pupil sex thing legalized you would see much more of it. Being 67, I am stunned by all this. I never heard of anything like this as a kid growing up. My own opinion is this reflects a stunning change in values, sexually. I don't think this will improve. My guess is, at some point, most of the constraints will fade away. I hope I'm wrong. But kids are growing up watching sex tapes of famous people and hearing the exploits of music icons, sometimes on film and they are envious. There is alot of social conditioning going on that the public is allowing that never would have happened 30 years ago. But out of this I do have a question for you. Is this actually something new or is it just becoming more visible? I know for a fact that the prior generation engaged in quite a bit of hanky panky behind closed doors that was never spoken of.
ReplyDeleteI think it's new. I could be wrong, but when I was growing up female high school teachers were not hooking up with underage boys. True, there were college teachers of both sexes who had affairs with students... most often male professors with female students... but that normally occurred after courses had ended. In the old days, girls had separate dorms and strict rules about when they had to be in their dorm rooms. Clearly, that restricted the possibilities for bad behavior.
ReplyDeletedtrumpet, all I remember of my 9th grade teacher was that she was young, but not if she was or was not attractive. I vass a shy boy.
ReplyDelete