RSS FeedsUtah Mother Breaks Silence About Her Son’s Sexual Abuse By Female Teacher
July 29th 2009. — After years of silence, a Utah mother said its time to talk about the pain her entire family still endures after her 16-year-old son was sexually abused by a high school teacher in the Salt Lake Valley. The crime happened almost four years ago and her son is now 20-years-old, but she said he still suffers. He is not the same son. I feel like I grieve my son every day.
Through this ordeal, this mother one thing has become very clear to her: male sexual abuse victims do not get the support or empathy that female victims do. If he was a female, no one would say something mean. They would say That poor girl and tuck her under their wing.
Instead, this mother said her son has endured years of loneliness and criticism. After the teacher was arrested and the crime became public, her sons friends and fellow students at his Salt Lake County School ostracized the boy; girls wouldnt date him and parents warned their children to stay away from him because he was bad.
The boy, who was a jock and planned to go to college, is now doing nothing, according to his mother. She said, He was robbed of his childhood, robbed of everything.
After researching numbers from a variety of sources, 2News found that in the last five years, Utah has had fourteen cases of female teachers whove been convicted for sexual misconduct. California, Florida and Texas have the most cases in raw numbers. But given the number of students here, Utahs rate appears to be the highest in the country. Why? Nobody knows for sure.
Dr. Rick Hawks, a licensed psychologist in Weber County feels the number of cases here will continue to grow. Hawks interviews male and female sex offenders and their victims for the court system. He said while the reasons female teachers pursue students for sexual relationships vary, often they see fail to see their actions as criminal. When you hear them tell their story, its like they are 22-years-old: on their honeymoon, in love. Hawks said that although not all of these teachers fit the label of pedophile their behavior is certainly deviant and wrong.
Utah Office of Education attorney Carol Lear agrees. She stated that, It is always the teachers fault. Lear said often, these teachers will say the student was the aggressor or pursued the relationship, but in reality she says only one person is to blame. The teacher has an absolute responsibility to be the professional and walk away.
In the case of the 16-year -old boy, his mother said the teacher, who was then 30, did more than pursue her son. He was being stalked by her, she said. The mother said the teacher made numerous cell phone calls to her son and sent many messages over three months, urging him to meet with her. She carried on as if she was 16-years-old, she added, telling how the teacher would share her marital and family problems with the student.
Dr. Peter Byrne, who also works with sexual offenders, said technology, like cell phones are often help these offender teachers cross a dangerous line with students. Teachers might start texting a student innocently, then slowly the messages start becoming more personal and sexual and they start to cross boundaries slowly.
Many recent court cases reveal that these inappropriate teacher/student relationships developed with the help of e-mail or texting. And while both Byrne and Hawks said the pain and damage to victims – whether male or female – is great, there is a double standard. Often, courts hand out more severe sentences to male teachers while female teachers seem to get much lighter sentences. People dont think about males as victims of sexual crimes, said the mother of the 16 year-old.
The teacher who abused her son served 180 days in jail and two years probation. At her sentencing, attorneys on both sides said they didnt want the convicted teachers children to suffer for her crime. The mother of the abused teens response? What about my son?
Last week, a former Bountiful Jr. High teacher Linda Nef was sentenced to three years to life in prison for having a sexual relationship with a teen student. While this doesnt necessarily mean the trend is changing, perhaps people are waking up to the fact that whether victims are male or female, sexual abuse is a painful crime.
http://www.kutv.com/content/news/local/story/Mother-Breaks-Silence-About-Sons-Abuse/OPO-I_YA1k6vL0lWnUjpuQ.cspx
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