Can a 16 year old girl "groom" a 44 year old teacher?

osarusan wrote: »

Do you not see any middle sgorund between the above extreme and this:

Not at my age, no. Sorry!

AudreyHepburn wrote: »

No our points are that the girl is not in fact a child and she knew what she was doing.

Does this absolve the teacher of his actions? Of course not nor has anyone said otherwise.

All we've said the that the girl is not an innocent little child who has been hurt by the big bad man. She had her part to play to and acknowledging that does not lessen the teacher's actions at all.

Well alright, I'll buy that - in part!

If the title of this thread isn't a towering monument to describing an adult who cannot take responsibility I don't know what is

Is he a pervert ,no
Is he a scum bag ,no
Was he stupid ,yes very
Hard to know what was going through his mind his wife had suffered a miscarriage not an excuse but its likely he had a laspe of moral judgement ,
What's worse to me he's lost his job and will never teach again and his wife has been put on leave by her job ,
Meanwhile the girl involved will probably get to sell her story to a tabloid in a year or 2 giving an all together different account

I’m reminded of something that happened to me many years ago. My flatmate was a care worker in a house shared by people with mild intellectual disabilities next door. She brought them in one day as she was passing to say hello. We were all young – 19 or 20 or so.

Later that week, my flatmate encountered one of those men in our hallway and he proceeded to grab her, wrestle her to the ground, tried to kiss her and groped her breasts. Luckily his absence had been quickly spotted and the screams alerted his carers before he could continue.

So let’s pretend she was as willing as he was to have sex in the above scenario.

While he had normal hormonal urges like any man, understood sex education and how sex happened, if my flatmate had decided to have sex with him, even though he would have fully grasped what was likely to happen, and he would have been willing, and thoroughly enjoyed himself, it would have still been wrong.

The law would hold the view that he was not deemed capable of consent. And if a judge had claimed that the care worker was groomed by the client, and was partly to blame, I think most of us would find those comments quite distasteful and unnecessary.

Gatling wrote: »

Is he a scum bag ,no

Disagree with you there. His wife suffered a miscarriage and he responded to that by shagging a 16 year old entrusted to his care.

Any single shred of 'well, maybe it's understandable' I may have had vanished when I read

Jurors heard that he had told the teenager their relationship was “written in
the stars”. He had shown her a condom he had brought into school and told her he
would use it when she became too “irresistible”, the prosecution told the court.

He didn't have an unfortunate lapse of judgement, he planned and prepared for the affair and took advantage of a teenager's crush on him.

Gatling wrote: »

Is he a pervert ,no
Is he a scum bag ,no
Was he stupid ,yes very
Hard to know what was going through his mind his wife had suffered a miscarriage not an excuse but its likely he had a laspe of moral judgement ,
What's worse to me he's lost his job and will never teach again and his wife has been put on leave by her job ,
Meanwhile the girl involved will probably get to sell her story to a tabloid in a year or 2 giving an all together different account

1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. If every partner went off the rails at a miscarriage, we'd see a lot more action before the courts. Its a pathetic excuse.

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

I asked should 16 y/o's be able to behave this way without statutory punishment.

Statutory punishment for what, exactly?

kylith wrote: »

He didn't have an unfortunate lapse of judgement, he planned and prepared for the affair and took advantage of a teenager's crush on him.

To be honest, for me, notwithstanding the 'grooming' comment, which I think the judge might have meant to be interpreted differently, her comments about him giving in to a moment of temptation seem WAY off to me, given the comments and actions testified to by the girl (the guy has insisted he is innocent and is now appealing).

Comments about how their relationship was written in the stars.....showing her a condom...suggest it was not just a momentary lapse of judgement.

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

But I don't think it's right either that his life is destroyed (although the punishment is if anything lenient on him) when the instigator, as per the judge, gets to walk away free on this outdated idealistic notion that 16 y/o's today can not be deeply cynical, manipulative and devious and know exactly what they were doing. There were two or three types like that in my class that showed more maturity than some adults.

16 year olds can indeed be cynical, manipulative and devious. But none of that is a crime. And none of that absolves the teacher from the basic requirement that he be on guard for such manipulation.

As a teacher he should have been very aware that no matter what manipulation there was, the very act of sleeping with a 16 year old student of his was illegal. On that point he has no defense and nobody to blame but himself.

It is only on the aspect of sentencing that the surrounding circumstances have a bearing, not on the guilt.

Neyite wrote: »

She didnt break the law. She was not the one on trial. Nobody is saying she was all sweet and innocent, but the fact remains that it should be irrelevant how she conducted herself given that she was a minor in the eyes of the law.

If you left your house unlocked and got burgled, do you think that the thief should get let off because you left your door unlocked? You may have been an idiot, or not thinking straight, or distracted when leaving the house, but you are still the victim of a crime, and you still deserve that crime to be punished.

In hindsight, you'd kick yourself for not thinking straight that morning, but you don't deserve the judge to tell the thief that they were just at a low point in their life, that you took advantage of that, that you appear to be a manipulative and deceitful person anyway, and that you somehow deserved to be burgled. You made a mistake, but that does not mean that the person who took advantage of your vulnerability at the time should get to blame you.

That's not quite the same though.

A better analogy would be if I took some-one's life and was up in court for it. Obviously that person is a victim but one of the big questions that would have to be asked would be what led me to do it the first place.

Did the person attack me? Did they attack some-one I love? Did they try to illegally gain entry to or damage my property? Did they threaten me? Was there a history between us?

None of these scenarios would absolve me of the fact that I killed a person nor do they mean I should not face consequences for my actions.

But they are vitally important mitigating circumstances which need to be taken into account because they make the difference between me being labeled a murderer for the rest of my life or the incident going down as an act of self defense or an act in defense of some-one else.

gozunda wrote: »

If you say that she is not a "child" and the law says she is not an adult - then exactly what category is she?

I don't belive anyone here has implied that " the girl is not an innocent little child who has been hurt by the big bad man". That is simply hyperbole.

What is clear that the responsible person in this situation was an adult, a teacher, a person with a duty of care towards his pupils. He grossly abused his position. I really hope his wife finds someone more suited to being a father.

Of course he abused his position, no-one is saying otherwise.

But can you honestly tell me that the girl involved does not apportion some of the blame? That she did not know what she was doing?

I'm not at all saying she should be thrown in jail, but she does need to face the consequences of what she did.

I feel very sorry for the girl in this case. She has basically been publicly accused of grooming and stalking at the age of 16, and some perspective on the impact this could have on her would be good. This is a girl who had never had sex before this teacher took her virginity in a cupboard. She had troubles at home. She became infatuated with a teacher. That's not a crime.

Imagine the intensity of her feelings for him - awkward teenager making a complete fool of herself among her friends as she tracked the teacher's every move and lusted after him in class. That is a girl who needs help (*), not being taken up on her fantasy by a grown man who started imagining that sex with a 16 year old was the answer to his problems. Whatever his emotional state, he can't have not known that it was totally against the law for a good reason. Adults are supposed to know better.

* Help to understand that it's not appropriate to pursue a teacher, putting him in such an awkward position. I assume they teach this in teacher school.