Feb 24, 2008 - "Female sex predators hard to understand" doesn't begin to explain why there’s a noticeable spike in the number of women arrested for sexually assaulting minors, according to this article by Sara McDonald.
tt- It is hard to say whether there really is a spike in the number of women arrested for having sex with minors because we can find no study on the numbers. No one collects the statistics.
Current news stories are not a reliable measure because many cases are never reported online so there is no means to gather and quantify the problem. You would think that those who license teachers would be able to give some idea of the scale, but several investigations demonstrate that state Education officials are often the very last to know - even after the educator is convicted and is serving time.
Studies that were collected by Charol Shakeshaft vary widely on the percentage of male vs. female sex offenders, even her own studies. See p25 Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature. However, female teachers are likely to be underreported.
Analysts speculate that female abusers might be underreported if the target is male, because males have been socialized to believe they should be flattered or appreciative of sexual interest from a female.That may be less true now than it was in her 2004 report. A lot of female educators are discovered through e-mail or instant messaging or just being caught in cars, vans, hotels or parks with students. Those are prosecutable cases that do not depend upon the testimony of the victims.
In any case, it still isn't an expected behavior, but maybe that's because our expectations of women are more idealized than it is for men. Or they were.
When Susan Lemery, 38, was arrested in 2002 for fondling and raping a 14-year-old boy, teachers at her school sent her a care package including cards from adults and children and artwork from her second grade students. The school principal visited the class to talk to the students about the case, asking them how it feels when they get accused on the playground of doing something they perhaps didn't do. Lemery was convicted by a jury on five of the six charges and narrowly escaped conviction for sexual contact with a second 14-year-old boy. She was sentenced to five years in prison. She only served three.
Tonya Hadden. served even less when she ran away to Las Vegas with a 15-year-old boy in 2002. (She was later sentenced to two years in California.) May 2002 Carolyn Ann Wilson, 40, pleaded guilty to having sex with a 16-year-old boy. She was the 10th school district employee accused of sexual misconduct in a little more than a year. She got probation.
