Ashley Elizabeth Zehnder, Pasadena, Texas (arrested Oct 2014)

Had to remove the link, the vocabulary & allusions are not acceptable here.

I doubt there is any real rise in teacher sex abuse cases. They've been with us all along.

Direct communications via email & cell phones must surely help -- little chance that you'll have to talk to Mom & Dad before you get through to junior.

One of my favorite high school teachers had to leave his previous teaching job after he married an 18-year-old senior. That was in 1969 in central Idaho. He landed a couple hundred miles north in the same state, no licensing issues, not a big deal as long he was elsewhere. By today standards he'd likely have ended up in the old territorial prison, a pretty bleak place (I've toured it a couple times).

When I first started this site > 3 years ago, I was able to keep up with everything. Three scandals (Citadel, Penn State & Miramonte) put an end to that -- reporting mushroomed.

 

Some very thought provoking quotes from a great article on how young HS teachers deal with the temptations.

Students still pry about her personal life, asking: "Who is your boyfriend?" and "What did you do this weekend?" Jones often has to remind them she's a teacher, not a friend."When you get too close to them, or develop too close a friendship," she said, "kids take advantage of that. The flirtatious boys, however, don't give up."

Perhaps other school districts can follow L.A.'s lead in making new young teachers fully aware of how to conduct themselves in a professional manner but yet also fully utilize the "leverage" that their youth provides.

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jul/03/local/me-young3

 

Same here. The very first high school teacher I ever had (this goes back to 1974) was a young male teacher in his early 20's. It was his first job out of college. He taught freshmen social studies and coached on several sports teams. In my junior year it became known that he was in a relationship with a junior female. To be quite honest, she was the most attractive girl in our graduating class. It's my understanding they were "secretly" living together several months before she graduated high school, moving in with him shortly after her 18th b-day.....they even drove to school together towards the end of that school year. Everybody knew about it, students and faculty, but no action was taken. So long as they remained discrete, everyone just stayed politely quiet about it. Different times I guess....but yeah, he too would have found himself behind bars had he done the same thing in this day and age.

My most vivid memory of this teacher was when he taught me drivers training....back then, the school provided that service and had a car dedicated for student training. The teacher would take 3 students for an hour after school and we would take turns driving, the teacher was always in the front passenger seat. What I remember was sitting in the back seat and noticing that this guy would turn his head and look at each and every high school girl we passed as they were walking home. Never once did he turn his head to so much as glance at any males, but every single female got his attention. And if the girl was pretty, he would stare, turning his head and looking back over his shoulder at her as we passed. I brought it up to the other two students, and once I pointed it out they noticed it as well. For the rest of that week (it was a week long class) we all watched his head turning for each high school girl we passed, and we'd laugh about it afterwards. Looking back on it now, it's kind of creepy when viewed in the context of his hooking up with a 16/17 year old less than 6 months later.

BTW - he married the girl, they are still married, and he retired from teaching back in 2008. Taught 34 years all at the same high school. Even if things turns out OK in the end, it wasn't right. I often wonder what he thinks about when he reads about teachers going to jail for doing exactly what he did. I wonder how he'd feel if a high school teacher tried to hook up with his teenage daughter...assuming he had one.