Saturday, April 07, 2012

You Knew This Was Going To Happen

I wrote about them before, and now comes the bell--this round is over:
A California student who left school, her family and her friends to live with her teacher boyfriend has ended the relationship after the teacher was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting another girl 14 years ago.
I would've thought that the statute of limitations would have run out before 14 years, but whatever.

Update, 4/8/12: The legislature might make such actions a felony in the future:
But in the future, the bill would create a felony for any public school employee who begins a sexual relationship or has "excess and inappropriate communication" with a student of any age. The bill's inclusion of inappropriate communication, described in broad terms, is meant to deter teachers from starting down a path that could lead to an intimate relationship, Olsen said.

AB 1861 also would expel the school employee from the public pension system, though it would return employee retirement contributions back to the worker.

Olsen said she wanted to impose a felony charge in such cases because as many as 23 other states have similar penalties for teachers in the same circumstance as Hooker.

The bill would not pertain to college instructors, and it only applies to teachers and students at the same K-12 public school.
Everything about this law seems reasonable to me except for the pension part. That seems excessive to me.

6 comments:

Mike Thiac said...

Don't know the legal age of consent in CA but for more serious crimes like murder and rape their is normally no statue of limitations"

Darren said...

I know there's no statute of limitations on murder, I didn't know there wouldn't be one for rape or sexual assault.

Anonymous said...

I wonder what legally compelling evidence was offered in the 14 year-old case. There is no mention of a 13-14 year old child. If it's no more substantive then an accusation, that's disturbing.

And no teacher would be safe. Ever.

Anonymous said...

If I understand the text of the proposed law:

"For purposes of this section, 'excess and inappropriate
communication' means any communication by a school employee to a pupil, regardless of who initiated the communication, that may be viewed as derogatory, sexual, lewd, threatening, harassing, discriminatory, or suggestive in nature."

Then an e-mail from a student with an ethnic joke, which the teacher replied to with "This is inappropriate", could cost the teacher his/her job and pension. The reply e-mail contained the ethnic joke, it doesn't matter who initiated the communication and it can clearly be viewed as "derogatory".

I'm not a teacher, but this seems not good.

Seriously, does this sort of "teacher having sex with over-18 age student" thing happen enough that we need a new law? It is already illegal with the under-18s ...

-Mark Roulo

Mike Thiac said...

From a website

The prosecution of an aggravated rape may be commenced at any time. The prosecution of a rape that is not aggravated must commence within six years after its commission.

I would assume under age is aggravated by it's definition. Not surprising...until 1960 rape was a capital offense in many states. The Supreme Court declared it "cruel and unusual" in a case them.

Darren said...

Mark, I wouldn't know, that's not my cup of tea at all.