OK For Teachers To Have Sex With Students?

Well, not exactly OK, and maybe such teachers are guilty of a lapse in professional judgement, but they should not be prosecuted--so says a British teachers union official.

A British teachers’ union representative has come under fire after claiming that teachers who engage in consensual sex with students over the age of 16 should not be prosecuted, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported Sunday.

Chris Keates, the general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said in an interview to be broadcast in the U.K. on Monday that teachers who have sex with pupils over the age of consent are guilty of a mere “error in professional judgment,” and should not be placed on the sex offenders register, the Mail reported.

“There is a real anomaly in the law that we are concerned about,” the Mail quoted Keates as saying. “That is that if a teacher has a relationship with a pupil at the school at which they teach—it could be an 18-year-old pupil—then that teacher can be prosecuted and can end up on the sex offenders register.”

Should I end with an anti-union comment, or a lamentation about how far the British have fallen? It's so hard to decide.