DECATUR, Ala. – An Alabama teacher accused of having sex with two of her students succeeded in having her charges thrown out on constitutional grounds, Morgan County Circuit Judge Glenn Thompson confirmed Thursday.
Carrie Witt was facing potential prison time for allegedly having sex with two students between 16 and 19 years old while she taught at Decatur High School.
I had assumed that this law for consent only applied to teachers with direct authority over a student. It seems I was wrong. I can understand a law making sex illegal for any adult directly in authority in a high school setting. But if the adult is not a direct teacher or administrator over the student and otherwise sex with the student would have been legal, then this teacher should not have been charged. I have also heard of teachers being charged for having sex with their students that were over 18. Sometimes sex between adults is considered inappropriate (like with your college prof. or boss), but it should not become a crime. Sometimes our bad judgements should just become one of life’s many lessons and not make someone a lifetime criminal.
Here’s a conflicting 2010 ruling by Washington State Supreme Court.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/high-court-teachers-cant-have-sex-with-students-even-an-18-year-old/
Here’s another conflicting 2014 ruling by the NJ State Appellate Division.
http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2015/07/appeals_court_reinstates_charge_against_teacher_ac.html
And another:
A former Ohio substitute teacher was sentenced in 2017 to two years in prison after admitting Monday she had sex with an 18-year-old students;
http://people.com/crime/ohio-teacher-sex-student-jessica-storer/
Maybe these conflicting rulings should be settled by SCOTUS
Let me clarify my statement: when I said “I can understand a law making sex illegal for any adult directly in authority in a high school setting”. I actually meant that perhaps the teacher should be fired or lose their teaching credentials (especially if it is prohibited in their employment contract), but in no way do I think the teacher should be prosecuted in a criminal court for sex that would otherwise be legal had it not been a teacher in authority over the student.
That just goes to prove how far we’ve gone down the path in the war on sex. The age of consent in Alabama is 16 for crying out loud. Good to see that woman’s free.
So people think it is only dirty old men who take sexual advantage of youth. How many men do you see here?
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/notorious-teacher-sex-scandals/?ftag=ACQb72972c&vndid=00c2d05b30268f6b389739e35261314467
Because the original, 1980s, hysteria was propagated by an unlikely alliance of religious fanatics and the Dworkin/MacKinnon branch of gender feminism, the eventual addition of women, themselves, as “predators” (they were running out of men by that point) was undoubtedly more of a cognitive hurdle for many (but not all) of the feminists than it was for the religious conservatives (especially the women) whose beliefs were inflected rather differently than the feminist pressure groups. Ultimately, however, they all more-or-less despise human sexuality not their own while maintaining sharply distinct views on homosexuality and gender roles.
I think what joins these groups is the idea of sexual exceptionalism. By that I mean that sex takes on a sacramental quality, way above in importance to that of other bodily desires. Sex as looked at by these people if done by the right people in the right way at the right time, in the right surrounding and with the right approvals, is something that sanctifies your life way above what it actually does, or if not done in the right way, then you are scarred forever.
It is no wonder that the penal system is so involved in sex regulation. It is the social institution that is most comfortable with and equipped to implement this binary view of male or female, black or white, good or evil, criminal or saint, child or adult. These distinctions don’t often play out so very clear cut in real life, but don’t tell anyone that today or they will call you strange at best or at worse a monster.
I am glad for her out come , I hope its over , maybe she should run for president 🙂
Any victory for someone wrongfully accuse of a sex crime is highly valuable but the gender question does hang in the air…What if it was a male teacher would it had been handled differently?