Throughout the course of your life, you will encounter many different types of people, foster many different types of relationships and experience the harsh reality of your trust being tainted. The most atrocious of these potential experiences being sexual exploitation of students in the school system. According to Educator Sexual Misconduct: New Trends and Liability, “nearly 10 percent of students in the United States are victims of sexual misconduct at some time in their school careers.”While the misconduct is in the court of the professional, many students hold the fear of retribution if caught in such a relationship. Teachers in this position manipulate the students into fearing punishment if they reveal the forbidden relationship, thus ensuring their own reputation and their own careers. In “Boundary Issues: Teacher-Student Relationships,” P. Rutter states that, “The forbidden zone always exists. between a teacher and a student and because of the greater power of the professional, the [student] is unable to give truly informed consent.” As a result, he reveals to students who believe they are in a consensual relationship, that they, in fact, are not capable of giving consent.
On such occasions that the student is aware of the situation and condones it nonetheless, a negative portrait is not depicted of the student, but of the teacher involved. From minor to major misconduct, a child, regardless of their potential maturity, adheres to the adult’s display of the rules. If the adult continues making even jokes of a sexual manner, the child believes, without question, that though what they are involved in is frowned upon, it isn’t “that bad.”
When someone “becomes intimately involved with [their] mentor.that person [becomes] too much like their [parent] for their own. good.” G. Sheehy’s statement from the aforementioned article illustrates that post-abuse, the student may view the abuser in such a close relation to themselves, that it is nearly impossible to see the impurity in them. For the victim to label the person as an abuser, they must first admit to themselves, that they were abused. This admittance is something many abuse-victims attempt to ignore, for the reality of it is often too much to bear.
Regardless of the “consensual” status of the relationship, or the degree of the violation, whether it be sexual words or actions, it is always “the responsibility of the [more powerful party] to control the necessary boundary” (C. Jacobs).
Laura Valentin is a student at West Chester University.