Teresa Englebach
The St. Louis area now has its own female teacher-on-male student statutory rape scandal:
Dunklin R-5 School District officials said today that a 14-year-old Senn-Thomas Middle student and a substitute teacher who has been accused of having a sexual relationship with him knew each other for several years before she became a substitute teacher.
The 21-year-old began working for the district in September 2006 and has taught at all three of its schools, including Herculaneum High School and Pevely Elementary, and she recently volunteered to become an assistant middle school track coach, according to a press release issued by the district.
In spite of the district’s name, it is in Jefferson County, not the bootheel’s Dunklin County.
Aside from the fact that teacher/student relationships of this sort are highly immoral and unethical, this one between 21-year old teacher and 14-year old student barely falls under Missouri’s statutory rape law.
The law states that statutory rape is defined as any human being having sex with a person under 14 years of age, or any person 21 or older having sex with anyone under age 17. This means that if this teacher were one year younger, that relationship would not be statutory rape under the relevant Missouri law, though it might violate other laws and school district policy.
Dey