If you had to guess, how often would you say teachers were engaging in inappropriate sexual activity with their students? Would you guess three or four times a year? Or, would you even go higher? Although the mainstream media is eerily quiet about the phenomenon, the truth is that sex between teachers and students is outrageously common.
In fact, it is an epidemic.
Steve Gunn, editor-in-chief of EAG News, writes that every day “there are at least three or four new reports of teachers being arrested or sentenced for having sexual relations with students.”
In February, Gunn observed,
“If you count on the mainstream media for most of your information, you might be under the mistaken impression that teacher sexual abuse of students is nothing more than an occasional problem.”
Putting Gunn’s observation to the test, I compiled a sickening amount of news stories recording teachers engaging in sexual activity with their students from just this past week.
The question begs to be asked: How is it possible that Americans are in the dark about this epidemic?
The list, posted at Tavern Keepers, includes the story of two school employees (aged 44 and 56) having sex with the same 15-year-old girl (now 16 and four months pregnant with her teacher’s child), a 32-year-old teacher who was hired by an elementary school even though he was already charged with “more than two dozen felony counts including 13 counts of lewd acts on a child, eight counts of kidnapping, forcible oral copulation, forcible sodomy on a child, sending lewd material to a minor online and dissuading a witness,” and a 41-year-old teacher who allegedly had sex with several middle school students.” She has been “charged with second-degree rape, second-degree sexual abuse and second-degree sodomy of a student.”
Those are three of the dozens of cases.
From just this week.
Although the heinous stories do not seem to make it past the local media, they are rampant. In many cases, the families are devastated at the light sentences these predators receive, and that is if the perpetrators even get jail time. In many other cases, school officials are accused of not being vigilant in following up on complaints that the abuse is happening in the first place.
Has this problem always existed? Has it gotten worse in previous years?
Gunn notes that “unfortunately nobody seems to be keeping national statistics” and he laments, “Why isn’t this issue all over the news?”
EAG News created their own logo (pictured) and has been tagging stories, which can be seen here. Based on the horrendous list that I compiled today, it would be practically impossible to document all of these stories without a staff and resources based on the sheer volume of instances.
It is clearly past time that Americans, particularly parents, wake up to this epidemic and lobby to put an end to the abuse.
