For some reason, female teachers who cross the line and engage in sexual situations with students are frequently held in esteem by, one would hope, otherwise reasonable adults who have some "hot for teacher" fantasy and feel obliged to tell DU about it. This article points to the creepy incestuous overtones of these relationships and may be instructive to such posters.
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Middle- and high school students may look to their teachers as mentors or even friends. In rare but high-profile cases, experts say, the relationship may go too far, into the sexual realm.
However the situation unfolds, it is always the responsibility of the teacher to keep appropriate boundaries. "It's never the kid's fault," said New York psychologist Judith Alpert.
...The teacher-student relationship mirrors that of the parent and child in the sense of a large power difference between perpetrator and victim, making sexual acts between instructor and pupil related to incest, experts say.
In both situations, the younger person is dependent on the authority figure, said Clare Cosentino, a psychologist in New York. The person in power is unable to see the child's needs clearly and crosses established boundaries, she said.
But usually, the victims of incest are younger than those who are sexually abused by a teacher, Alpert said. If a parent is the perpetrator, the child is more trapped because the abuse occurs at home.
Moreover, there are often threats involved in incest that are not present in teacher-student relations. For example, a man may threaten to burn the house down if his daughter tells anyone about how he abuses her. Students, on the other hand, may simply be vulnerable to the attention of a teacher or even give in to sexual acts for the sake of better grades.
A phenomenon psychologists call transference occurs when people shift the feelings they had about parents to others, such as teachers. For instance, a male teacher may make a female student feel overpowered, just like a father figure, so she gives in, Alpert said.
Even if the student is perceived as flirtatious,"teachers should still keep their boundaries," Meiselman said...
Some, but not all, adults who abuse minors have sexual abuse in their own histories, Meiselman said. These people may have identified with their abusers and taken on characteristics of the person who abused them, she said.
A student who has had inappropriate relations with a teacher will need therapy, even if the relationship felt consensual to the young person, Cosentino said. The student should explore why he or she felt vulnerable to the attraction of the teacher.
"As much as it may not have been experienced as trauma, it's an abuse of power and crossing of a boundary, a loss of innocence," she said.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/12/teacher.student.sex.scandal/?hpt=Sbin
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