Word: teachers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...with other places. "It certainly seems more prevalent, although we can't say for sure if it's worse than other large states," says Michael Sinacore, the Hillsborough County assistant state attorney who in 2005 prosecuted one of Florida's most high-profile cases, that of Tampa middle-school teacher Debra Lafave, a blond siren who pleaded guilty to lewd and lascivious behavior after being charged with having sex with a 14-year-old boy. (In a controversial decision, a judge did not make her serve prison time.) "None of us can really say why at this point...
...student; Hernandez is estranged from her husband. Such problems certainly aren't excuses for pedophilia, but they can compel women like Lafave to seek out emotional comfort - or a feeling of control that they might not experience in relationships with adult men. (Read about the notorious Mary K. Letourneau teacher-student affair...
...This isn't an 'affair'; it's abuse, and we have to shift that paradigm," says Terri Miller, president of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation (SESAME) in Nevada. "We say, 'Bully for the boy and his conquest of the geometry teacher,' but that makes it harder for boys to vocalize their victimization." Indeed, studies by psychologists like Julie Hislop, author of the 2001 book Female Sex Offenders: What Therapists, Law Enforcement and Child Protective Services Need to Know, note that boys who are sexually abused by women often develop alcoholism, depression and their own sexual dysfunctions, including rape...
...experiencing an especially high number of such cases? Are those women, and for that matter, the hormonally charged boys they target, somehow egged on by the state's more sexually relaxed atmosphere, with its sultry climate and scantily clad beach culture? (California also has a high rate of teacher sexual misconduct.) Or are Floridians simply reporting more cases like Hernandez's? It is a crime in Florida, as in most states, not to report such cases, but perhaps the tabloid publicity of the Lafave case has prodded Sunshine State denizens to be more vigilant, to no longer be in denial...
...paradoxically, says Sinacore, it might also be engendering more cases. As potential female predators see more and more headlines about teachers like themselves bedding boys, it can seem like more acceptable behavior in their eyes - especially when they see that offenders like Lafave get relatively light sentences. (That might be changing, however: a Florida judge recently slapped a two-year prison term on a 28-year-old female teacher in Pensacola convicted of unlawful sexual activity with a 15-year-old male student...