When confronted with the allegations, 36 year old Lawrence Foster, a public school teacher, confessed to kissing and fondling one of his 14 year-old social studies students after a school outing. Foster further acknowledges that, during the following three months, he had sex with her twice in his home while his wife was out of town. The student, feeling uncomfortable with the relationship, broke things off and confided in a school friend for support. The friend indirectly alerted the authorities.
Foster pleaded guilty in King County Superior Court to third degree child rape and the prosecuting attorney recommended that he serve six months in jail and undergo counseling for sexual deviancy.
Judge McCutcheon, however, didn't see things in so harsh a light. He reasoned that, since Foster had "lost his career, surrendered his teaching credentials and suffered severe financial consequences," all that was in order was one month of community service and counseling. A fourteen-month prison sentence would be suspended, meaning that Foster wouldn't serve any time behind bars as long as he kept his nose clean for the near future. In an attempt to force a justification for his lenience, the judge elevated Foster to war hero status and, indeed, posed him as the victim with the following statements: "He has in effect stepped on a land mine. He has caused enormous injury to himself already."
Unlike Judge McCutcheon, you don't feel sorry for Foster, do you? Perhaps only because I've tricked you, you feel disgust and outrage at a justice system that has such misguided pity on an admitted child molester. My trick? ... was simply to reverse the genders of some of those involved. All other details of the story are accurate as presented. Foster's first name is actually Laura, her 14 year-old sex-mate was a boy and it was her husband who left her home alone.
So now how do you feel? You don't feel the same sense of outrage, do you? Does the judge's verdict seem more acceptable now? Indeed, perhaps it seems too punitive in a culture where virtually every schoolboy past the age of puberty fantasizes about having sex with his attractive female teachers. But what if the teacher had been a gay male and the boy had "consented" to a homosexual relationship? How many of us want laws that say sex involving adults and minors is illegal unless it involves a male of at least 12 years of age and a female adult? A few years ago, one southwestern state lowered the age of sexual consent to 13 -- maybe that's the answer.
As a society we need to face up to the glaring discrepancy between how we value the virginity of our female children versus that of our male children. A few days before I wrote this, I read the results of a major survey about child abuse on the front page of a major metropolitan newspaper. Though the body of the article discussed figures for the abuse of both boys and girls, the headline referred only to the abuse of girls. The last paragraph of the article reported, for comparison, 1991 figures for 12-grade girls reporting sexual abuse. No mention was made of the corresponding boys' figures. If expertly presented media stories are reflections of the public's priorities, then what does that say about our society?
Are we capable of valuing the sexuality of our boys and girls equally? Can we see clear to holding female teachers (and other women) fully responsible for their actions of rape? Our current attitudes embody a most foolish inconsistency.
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