Much like pit bulls attacking toddlers, this happens, has happened, and continues to happen, and will continue to happen. I really struggle with the term "sexual abuse" and "sexual battery". Call me crazy but when it's adult female, student male, most dudes would never stop this from happening.
Alright, so, a pretty similar situation happened when I was high school with one of my friends -- a school at 1/9th the enrollment of X. Posting about this here to shed light on why this
is a big deal.
Whether or not "most dudes would never stop this from happening" is beside the point. We're not talking about men with much 'real life' experience coupled with a fully-developed brain; we're talking about teenagers who generally experience minimal consequence for doing silly stuff that they wouldn't do as adults. We're not talking about grown men who live in general independence, with generally easy mobility in-and-out of their house; we're talking about teenagers who live under the same roof as their parents and siblings.
I understand and relate to the point on impulsiveness, but what gets nary consideration in situations like this is
these kids lack the ability to see past their actions. You're only thinking with one head when you engage in it.
After the deed is done, the seal is broken and it's from there that your life (at least in the short-term) becomes a ball of yarn unraveling itself beyond your grasp. You experience fear, you experience regret; you experience shame, you experience anxiety. You're told that "no one can know about it", that "people will get hurt if they find out about us." If you come forward and talk about it with someone, that person loses their job and you end up holding the bag on scrutiny, constant questioning as to 'what really happened', and the looming fear of the worst case scenario that one day you may be called to finger (no pun intended) in court the person you played house with in front of a jury within your community.
In the meantime, as you desperately try to hold it together and not blow the secret, the bricks around you come tumbling down. Having to come up with excuses as to why your phone keeps ringing, why you keep walking around your neighborhood to talk on the phone when you normally talk on the phone inside your house; why you’re displaying unusual behavior like coming home later than usual and acting generally empty as well as lacking depth in your conversations with the folks.
Making matters worse is, in the process, your life as a kid now bears the burden of an adult’s misdeeds – one you inevitably have to interact with at school because
she’s your teacher. Everything leading up to that point of the bottle getting uncorked, you enjoy school and being there; once the Rubicon is crossed, you suddenly
dread going to school because the situation seems inescapable. And if someone DOES have to find out, it comes to mind real quick that you’re the one who wants to stay ahead of the situation so as not to have your side of the story be presented as a counterargument in the event the teacher says
you were the one who initiated it – not her.
Therein lies a significant chunk of the issue. The impact on the kid’s life, at least in the short-term, where something that seemed too good to be true in its advent ultimately rears its ugly head. The kid doesn’t understand the depth of the consequences that come out in the end; and those consequences are greater than any tangible punishment they could receive for doing anything else that a teenager would do on school property or toward a faculty member.
Hopefully that explains why this gets taken as seriously as it does. (And no, the teacher in my example wasn’t cute – which also makes it an even bigger
’L,’ reasons not the least of which being that social media/the internet sees that the doe you unceremoniously and regrettably bagged also happens to look like Grimace.)
