Adults must be held accountable
Published 12:00 am Monday, March 4, 2002
"But it was ‘consensual’!" I am tired of hearing this worn-out, weak excuse for failure to accept moral responsibility for ones own misbehavior.
Monday, March 04, 2002
"But it was ‘consensual’!" I am tired of hearing this worn-out, weak excuse for failure to accept moral responsibility for ones own misbehavior. That an improper sexual affair followed some degree of agreement means no more than two people offended society’s moral standards or, sometimes, violated the law. "It takes two to tango," and certain other things.
Consider this not very hypothetical example, not confined to time or place.
A teacher spots a student who arouses sexual interest. The teacher ingratiates himself or herself to the student, whether of the same or other sex, with a view toward proposing or, if necessary, seducing to a sexual act. The teacher has several distinct advantages over the student, both positive and negative. The teacher can flatter with attention from an older person with status, or the teacher can intimate the student into compliance by implication of position. Often, both angles are worked.
Some students have initiated an affair with a teacher and ought to pay fully for the offense, but seldom do. Some teachers have become confronted with a terrible problem, but it is their professional responsibility to solve the problem. Teachers, whether professionally certified or others who have managed to insert themselves into a teaching position however unqualified to teach, are held accountable by an eminently necessary and just law. Our society has chosen wisely to place the burden of responsibility on adults for the welfare of children and youth. We rightly require those in positions of authority, formal or informal, to ensure vulnerable minors are not exploited.
One reason is that, generally, minors do not know their own minds or understand their own emotions and bodies. They are cared for and nurtured at home, and this responsibility is extended into the schools and other community organizations. Just as physicians, lawyers, and clergy sustain professional responsibility for their clients, teachers and community organization leaders sustain a similar responsibility. So, too, must they be held accountable for failure to fulfill this responsibility and, the more so, for violating it.
Teachers enjoy both momentum and leverage over students. From the very nature of the situation, they make their moves on something that is anything but an even playing field. Professional ethics enjoin them to treat students with respect, civility, and gentleness. The law requires it.
We hold teachers responsible not only for what they do in the classroom, but in all their relations with students as students and, even, personal relations while students. Moreover, a teacher-like relation exists in many settings of community organizations. Formal instruction is not the issue, and any position of adult authority requires this level of accountability.
Given these facts and realities, it cannot truly be said that a sexual affair – at least those initiated or encouraged by the adult – is consensual.
The youth may have made a choice, but the adult made the choice. Without at all excusing children and, especially, youth from their parts, society and the law holds adults fully accountable for their parts. So being decisive, it settles any question of guilt and penalty. It renders the factor of any consensus irrelevant.
If a minor student has offended sexually, it remains the responsibility of parents and others in a similar relationship to care for the young person.
No amount of guilt on the youth’s part excuses or even mitigates that of the adult. There is no "other side" of the story to be told; legally, the story ends with the adult. Let’s have no more nonsense about "consensual."