One other interesting tidbit: the story mentions as an aside that the typical sentence for teachers convicted in similar cases is 18 months to 2 years.
Is this form of child sexual abuse less serious than what the priests did? Why aren't teachers who abuse children treated as toughly as priests? Just wondering.
A sixth-grade science teacher who was accused of having sex with a 13-year-old student has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Rachel L. Holt, 35, had pleaded guilty to second-degree rape. She sobbed in court Friday as Superior Court Judge Calvin L. Scott gave her the mandatory minimum sentence.
Prosecutors had wanted Scott to sentence Holt to the maximum of 25 years.
Holt was initially charged with 28 counts of first-degree rape.
Police accused her of having sex with the boy that many times during an intense weeklong affair. She was also accused of plying the boy with alcohol and allowing him to drive her car.
Holt's attorney, John S. Malik, said the sentence was much longer than what teachers convicted in similar cases got. He reviewed 40 such cases and found the average was 18 months to two years.
1 comment:
I would suspect this case raises more questions about how society views adult females who abuse boys/teenagers, than it does about priests vs. teachers. In both cases, authority figures abused their positions of trust. Don't you think that our stereotyped gender roles - including masculinity - the role of sexual relations in the coming of age of a boy/man likely has much to do with any bias toward leniency that might exist in cases like this? For more about child sexual abuse and prevention, check out www.stopitnow.org for balanced information and resources.
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