An Acceptable Double-Standard?

So I didn't get around to writing again this weekend, but here it is. I was alarmed to hear that accused middle-school reading teacher Debra LaFave was dismissed of the charges against her. This is the teacher who plead guilty to having sex with a 14 year old student three times over four days. These liaisons happened in two counties, so she was being charged in both. One county found her guilty but only gave her a few years of probation and made her register as a sex offender. The other county dropped the charges altogether after the boy refused to testify.

It seems ridiculous that she got off so easy. Some would say that years of probation and registering as a sex offender is no walk in the park, but let's consider what would have happened had a 25 year old man slept with a 14 year old student several times over several days. It is hard to imagine this male teacher would have walked away with nothing more than probation and registering as a sex offender. It seems far more likely he would have been handed some hard jail time in addition to his probation and sex offender status.

Is this an acceptable double standard? A man is more physically powerful than a woman and is more physically intimidating, but does that amount to enough to throw out the probability of the relationship being consentual? I wouldn't think so. All other things being equal, whether you are a man or a woman, both hold positions of authority and have committed crimes by sleeping with underage children. It just doesn't seem the same thing would have happened to a man that happened to Debra LaFave.

It seems pretty likely this has to do with some factor besides what LaFave did. I don't know what that would be but it may very well be that she was too attractive to send to jail for hard time, or that this kid wasn't willing to testify against the "hot" teacher he bagged thus giving up his bragging rights. That seems too banal an explanation, but what else could it be? This might even be held up by the case that occurred right after this where a teacher in West Virginia was not being given the same leniency that LaFave received. She was not blond, not attractive, and not young. She did have multiple victims, but she seemed just as repentant and yet she wasn't being given the same treatment that LaFave received.

The bottom line it would seem, is that there is a double standard. Rather than holding all teachers and others in positions of authority to the same standards with the same punishments, we are giving those who may be better looking and camera friendly the advantage. It's pretty hard to make a pretty blond girl in a bikini on a motorcycle into a child abusing monster. I guess now we know what would happen if Lolita were written by Mary Wollstonecraft.