This is one of the all time worst stories I have heard about teachers doing this stuff , mostly because the child was not only 14 he was also special ed. The teacher has even more power over these children since they are more vulnerable. The 27 year old married teacher claimed she was "sexting" him to help him improve in school , maybe she has been watching Billy Madison one to many times. This whole new era of sexting is getting ridiculous especially with children doing it. If children get caught they can be put on the sex offender registry and be charged with making/possesing child pornography and will have to live with that forever. I think there needs to be some kind of mental evaluation for teachers and people who work with children. It such a horrible thing because thery are in an authority position and children have always been taught to follow it.here is a link about her and other cases http://www.aolnews.com/story/female-teachers-charged-with-sex-abuse/634372 and http://www.examiner.com/x-1393-Education-Examiner~y2009m12d11-Female-teacher-sentenced-to-90-days-for-sexting-special-education-student for case specifics or google Michelle Simpson for more
This certainly seems to be getting out of hand. It's always tough to tell if a problem is really becoming more common, or if it is just getting more media attention so it looks like it's becoming a bigger problem.
However I think in either case these cases have begun to show that we are no longer able to distance ourselves from criminals, so as a society we should begin to hold ourselves more accountable for our behaviors. When criminals are seen as "crazy psycho's" we can easily say, "Well I don't have to worry about my behavior, I'm not like that."
These teachers, although admittedly performing terrible, and unethical crimes are I believe ordinary people. I'm hesitant to believe this notion that all of them simply have bad home lives, emotional issues, divorce, prior history of sexual abuse, etc. I think they have backgrounds like any one of us. What is the problem is a societal issue with love, romance, sex, and relationships. We have an inappropriate way of talking about it and expressing it.
My wife works as an X-ray tech in a local hospital. Many many of the Drs. well over twice the employee's age routinely buy expensive gifts for other nurses and x-ray techs, and also send suggestive texts, and show up at the local bars on weekends trying to get them drunk. We all know where this is going. Not only is this unethical professional practices but many of the girls are just 18, 19 and 20. It is not far off to act this smae way towards 14, 15, and 16 year olds.
It's sick, but if "To Catch a Predator" and cases such as those on the links above show us anything it is that something major is wrong (it may be new or old), and assuming that it's just psycho's and criminally deviant, or severely mal-adjusted former rape victims no longer works.
What type of mental evaluation could test for having sex with children? I don't think any. To me issues such as this are all about ethics. We need to teach ethical behavior, and life-style choices from an earlier age. For these people I truly don't think they understood why exactly they were breaking the law. The difference between seducing an 18 year old at the bar, and a 16 year old in your class is an obvious one legally. One is legal the other is not. However ethically I see no real difference between these two.
Ethically they are both wrong in most all circumstances (with the exception of people of near equal age, or at least approaching eachother with honest and wholly open intentions). Since legally there must be a cut off people know "Ok, 18 is fine." From there the lines begin to blur and blur in regards to people's ethical decision making about their own personal behavior. Had they had a better understanding of ethical decision making, which teaches people critical thinking skills, as opposed to legal decision making, which teaches dichotomous thinking skills (Yes or no) these people would be better equipped to deal with these situations when they arive. For as we all know although whether or not something is legal is obvoius, whether or not you should do it is much less so. An inability to critically think about ethics is a societal problem not one of a minority.