A district court in Pennsylvania has denied summary judgment to the Pottsgrove School District and the school principal in a case involving a sexual relationship between the high school band director and a female student in the band.
The plaintiff was a seventeen-year-old senior in 2003-04. During that year, she and the then-29-year old band director Christian Oakes had a 10 month long sexual relationship.
After graduating, the plaintiff sued the school and the principle under Title IX. School districts can be liable for sex discrimination committed by their students and teachers when an appropriate person, like a principal, has notice of and is deliberately indifferent to the ongoing discrimination. Harassing a student on the basis of sex is an actionable discrimintion under Title IX. In this case, the school district argued that because the sexual relationship between the student and the teacher was consensual (by plaintiff's own admission) it did not amount to sexual harassment.
The judge rejected this argument, analogizing to two lines of precedent in which a person is considered legally incapable to consent to sex. The first line established the principle that a person in an authoritative, custodial position (paradigmatically, a jailer) is considered to have so much power over the individuals under his or her control that consent to sex by a subordinated individual is meaningless. The second analogy was to the concept of statutory rape, under which a minor is deemed incapable to consent to sex with an adult for no other reason than the minor's age. The judge reasoned that "The teacher-student relationship encapsulates both of these lines, with teachers exercising custodial control over high school students in their classrooms... Under these circumstances, the Court concludes that Plaintiff did not have the legal capacity to welcome Oakes's sexual advances."
This conclusion is, according to the judge, consistent with the "result obtained by many courts, which have implicitly presumed, without much discussion, that a high school student's having sexual contact with her teacher constitutes sexual harassment or abuse."
Though the court clarified that a teacher's sexual relationship is sex discrimination under Title IX, a factual dispute over whether the principal knew or should have known about the relationship also precluded a summary judgment for the defendants. Barring a settlement, a jury will decide whether the principal knew about the relationship and took sufficient action to put an end to it.
The case is: Chancellor v. Pottsgrove School Dist., 2007 WL 2274837 (E.D. Pa., Aug. 8. 2007).
Schools are very small places - I would be in shock if something of this magnitude was completely unknown to the administration.
ReplyDeleteThis happened to me! I told the principal after a three year consensual affair with my teacher. He told me that since my teacher was leaving the district the next year to not expose him. The affair continued. I wish I would've done more legally but didn't know or understand what I do now (I am 33).
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI hear the same story all the time, and you've probably heard it too:
A woman who is sexually repressed and disinterested in her man, with a long list of things she won't do in bed or that she thinks are "gross"... ends up cheating or finds herself dating a new guy, and suddenly she is insatiable and enthusiastically doing EVERYTHING she used to swear she would never do!
And it happens in reverse too. A woman who used to be sexually WILD settles down with the man she thinks is "husband material" and loses all interest in sex-- and even believes that it's just natural and normal for her stage of life.
What's really going on here is that there is a hidden sexual trigger inside every woman's brain, and when it's switched off, it's very hard for her to feel any enthusiasm or interest in sex at all, and when it's switched on...
Watch out! She turns into a wild animal of lust and desire!
Sex coach and author Alex Allman calls it "The Playmate Switch," because when it's flipped ON, it triggers a woman's sexual side as well as her more playful, mischievous, flirty, and fun side.
What switches it on?
YOU.
Novelty (a new guy she hasn't been with before), danger, forbidden romance, fun flirting... all of these things can easily flip it on temporarily...
But the reliable, biological, and long-term control over her Playmate Switch has to do with YOUR male behaviors-- behaviors that many men either repress or simply lose touch with over time.
Allman insists that this stuff is simple and natural, but it takes a level of sexual confidence and a willingness to actually try.
He's trained dozens of men to quickly overcome their anxieties around this issue, and to almost instantly start getting the kind of natural attraction and fun, sexy attention that they thought was only a fantasy.
>>> You can find out more about how to flip YOUR woman's Playmate Switch here <<<
And one more thing that Alex Allman wants to make sure that you know, because he says so many men get this backwards:
Women are ON YOUR SIDE when it comes to flipping their Playmate Switch!
They love it, it's natural, fun, sexy, and beautiful for them to have those feelings and emotions around you. They are rooting for you to figure this out!
Some men, especially men who have repressed this side of themselves for a long time and have suffered at the hands of women rejecting them because of it, find that fact hard to believe.
They'd RATHER try some kind of manipulation because it's so hard for them to believe that they could get a woman's sexual attention authentically.
Alex Allman wants to prove it to you!
>>> Check it out here to see for yourself <<<