SWGA Politics

Do Teachers Not Deserve Equal Protection Under the Law?

This past Sunday, the Marietta Daily Journal had an article about a Supreme Court decision that came down over the summer than I’ve already written about a couple of times – the decision that said that consent WAS a defense for teachers accused of sexual assault of a person in custody.

The article addressed both a local case up there potentially impacted by the decision as well as two State Representatives’ efforts to change the law – one of whom is Rob Teilhet, who is running for the Democratic Party’s nomination for Attorney General.

Per the article,

Teachers across Georgia may legally engage in sexual relationships with students 16 or older if the sex is consensual.

That is what the state Supreme Court held last summer when it ruled, 5-2, in Chase v. The State, a case out of Richmond County. The decision has immediate effects in Cobb County, where at least two former high school teachers are charged with sexual assaults of students older than 16.

At issue is Georgia law 16-6-5.1, which defines sexual assault against persons in custody.

The statute has three subsections, and while one part of the law prohibits a “supervisor of another person” from having sexual contact with a person enrolled in a school, a different section, which addresses sexual contact between a supervisor and someone in legal custody or detained in an institution or hospital, includes this caveat: “Consent of the victim shall not be a defense to a prosecution under this subsection.”

The court’s majority found that the General Assembly, in writing the law, had not added that caveat to the other sections of the law, meaning they had not removed consent as a defense for those sections. In Georgia, the age of consent is 16.

A lawmaker from Gainesville has already drafted legislation for the 2010 session to crystallize the illegality. And a Cobb lawmaker, Rep. Rob Teilhet, says if that bill can’t be passed quickly, “I don’t know what we’ll do this year of any value.”
…
Although it will be up to juries to decide whether either man committed a crime, the state board that deals with educators’ ethics has already acted by revoking both men’s teaching certificates.

Kelly Henson, executive secretary of the Professional Standards Commission, said, “Consent has no bearing on the fact that we consider it completely and totally unethical. Educators who have sexual relations with students can be certain that we will take a severe sanction against their certificate.”
…
Teilhet, a Smyrna Democrat, also disputed the idea of consent in such cases.

“I’ve heard some people suggest that some cases of statutory rape or abuses of power like this are somehow victimless if there is consent. I think that’s flat wrong,” Teilhet said.

“The whole premise behind consent not being a defense … is that the victim is not in a position to resist, and is very vulnerable to be taken advantage of,” Teilhet said. “A 16-year-old who is taken advantage of by an adult suffers long-term consequences as a result. I don’t care if the victim consented or not. The older person has a higher responsibility. Consent isn’t good enough.”

Teilhet is the father of twin girls, and is seeking his party’s nomination for state Attorney General in 2010.

Meanwhile his colleague, state Rep. Doug Collins, a Gainesville Republican, is already working to rewrite the law. Within days of the Chase decision, he had new legislation drafted that would remove consent as a defense when a teacher or someone who works in a school is charged with having sex with a student enrolled in high school.

“The Supreme Court highlighted a problem with the law, and I want to correct that,” said Collins, who was first elected to the legislature in 2006. He is also an Air Force chaplain, assigned to the 94th Airlift Wing at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta.

“I don’t anticipate a great deal of opposition. I’m an attorney, and I do some criminal defense work,” said Collins, 43, who is himself the father of teenagers. “I just want to address what I consider a very narrow issue. I don’t think anybody would’ve expected that a teacher could get away with having sex with a student and it not be illegal. It’s a narrow window that needs to be closed.”

I’d like to make a few points, and as I do remember that we are talking about people of legal age to give consent in all cases who did, in fact, give such consent.

First, I can completely agree with the General Assembly in regards to the jailers and psychotherapists. With those professions, you are genuinely working with people you can easily manipulate with relative impunity, and those laws SHOULD therefore be more stringent.

That said, teachers should NOT fall under similar guidelines. Quite simply, a high school teacher MIGHT see a student for an hour and a half per day in class. In that hour and a half, teacher almost never have any one on one time at all with any student, particularly not in the environment of trying to help them with their mental illnesses.

Teilhet seems to think that 16-18 year old students are “not in a position to resist”. Clearly, he hasn’t been in a high school classroom in several years. Most of my students resisted when I told them to do their classwork! Yet Teilhet thinks that they would not resist an unwelcome advance from a teacher.

If “consent isn’t good enough” for under 18, why is it good enough for over 18? And if it isn’t good enough under 18, why is the legal age of consent 16? Should he not be attacking THAT law, rather than banning teachers from using consent as a defense to a charge of sexual assault of a person in custody?

I completely agree that teachers SHOULD NOT have intimate relationships with students. The whole reason I left that bit about the Professional Standards Committee in the blockquote was because I do not mind if a teacher loses their license to teach because of a sexual relationship with a student. That has long been a part of our ethical standards, and teachers know the risk when they make that decision.

All I’m saying is that IF they are caught having sex with a student and are charged under this statute, the fact that it was consensual sex SHOULD be a valid defense under the law for teachers, exactly the same as it is with virtually every other person out there charged with a similar crime.

After all, do teachers not deserve equal protection under the law?