Quotes from

Female sex offenders reveal cultural double standard

Rebecca Morris, The Seattle Times, September 10, 2007 

It all seems so terribly familiar. A trusted, even respected or beloved teacher is accused of having a sexual relationship with a student. What used to shock us, but is now much too commonplace, is that the teacher is a woman.

[...]

Jennifer Leigh Rice, a 31-year-old former Tacoma teacher, was charged with having sex with a 10-year-old boy who had been in her fourth-grade class. 

[...] 

Earlier this year, former Tenino math teacher Dawn Welter, 38, was charged with second-degree sexual misconduct after spending the night at a motel with a 16-year-old
female student. Her lawyer explained her relationship with the student as "horseplay that became sexual."

The decade long wave of sexual offenses committed by women - teachers in
particular have exposed a cultural double standard: The public is more willing to accept the female abuser's claim that she had a "relationship" with the victim. And in cases in which the male is a teenager, the sexual abuse is more likely to be dismissed as a rite of passage. The questionable, yet overriding assumption, is that women predators are somehow different from men. 

"Men are demonized, women are diagnosed. Men are beasts, but women are
troubled or mentally ill," said media scholar Matthew Felling in an interview with Fox News. In fact, accounts of women sexual offenders are often more titillating than harsh. Felling calls the news coverage of young, attractive 
teachers involved with their students "part crime drama, part Penthouse
letter." 

[...] 

The number of cases of sexual abuse by teachers, male and female, is less than 10 percent of all sex crimes against minors.

The current awareness of women predators began with Mary K. Letourneau, 
[... ... ...] 

Female predators' crimes are often attributed to 

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Spiritual "relationships" 

Not only do we look at female offenders differently, so do the offenders themselves. Women predators are more likely to see the abuse as a romantic relationship. 

[...] 

Dr. Leigh Baker, a clinical psychologist in Colorado, interviewed hundreds of male and female predators for her book "Protecting Your Children From Sexual Predators." All were incarcerated at the time, and their stories help form her theory that there are four types of predators: inadequate, narcissistic, anti-social and pedophile. 

While some women are pedophiles and some men do profess their love for the children they sexually abuse, women are more likely to "couch it as a relationship," according to Baker. Men are more likely to be serial pedophiles; women seek that "deep spiritual oneness" that Letourneau says she found.

The traits women predators exhibit 

probably place most women predators into two of Baker's four categories. 

"My suspicion is if you took a large enough number of female predators,
they would fall into all four types. But, we know women are less anti-social than men, and there are fewer female pedophiles, so I think most women are narcissistic or inadequate types of predators." 

[...] 

While a mental illness may produce hyper-sexuality, impulsiveness and poor decision-making, such a diagnosis for a sexual predator is rare, according to Baker. They are more likely to have a personality disorder (such as a anti-social, or narcissistic) or to have been sexually abused themselves. 

The "Mrs. Robinson Syndrome"

[...] 

Robert Weiss, executive director and founder of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, who provided his expertise in one of the episodes, says sexual compulsions on the Internet are male-dominated. 

But female predators are beginning to use the Internet - not in an anonymous way to find children but to stay in close touch with those they are involved with. Rice, the former Tacoma teacher, communicated online often with the 10-year-old she had sex with, according to court records.

Then there is the ultimate double standard: The wink wink, nudge nudge, of boys getting their sexual initiation from grown women. 

"Society sees it as they got 'lucky' " to receive a sexual initiation from a woman, according to Dr. Keith Kaufman, chairman of the department of psychology at Portland State University. "But their brain maturation isn't complete. Boys aren't in a position to give consent to a sexual relationship. Girls see it as abusive much more quickly. Boys won't want to see themselves as a victim." 

There is a prevailing sense that boys are not harmed by sexual liaisons with older women. It's called the "Mrs. Robinson Syndrome," after the character in the 1967 film "The Graduate." But Benjamin, Mrs. Robinson's target, wasn't a child; he was in his 20s, had just
graduated from college and was contemplating that career in plastics.

"We tend to see the female teacher-male student relationship as less abusive and less harmful psychologically," according to Dr. Susan G. Kornstein, a psychiatrist and director of the Institute for Women's Health and the Mood Disorders Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University. "But in fact, a sexual relationship between a female teacher and a male student can be just as harmful and can have both short- and long-term consequences on the child's emotional stability and psychological and sexual development."