The message must be sent to the judicial system that teachers should pay the ultimate price if they are found to have been sexually active with their students, regardless of whether they are male or female.
Whilst I have no evidence to suggest that the reason a female teacher was spared jail for engaging in a sexual relationship with her student partly because she was a woman, I ask the following question – Can you see a male teacher spared jail due to the excuse of being abused as a teenager? Somehow I don’t think so.
A teacher who admitted having sex with a pupil had been abused when she was a teenager, a court heard yesterday.
Eppie Sprung Dawson, 27, was targeted when she was aged between 13 and 18 by a man 29 years her senior, a sheriff was told.
Yesterday, Dawson was told she would escape a custodial sentence after earlier admitting having sex with the 17-year-old boy in the front seat of her car last December.
She will have to return to court to learn her fate next month, but a sheriff told her she had breached a position of trust, although she had not abused anyone.
Sheriff George Jamieson added: ‘You were there simply to teach but you have been called into temptation and you have committed adultery – your marriage is gone, and your career as a teacher is gone.
‘What you have been charged with is breach of trust, and I cannot see that there is anything to be gained by a custodial sentence.
‘Had it not been for the fact that you were this young man’s teacher, there would have been no criminality.’
I just don’t understand that last sentence. Isn’t the fact that she was his teacher a clear ‘game changer’. So what if she wouldn’t have broken a law had she not been his teacher – she was his teacher! And the notion that she has been punished already due to the breakup of her marriage and the demise of her career is laughable. I have no sympathy for both losses because a person that cheats on their partner and abuses their position has shown through their actions that they didn’t value either.
And back to my central argument. If it was a male teacher, would he be given the same latitude?
Tags: Dumfries, Education, Eppie Sprung Dawson, Ranald Dawson, Sex Offenders' Register, sexism in teaching, Sheriff George Jamieson, St Joseph's College in Dumfries, teacher escapes jail for having sex with student, teacher who admitted having sex with a pupil
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