Two female teachers have become the latest in a string of ‘cougars’ charged with engaging in sexual activities with underage students.
Amy Caudle, at eacher in Alabama was charged with sexually abusing three students and pled guilty to two counts. She was sentenced to 15 years in prison; however she will serve three years and receive credit for time already served.
The judge rules she must resign from her job and give up her teaching credentials. Further, McGuire will be forced to register as a sex offender.
According to records, Caudle performed oral sex on at least two students in her car. She was found out when she slipped up and told a former school employee.
In South Carolina a Spanish teacher resigned from her job following charges of sexual batter with a student.
The courts allege that high School teacher Abby McElhenny was involved in a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old student.
The student was found out by his parents, when they learned he had been lying to them about spending then night at a friend’s home. They later found hundreds of text messages between the student and an unknown number.
When a friend attempted to call the unknown number pretending to be a salesperson, they discovered it was the teacher and the student had been having an affair with her.
Both teachers join a growing list of female teachers who are caught in sexual relationships with their students. In May alone, there have been at least 6 cases reported of female teachers having sex or engaging in sexual activity with one or more students. Over the past school year there have been over an estimate 25 cases.
Some argue the lines between teacher and student have become blurred and much of American culture has become over sexualized.
“I have had teachers in my practice who are friends with their students on Facebook and they don't see anything wrong with it,” child psychologist Dr. Michael Oberschneider told the Daily Mail. “It's a blurring of boundaries but your teacher is not your friend. We need to get the boundaries back.”
The roles of teachers need to be reinstated. Teachers are not a friend or a buddy, they are teachers. Often this leads to other issues.
“As a nation we are over sexulising things,” he commented. “Our prime time shows are becoming very graphic, we have TV shows that encourage 'cougars' – they're saying isn't it a wonderful idea for older women?”
“This idea of the cougar and the inappropriate term MILF. It's trendy to be with someone's mom,” he added.
Oberschneider explained that younger teen boys see having sex with an older woman or a woman in a position of power as an accomplishment, a victory to be honored.
“I've had teenage boys in my office talking about being with older women and their parents are laughing,” Oberschneider said. “The father is almost saying ‘atta boy’.”
“There is a certain mystique around the older woman in our society,' he added. 'If it was a man (who is abusing) in our society we are harsher, but when it's a woman we kind of wonder about it.”
American society almost sympathizes with female teachers who sleep with students, while simultaneously demonizing a male who does the same thing.