http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-30813335

WTF!

Very messed up :s


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From what I've heard, they pleaded mitigating circumstances and the judge went with it. I found some of the comments on the victim's behaviour to be pretty distasteful though. Whatever the girl in question was doing, his responsibility as a teacher and in fact as a mature adult was to do pretty much anything other than what he actually did.

In pure legal terms it was consensual and she was above the age of consent, so they can't throw anything serious at him. I suspect the charges they brought were the best they could manage and there is precedent for a suspended sentence under that circumstance. he's never going to work as a teacher again but he won't be on the offender's register.

As I've said before, 'what the law says' and 'justice' are not necessarily aligned but we always get the former.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30835245

My cynical brain can't help thinking this guy's being protected, cos he's remarkably lucky so far.

OK, cynical head on.

There was case a while back that was pretty much identical, but the teacher was female and the student was male. She was given a suspended sentence. In the past, it's generally been the case that male teachers in this situation have been treated more harshly than female ones - quite possibly because the latter case was much rarer as there were far fewer female teachers in the age ranges where it wouldn't just obviously be considered child abuse.

Given the rather febrile era of gender politics we now live in, if they did throw the book at this bloke after giving a woman in the same situation a suspected sentence, the Daily Mail & co would have an absolute fit. It's perfect ammunition for the anti-feminist movement.

So they have a choice - hit the bloke with the full weight of the law - such as it was for the only offence they could pin on him - and face a massive orchestrated media backlash, or give him the same as the female teacher got and probably get a smaller, more short lived media backlash along the 'wishy washy liberal justice system' line that's pretty well trodden already and people are pretty much habituated into not caring about any more.

what the system basically did was choose the path of least trouble to itself, regardless of the requirements of the case in question. They picked the result that would lead to the least mud being flung their way.