I've always said that sexual harassment is just a point on a line along the sexual abuse continuum. After all, it's about making someone feel uncomfortable with sexual messages, either verbal or non-verbal. And deliberately making someone feel uncomfortable is abusive. Even if it isn't deliberate, it feels violent.
Sexual harassment can be a comment about how someone dresses, or a discussion of size. Sometimes it is a joke. It can be a gesture or a leer. And it can be blackmail.
Have sex with me or you will not get a raise.
Have sex with me or you will not be promoted.
Have sex with me or you will lose your job.
Have sex with me. I'm telling everyone you did, anyway, and this way you'll get a really good bonus in December.
Have sex with me or that grade will be a C, not an A.
Only teachers can do that, threaten students with lower grades, or failure in a course.
We define it as sexual harassment when someone in a school or at a workplace makes someone else feel uncomfortable using sexual props or threats, comments or any other type of sexual behavior. We shouldn't have to feel uncomfortable at work or at school, which is why our enlightened law makers have made this a federal crime.
Defining sexual harassment is a form of sexual abuse, defines it as basically yet another sex crime. Sure, it sounds less damning,
harassment, than the others-- coercion, molestation, attempted rape and rape-- but it still hurts, so why not call it what it is, abuse, or assault? It is bullying.
When a school teacher is in trouble for coercions (coercing a student to have sex), or for molestation, attempted rape, or rape, it is usually because he or she intentionally lured a student into an intimate relationship using flattery and emotional intimacy as bait.
Sometimes it is the student who has lured the teacher, but as professionals, teachers are supposed to know better than to initiate or participate in a sexual relationship with a minor.
So it is the teacher who is responsible for the boundary, in the eyes of the law, not the student. Minors, as works in progress, people still maturing, are off-limits when it comes to sex with adults. It is hard enough for them to make their own choices about these things, we shouldn't be making the sexual ones for them, making them offers that are difficult to refuse.
The effort that is spent making a child feel special, different from the other students so that the child will trust the adult, is called
grooming. Children want this sort of attention. We all need it, but when a child receives special attention from a mentor, a teacher, the positive attention feeds the beast, the emptiness, the wholeness of self that hasn't been filled, not yet, not by childhood. Add the impulsiveness of childhood, the omnipotence of adolescence, and the gaps that should have been filled at home beg for fulfillment.
It is called
exploitation when an adult poses as a parental guide and is really positioning himself as sexual mentor.
Adolescents, especially, feed into this relationship because they often want to differentiate from their families. Beyond having been neglected (if they were) they want to reject what their parents represent, to become their own person. This is the process of identity formation. Some adolescents have had enough lecturing, ranting from their parents, and are looking for new and different people in their lives to coach them.
There are, unfortunately, people in the teaching profession who wish to fill that job description, who recognize that individuation, look for it, and exploit the need, take little hands and young lives, lead them to sexual relationships if they can. Children of all ages are very sexual, will play out their psychological soft spots with psychological candy. This is why we call kids vulnerable.
To complicate our parsing out of terms, if the goal is to have sex with the student, then positive, seemingly nurturing behaviors that lead to a seduction are really coercive, technically assault, not harassment. Harassment, remember, feels bad. Coercion feels good, although it can be very confusing. But if a teacher is skilled a the art of seduction, then he or she knows how to make the student feel good, not uncomfortable, not harassed. This can start with an email relationship, progress to texting, even sexting, then meetings alone.
Most students don't get it until they find themselves alone with the teacher, in an uncompromising position, perhaps in the teacher's apartment. Alone, soon to be over-powered, this becomes terrifying, traumatic. Sex with a minor is rape, whether or not the student consents, and coercion, attempted rape, is just as bad in the eyes of the law.
And even if the student is ready and willing, minors do not have the right to informed consent, to say they are willing participants. A teenager wanting sex with a teacher doesn't help that teacher's case. It is still statutory rape.
Sexual harassment, on the other hand, isn't a seduction, although the intent may be to coerce a student into sex. Harassment makes the student uncomfortable. It might be a comment on the student's clothes, how a tee shirt fits; or her about the teen's body, how well-developed he or she is for that age.
The teacher might make direct comments about how the student makes her/him feel, might share dreams about the student, erotic dreams or fantasies, with graphic descriptions of these dreams, fantasies. The teacher might share sexual stories or pictures, porn, even suggest that they watch porn together, or that the student write an essay about porn. If words, gestures, suggestions, make a child feel uncomfortable, it is harassment.
Teachers have an inordinate amount of control and can damage young lives, change them irrevocably. They hold real power in ways that no one else can. By virtue of their profession, they can manipulate what students read, literally assign novels that message sex between older men, younger women, or older women, younger men. And the way the teacher interprets it, of course, is the right way.
The power goes beyond merely holding grades over a student's head, the most obvious form of sexual harassment, the one that tends to be the red flag, threatening non-sexual compliance with failure. If a student has been outed as willing, social castigation follows. The damage of the harassment/abuse can follow a student beyond his or her school years.
And might we add that the lessons of this relationship influence values, the communication that love conquers all, that age, station in life, should not matter.
Could I give you specific examples of sexual harassment? Sure. But it isn't necessary, you get it.
Same with coercion, molestation, sexual assault and rape, the other sex crimes. We don't need pictures, videos to understand these relationship processes.
Our imaginations ache when we associate them with a teacher/student relationship.
That's why they are crimes.
Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT
