Scott Tibbs
blog post
February 16th, 2005

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This is sick.

"Mary Kay Letourneau plans to marry the former sixth-grade pupil with whom she had two children", reports CNN. I suspect we'll be reading about their divorce soon, as soon as she gets bored and finds a new teenage boy to have sex with.

What if the genders were reversed in this case? Would people be complaining as much as they are here? Yes, they would, if the facts of the case were similar. (As in, the girl was 12 when they got together the first time.) In fact, the screaming about this would be much louder than it is for this case.

Unfortunately, sexual abuse of teenage boys by grown women is not taken seriously. If a teenage girl has sex with a grown man, it is statutory rape no matter how "consensual" ("consent" to intercourse with a grown man, of course, cannot be given by a 15-year-old) the intercourse was. This is almost universally recognized. But if a teenage boy has sex with a grown woman, he's a "stud", and is the "hero" of his peers at school. This is especially true when the abuser is a pretty young teacher. In reality, though, the boy will be messed up for life.

They are both adults now, so they can do what they want. But that doesn't change the fact that Letourneau is a child abuser who should be behind bars, not getting married to the man she molested as a boy.

Has anyone considered the damage this does to the husbands of the women who have sex with teenage boys? Can you imagine how the abandoned husband would feel like much less of a man because his wife had sex with a teenage boy? It has to be humiliating for the husbands of women caught up in these high-profile abuse cases.