Sexual abuse by educators: a comparison between male and female teachers who sexually abuse students

ABSTRACT

The study aimed to identify the differences in case characteristics and typologies of female and male teachers who perpetrated sexual abuse on students. Decisions of sexual misconduct reports in England from June 2006 to December 2016 were used. Quantitative and qualitative content analysis was conducted on 20 cases of male and female teacher sexual misconduct (N = 40). Regarding case characteristics, most were secondary school or college teachers, mid-career, with victims of the opposite sex. For differences, male teachers were older and more likely to have: perpetrated more severe and lengthier sexual abuse and previously received warnings. Interestingly, females and males were similar across the preliminary typology: minimisers and deniers; poor mental health or stressors; and young, early career. However, a fourth group of females emerged: “I was overpowered”. The study furthers the understanding of sexual misconduct by teachers and should assist in the development of policies, guidelines, and legislation around prevention.

KEYWORDS:

• Female sex offender
• male sex offender
• teacher
• typologies
• child sexual abuse
• institutional abuse

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Larissa S. Christensen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3852-3686

Andrea J. Darling http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5605-4943

Notes

1 Shakeshaft (2004) considered “educator” as an individual, over the age of 18, who works in a school or other learning or educational setting (e.g. teacher school volunteer, special education aide).

2 Teachers or educational staff in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (2017) included tutors, teachers as well as dormitory and house masters.

3 These perpetrators involved adults who supervised children within an organisation or institution that were responsible for the care of children (e.g. teacher) and individuals who supervised children in a voluntary position (e.g. coach at a sports club).

4 While the NCTL refers to this behaviour as “sexual misconduct” the authors prefer the term “sexual abuse”. This is because engaging in any sexual activity with a child (whether contact or non-contact) is abusive by its very nature. Furthermore, even where the young person is over the legal age of consent (16 years) for sexual activity more generally, by the nature of the adult’s position of trust deems the behaviour is a criminal offence in the UK.

5 The random sample was attained through assigning a number to every case which appeared in this period, before using a random number generator to select the first 20 cases at random.

6 Three cases involving male teachers could not be classified due to insufficient information in the report.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council [ES/1447912] which provided funding for the female perpetrator element of the research via a doctoral studentship at Durham University.