This is Scylla. Charybdis is in the teachers lounge.

Responding to one of the recent posts here about the deteriorating relationships between students, teachers and administrator, teacher Brook Styler alerted us to his own crisis, a situation right out of “The Children’s Hour” in which vengeful female students, aided and abetted by parents, circulated rumors that lost him his job.

Styler has launched a website, Teacher Hunt, to collect the experiences of teachers, who, like him, have been victimized by false accusations from students. I plan on visiting it often. But the site appears at a time in which teachers using their students for sexual gratification is either on the rise, or is being uncovered with remarkable efficiency. Every day, one or more cases of teachers preying on students is in the news. Yesterday, it was Rachel L. Farrell, 25, a  Bangor, Maine  high school teacher  charged with having sex with a 17-year-old student on “numerous occasions” while she was supposed to be tutoring him in English. Authorities believe she had sexual relations with as many as three other students. Today, it was the still unfolding horror of Mark Berndt, 61, a teacher at Miramonte Elementary School in the Los Angeles community of Florence-Firestone, who was charged with 23 counts of committing lewd acts on children after over 400 photos were discovered by a CVS clerk, showing pornographic conduct involving his students (age 7-10) over a five year period. Berndt, now being held on $23 million bail, regularly told his students that they were going to play a “tasting game,” in which children were blindfolded and, in some cases, gagged with tape, authorities say. They were then fed the teacher’s semen, administered to them on a blue plastic spoon and, according to one alleged victim’s father, on cookies.

I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings, can you? Continue reading →