Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Female Teacher Sexual Misconduct: Understanding Power Dynamics and Emotional Drivers
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you with the most challenging human interactions, those involving someone with a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Speaker 2 (00:21): Hi everybody. Speaker 1 (00:22): We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute where we focus on training, consulting, coaching classes, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. Today we are talking about female teachers who sexually assault male teen students. Maybe a topic you've thought about, maybe a topic you haven't, but if you are like many who are scouring the newspapers on the daily, you might've seen that there seems to be more of this in the news nowadays than in the past. So we probably just talk about it today. We did a little research into this because it's something that I've been noticing as I read the papers and the news. And of course, as you know, bill, it's big splashy stories like this or hit the news. They're just really happy to have news pieces like this. I think unfortunately because it does grab our attention, but it's also fair to report things like this in the news so that people are aware. Speaker 1 (01:25): So I did a little background research and if you look at female offender cases, they are real, but they are rarer than male offender and interestingly far less studied, at least in the US than male teacher cases. And the research shows that female teachers who engage in misconduct with male students often target older adolescents around 15 to 16. They'll interact outside of the school setting, but sometimes in the school setting they're emotionally motivated. I thought this was really interesting that rather than being preferring minors, having a proclivity to that, it's more emotionally motivated. The federal data does not distinguish gender. So longitudinal analysis by gender is impossible. And again, reporting rates are low. So we don't know truly what the real numbers are, but over the past two decades, no sustained increase or decrease has been tracked specifically for female teachers. So do we know at what level it's increased? No. Do we know that it's more now than in the past? We have anecdotal evidence, I guess, but we wanted to play a video here by Dr. Leslie Stein who has treated many women who have found themselves in this position where they've been arrested or they've lost their marriages, lost their jobs, lost their profession because of engaging in this type of activity. So let's play that right now. Speaker 3 (03:00): It is a crime for a teacher to have sex with a child. These are women who may have been divorced and they are trying to recreate something in their mind to bring them back to a childhood situation where they had their first sexual arousal and emotional arousal. Speaker 1 (03:17): Dr. Lost Dean talked about that these women are married, they have children, or they're dating or they're divorced. And at that bill, what was really kind of stood out to me was that he said that they're trying to recreate something in their mind to bring them back to a childhood situation where they had their first sexual arousal and emotional arousal, which then blurs the boundary between the teacher and the student, thereby creating that power imbalance. So what are your thoughts on that? Speaker 2 (03:49): It's fascinating to me because it is relatively unusual, but not uncommon. Like you said, there's many stories like this. I look at it at kind of three levels, the individual psychology, what's going on inside the person, the interpersonal, which is a lotto where we talk about high conflict and one person dominating another person. And can you have a consensual relationship with a 15-year-old? And the law says no. And then looking at the culture. So let me start with just looking at the individual. I tend to think these are people that fit into the cluster B personality disorder or traits area, and I haven't researched them all, so this is conjecture. But the reason I think that may be possible is because people with cluster B personality disorders often grew up with insecure attachments. And so their adult attachments tend to take the form more of one person dominating another domineering. Speaker 2 (04:58): This vindictiveness intrusiveness are common to cut the deep personality disorder, which are narcissistic, antisocial, borderline and histrionic. But I don't care about disorder or not. It's the pattern of behavior may just be some traits, but they tend to be more emotional and to have blurred boundaries. And we see this in high conflict divorce cases. We see this in workplace that these are people that push for a more intense relationship. And so you can see that, hey, here's a 15-year-old male student who's full of energy and fun, and here's a 23-year-old teacher who remembers being 15 and being attracted to energetic and fun boys. But because they have weaker boundaries that the emotional connection, they allow it to grow and be intense and be lustful as the programs that the recording said. And so I think it's the shakier boundaries, the more intense emotions and attachment because looking for love in all the wrong places, most people, and I know as a therapist, I have 15-year-old girls as clients, occasionally and boys, 13-year-old girls and stuff who sometimes acted in slightly seductive ways. Speaker 2 (06:36): And all my warning systems were on. And I remember at one point was recommended we leave the door ajar a little bit to our office so that no one has concerns. And I remember I had a 15-year-old girl who lived with her father and had either no contact with her mother or a terrible relationship with her mother, and she's very comfortable with men. And at the end of our first session, I think she said, can I have a hug? And I remember saying, well, actually, let's go down to the lobby where your dad is waiting to take you and then let's do our hook, but I'm not going to do it alone in the office. Speaker 1 (07:18): Yeah, that's wisdom. Speaker 2 (07:21): Yeah. So I had all those kind of warnings. It was part of therapist culture when I was a therapist that this is a big issue to be careful about. And so you don't allow yourself to get that emotionally attached, that emotionally close. But what's interesting is that these are often women who are married, they have an adult relationship, but there's that more immature part, more insecure attachment part that may look to a relationship where they actually can dominate and control the relationship. And I think that's what we have to understand. It isn't a mutual cute relationship. It has a power and control dynamic. Speaker 1 (08:06): And what about the connection? I guess some may be so kind of deficit in there, even though they're married and they have that marital connection, romantic relationship, they still feel empty. And so are they still looking for it? So is that true in some cases? I mean perhaps, and if so, is that kind of a dividing line between those who need power and control or is it all the same? Speaker 2 (08:30): It's not clear to me because statistically the numbers are still small. And I haven't studied it real closely, but I would think a lot of people have marriages where they grow apart. I mean, I was a divorce lawyer, divorce mediator and therapist, and I saw a lot of those marriages and people were kind of, maybe they had an affair or something like that. It's less normal in a sense that you go towards teenagers for coping with maybe distance in your marriage that it's much more common. People have adult affairs or they just drift apart, get absorbed in work and often end up getting divorced. So it's a different dynamic to allow yourself to get into that kind of relationship because working with kids can be very exciting and very intense, but adults are supposed to have the boundaries. Adults are the ones responsible for how far it goes. And that's where I think it's those weak internal boundaries for one reason or another. I remember Mary Kay Erno years ago, she was one of the first that really made the news, spent time in prison because of this. But her father had been a college teacher who got involved with his college students. Speaker 1 (09:57): Really? I didn't know that. Speaker 2 (10:00): And so he had blurred boundaries and she may have learned to some extent those blurred boundaries and recreated his lifestyle in her situation as a high school teacher. So I want to comment on the cultural aspect. I think our culture has blurred boundaries. And the irony in today's culture is what's entertaining is the fringe behavior, the edge of the rules. People that break the rules, get in trouble, get away with it, but a lot of our entertainment is about behavior on the edge of society, and yet you can't have society without a lot of role models of within the society, within the culture. So how we want people to behave in real life is almost the opposite of how we want people to behave when we're watching entertainment. And so our culture's got so much entertainment as part of it now that we're seeing these kind of blurred lines and people allow themselves to have weaker adult to child boundaries than we should. And then perhaps we had in the past, although maybe it's just coming out more now, it's hard to know. But our culture love stories of May, December romance only May is supposed to be over 18, Speaker 1 (11:30): Right? Right. I mean, it's a great point about the entertainment impact on this, but also I think behind the scenes I would, there's so much more going on. There's porn, there's the fantasy. It's every young boy's fantasy to have sex with his hot 24-year-old teacher, and he's going to be applauded by his peers doing that. And he probably put it on social media. And then some are more vulnerable and just innocent and it goes on a lot more than is reported. And yes, we do get attracted to these fringe news stories, but it is a real thing. And the sad, I mean, there's many sad fallout impacts here, right? So marriages end research showed that the children of these women took sides that mom is treated as a monster, often ended up in psychiatric facilities, put on heavy medications, loses the license to teach, never teaches again incarceration. Speaker 1 (12:36): So that's what happens when a lust relationship becomes associated with attachment, as Dr. Stein had mentioned. So I just did a little research and went into chat GPT and asked for a list of recent US cases with these. And we have Alyssa Perry in New Jersey, June, 2025. This is the same month we're recording this podcast. 30 5-year-old teacher charged with sexually assaulting a former 17-year-old male student at her home, Christina Ella, March, 2025. This is all over the news right now. 30-year-old special education teacher and soccer coach, I think in Illinois, sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student, explicit texts. Molly Spears, Texas, another 30 5-year-old faces up to 20 years in prison. Brooke Anderson, 2025. She's a 27-year-old biology teacher. Had an eight month sexual relationship including classroom encounters Reagan Gray. In April, 2025, Arkansas teacher pled no contest after sexually assaulting a 15-year-old via Snapchat. And in person she got 60 years probation. Speaker 1 (13:50): Brittany Zamora, 2018, March, 2018, arrested after having sex several times in a classroom at an elementary school in Arizona where she taught sixth grade. She had other students, another student as a lookout while engaging in these encounters. And the parents began monitoring their son's phone with an app. So she was married. So there's more and more, I mean I could list, keep talking here. There's at least 15 more on this list, and that's just a small list. I mean, there's a huge impact on this person's life. So it's very self-sabotaging behavior ultimately. But what's the impact on the teen boys? You have a teacher in a position of authority, so you have that power and control and the position of authority and trust of a teacher and adult with students, and it really truly makes it impossible for the student to consent to a sexual relationship. Some research showed that many teacher abuse cases involve grooming where the teacher slowly manipulates and exploits the student, making it difficult for the student to recognize the harmful nature of the relationship. Speaker 1 (15:08): So another study from a National Institute of Health showing sexual assault has lasting effects on teenagers mental health and education. They're at risk of mental health conditions. Poor school performance per the research and the increased risk lasted for more than a year. The study found that most teenagers who reported this had symptom, and it is under-reported by the way. They had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety or depression within six weeks of the assault. After one year, their risk had reduced but was still high. More than half had symptoms of at least one of these conditions, poor school performance twice as likely at one year, then six weeks after the assault, lots of mental health issues. So we are going to put a link, a couple of links in the show notes today for help for those who have been in this situation. One is an organization called rain, and that the other is one in six.org. There are organizations who help are dedicated to helping men who have survived sexual abuse or assault. So as I dug more into this bill, I realized that there are others who are doing something about this and it's probably under reported. And whether it's females assaulting boys or it's men assaulting females in any relationship, it's bad. But I just thought it seemed to be to me in my mind that this was increasing and it's a problem Speaker 2 (16:42): To me. A lot of high conflict behavior seems to be increasing because of this entertainment fantasy world getting confused with the real world. And as we have more and more fantasy entertainment available to us, streaming 24 hours a day, all of that, that what really appeals to the human brain is the extremes that we really were curious about the extremes. Horror movies and stuff, really big business because we don't want that in real life, but we're attracted to that. But sex, I think of things like an eating disorder. An eating disorder is confused because you have to eat. So where do you draw the line? And our culture has all this beautiful food coming at you. And so we have a lot of eating disorders in our culture. I don't know if that's a good analogy, but I think that we have to get stronger at setting boundaries and stronger at teaching children, teenagers and adults, where the boundaries really are. Speaker 2 (17:57): That's really one of the dilemmas of our age because some people are going to do what they see, even though the reason they're seeing it is because it's exciting and odd, not because it's desirable. And that's the dilemma of modern entertainment is if you can keep the boundaries straight. Entertainment's fascinating. I love it. But when the boundaries get blurred and you start thinking, well, maybe I could do that, and that's where people get in trouble, is the outcome in all these cases is terrible. It's terrible for the woman or the teacher and terrible for the student. And I just glanced back at the Mary Kay Erno case, which I studied a lot more than these newer cases. And that was 30 years ago, and that was the first one that the public really heard about. Anyway, she ended up going to prison, but she married, they had a child together after she got out of prison, they got married, they had three more kids. They were together for 14 years, but then they split up. And my recollection is he said it really messed him up that in the long run it messed him up. And of course she lost her career and spent time in prison. So it wasn't happy for either of them. And it was an unhappy marriage. Speaker 1 (19:19): I mean, that's a marriage that's a bit out of balance. So out of balance, marriages typically have a lot of struggle. Speaker 2 (19:29): Teenagers are, in terms of personality development, are starting to develop the traits that turn into personality disorders as adults, because if 10% of adults have personality disorders, we don't diagnose them as teenagers unless it's really intense, but they're developing. And so there's a certain percent of antisocial kids who may be more aggressive and also more responsive to a teacher with gray areas like this, narcissistic students that's developing narcissistic personalities. So there may be some aggressive behavior on their part. And I know as a therapist that we're warned, let's say a student or an adult comes onto a therapist sexually that this happens and it's on the therapist's shoulders to not respond to that or not respond favorably to that, keep really clear boundaries. We have to realize there also are some older adolescents that already have aggressive behavior of their own, and that young attractive women teachers need to also keep their, so when someone shows interest in them that they go, yeah, yeah, that's a high school student. Keep that in mind. Speaker 1 (20:55): And if we add to that, the porn addiction factor, I mean, students have so much access to this. And so there are many, many factors, many variables that feed into this that weren't present 30 years ago even when the Lano case happened. So I guess the question is then what do we need to be aware of? How do we prevent this? I found an article by Dr. Elizabeth, judge, sorry to butcher the name. I'm not sure how it's pronounced. She's a clinical psychologist who focuses on sexual violence prevention. She had an article called titled How Female Sexual Abusers Groom Their Victims. And not all do, but some do. And research bears that out. So she mentioned a sexual grooming model, SGM, which has five overarching stages, which is of the grooming process. So selecting a victim, gaining access and isolating the minor either through working or volunteering in youth serving organizations or by gaining the trust of the minor's, guardians, things like that. Speaker 1 (22:01): And of course, we trust the teachers, right? That's kind of what we send our kids to school. The teachers are adults. They have boundaries. Three, developing trust with the minor and other adults in the minor's life. Number four, desensitizing the child to sexual contact and physical contact, five maintenance behaviors following the commission of the abuse. This is really interesting. This last and final stage occurs once the abuse has already happened. And the purpose is of the maintenance behaviors is for the perpetrators to be able to continue the abuse and avoid detection often by manipulating the minor into feeling guilty or responsible for the abuse and causing them to fear the consequence of disclosure. So kind of that classic flipping it on their head, the head and saying, you are part of this. You can sense it to this. It's Speaker 2 (22:54): All your fault. Speaker 1 (22:56): It's all your fault that I think a teen boy, teenager of any gender is going to probably look at themselves if they're in this type of situation and think it felt good. So I was a willing participant. So her takeaway was parents need to be aware that women can also use sexual grooming strategies and recommends a book called Protecting Your Child from Sexual Abuse, what You Need to Know to Keep your kids safe. So we'll throw that link in the show notes. Speaker 2 (23:28): Yeah, the dynamics sound to me. So similar to domestic violence, child sexual abuse of even younger children. And these, there's a percent of people. It's a pretty small percent of people or percent people who engage in these activities. And I think kids need an age appropriate level to learn about how to protect yourself and people shouldn't be touching your privates and those kinds of things. And in many ways, I believe education is where the answer to a lot of this stuff is, is this raising an educated population of adults and teens and children so that things are more clear cut. And I think society's changing so rapidly that it's hard to know where the rules are. Like you talked about pornography, pornography's probably the biggest business I think on the internet. And one of the concerns I have is, and I heard this study, I think it came out of University of Toronto about five, 10 years ago, that teenage boys, 90% of teenage boys have not only watched Sex on the Internet but have watched violent sex and something like 20%. Speaker 2 (24:52): No, no, this is 90% of 14-year-old boys and 25% of 14-year-old girls have watched violent sex on the internet. So people are getting about the nature of relationships and violence dominant relationships and with this without necessarily getting tools and resources to put it in perspective. And one thing that's kind of sad coming out of the last 10, 20 years is younger generations just avoiding relationships, avoiding committed relationships, avoiding getting married, avoiding having children on a large scale. And so to some extent, we've shown all this stuff and made people afraid. And I think that we need to not just make the boundaries clearer, but also make happiness a possibility that there's good life out there. You can have a good life and it is possible, and don't spend too much time on your internet pornography or on your whatever else, because there is life out there with people and there's a lot of healthy, good relationships. We talk about high conflict patterns of behavior. We're talking about maybe 10% of people, but 90% of people you can have a good time with. So don't be scared. Just be smart Speaker 1 (26:25): Because that 10% can ruin your life. So Bill, let's talk, just to wrap this up about two things. What can parents do and what can schools do? Speaker 2 (26:35): I think people need to be educated about this and that people need to teach appropriate to your kids that some people may want to blur the boundaries and the boundaries are very clear. You're the kid, they're the adult. And that physical touching and all that stuff really has its limits and you should be able to talk to me about anything. I think it's important that kids know that, that you're not going to get angry with them if they tell you that you're worried about someone coming on to me of any age. But I think adults I think need to learn and understand this, that it's not that these are evil people, these are people with attachment issues, maybe personality patterns that need to be understood, that other teachers need to know warning signs and that when they're feeling attracted to their 15-year-old students, be able to remind themselves, don't slip down the slippery slope to getting too close. Don't start wanting to hug your student and wanting to have special alone time with them. That's warning signs. You need to not let yourself slip in today. You need to have the door open. I learned as a therapist when you're in these gray area situations so you don't succumb to risks. So I think education is the answer of course, especially for teachers. Speaker 1 (28:13): And I think with schools in the article about what sexual grooming of minors, they mentioned that educational institutions should be aware of the teacher lover typology of female abusers and how this may manifest within educational settings and set strict guidelines for teacher student contact, just like you're saying, they must be in place and annual training must address sexual grooming and how it may present itself when engaged in by women, men too, obviously. But I think as we see this blurring of boundaries in society, more high conflict behavior, more of internet porn, more entertainment, showing us negative relationships that I think schools have to be aware of this and have to have structure in place. Everyone, every school needs to have the structure and training in place and strict policies that those limits need to be set. The consequences need to be imposed. I think putting people on notice can at least help it from sliding into the abyss and really poor outcomes for students and teachers. I spoke to some school administrators recently who said, in the last eight years, they've had a dozen or so cases just like this in their Speaker 2 (29:35): District. Oh wow. Speaker 1 (29:36): So it's definitely happening. And I think if any institution that's responsible for young people, for minors really needs to pay attention these days and have structure and guidelines in place and an exit ramp for those who do this kind of thing, Speaker 2 (29:56): Teachers should know it's okay to go to a therapist about having thoughts and fantasies about your students. What therapists deal with is thoughts and fantasies, and you can think anything. That's the thing we've all grew up with. You can think anything. It's what you do that matters. And I think that's a degree of shame that may block teachers that have this attraction to their students from getting help and saying, Hey, I'm feeling this attraction. And being able to talk that through with a therapist. A lot of things they can do to set boundaries for themselves, like never be alone with this student. Always be in a group situation. Don't say certain types of things to your student because like I love you, is something that people like to say to each other, but it means a lot of different things. And when a teacher says to a student, I love you, that could be just a positive thing. But if it means a deeper thing that's in the out of bounds category, then now you're in trouble. So go to a therapist, get help with that, and if a parent has a child that's dealing with this, let them know that is a preventative. You can talk to me about anything and if you ever want to talk to a counselor about private stuff, that's fine with me. So just letting people know, talking to somebody about feelings like this can really help make them much more manageable and help not act on them. Speaker 1 (31:34): I think of one article I read, it was two female teachers who were almost like high school mean girls who really encouraged each other to do this. And so they kind of had that little mob mentality and doing this. So if your friend is telling you, suggesting that you do this, use your wise mind and just say no. Alright, well thank you for listening today everyone. We appreciate you and so appreciate that you take the time to listen to our podcast and all of the meanderings of our minds. The links to Rain and one in six.org are in the show notes and the Psychiatric Times article, the research from the NIHR Psychology today. And by the way, the Conflict Influencer Alert signup for our new website for people involved in personal high conflict issues that will be in there as well. That's coming in July. Thank you for listening. Hit that like button. If you would, leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcast, keep learning and practicing skills, be kind to yourself, be kind to others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing piece. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts at True Story fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.