It's not even ten a.m. on the first day of this workweek, and there are already two bizarre teacher sex scandals to report. The first featured a kid, having engaged in a sexual relationship with his teacher since October, caught by the principal... (literally) with his pants down.
Now comes the story of yet another lecherous teacher and her teenage male victim. However, this case features a twist that we could never have predicted, even after reading of dozens of these cases over the years.
When 46-year-old junior high school teacher Linda Nef walked into a police station near Bountiful, Utah, cops had no idea a major media firestorm was about to descend on them. When Nef confessed to having sex with a thirteen-year-old male student, she fingered Valynn Bowers, 39, as a fellow rapist... of the same boy.
Bowers, in case you haven't figured this out, is a teacher at the same school.
According to local media reports, Hef Nef started sleeping with the boy first, but was dumped for an unknown other party, with whom the boy has been carrying on a sexual relationship for the past three months. One day, Bowers entered Nef's classroom and confronted her in what may have been a jealous rage, telling the older teacher, "I'm the new girlfriend." Or she could have simply said, "Hey, we really screwed the pooch on this one." However, we doubt that last part, as Nef is the one that freaked out and went to the police after the revelations.
The local news, predictably, has a unintentionally hilarious time trying to figure out how to work with these details:
With the suspects being so much older than their victim some wonder what would prompt them to commit the crime.
University of Utah psychology professor Don Strassberg says that would be an easier question to answer if the teachers were men. With men, he says, it's probably about the sex.
But it's more complicated when you're talking about women. For them, Strassberg says getting into a relationship like this is likely more about them: their needs, having control, getting attention.
Thank you, Professor Obvious. (Read more of his brilliant insight at ksl.com.)
We've been warning the public for months that the daily onslaught of these cases is going to eventually reach a breaking point and outdo itself-- in other words, we predicted that these kinds of "teacher sleeps with student stories" were going to involve in something even weirder, like janitor sex or parents getting used to it, but we never say a menage a trois coming....
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