Teacher Rapes 5 Students, Gets Probation

The facts are indistinct, but clear enough.  A former teacher at Pearl-Cohn Entertainment Magnet High School in Nashville, Tennessee, was charged with raping five students. Some of the rapes occurred at the school. Upon arrest, the teacher was released on $1000 bail.

The Metro Nashville Police Department’s Sex Crimes Unit started investigating Alston on Nov. 24, 2014 after the principal of Pearl-Cohn High School reported information she received about the teacher.

The investigation into Alston lasted several months and involved multiple interviews with students and others.

Detectives say they were told that Alston had sexual contact with several teens. Some of those incidents occurred on the school’s campus, according to officials.

While conducting “multiple” interviews may give the appearance of a great deal of work, it’s hard to imagine why it took “several months.”  Isn’t a teacher raping five students sufficiently horrible to compel the police to work a little more quickly?

What makes this crime particularly awful is the nature of the relationship between the perpetrator and the “survivors.”  A teacher is in a position of power over students, capable of exerting undue influence, of coercing students to comply with their sexual demands. A teacher who rapes one student is bad enough. Five students is an epidemic, a serial rapist. And these crimes happened at the school, right under the noses of those who are charged with protecting students from sexual predators.

And yet, the teacher, having pleaded guilty to the five rapes, was sentenced to probation. Where is the outrage? Where are the calls for the judge’s life? Why are there no townspeople storming the administration office with pitchforks and torches?

A former teacher at Pearl-Cohn Entertainment Magnet High School will get five years of probation after her rape arrest.

Oh. That pronoun, “her,” is not a personal choice to confuse readers. The teacher was a woman. The victims were male students.

Marquita Alston, 24, appeared in court Thursday where she pleaded guilty to five counts of statutory rape stemming from a 2014 incident.

She was also ordered to register for the sex offender registry and undergo treatment.

Alston performed sex acts on five 17-year-old boys between September and November of that year. Some of those incidents occurred on the school’s campus, according to officials.

marquita-alston1

What about the young boys of tender years who were violated by this teacher?  There is no mention of the trauma, the harm they have suffered that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, justifying their need for trigger warnings, safe spaces, loan forbearance, laws named after them.

Where are the victim impact letters, reproduced for all to share their pain? Where are the personal interviews in Vox, Salon, HuffPost and Slate, about the trauma they endured and how it has destroyed their lives?

No, there has been no outrage over this sentence, just as there was no fury over the bail. There is no mention in the WKRN articles about how these boys will never be able to face another teacher without feeling unsafe.  There will be no mention of this case at any of the media outlets that fueled the hysteria over Brock Turner, and promoted the crucifixion of Judge Aaron Persky over his sentence of Brock Turner. Hell, they didn’t even find the name of the judge worthy of mention.

The point isn’t the hypocrisy in how sequelae of rape are addressed.  That neo-feminists save their tropes for their own kind isn’t exactly a surprise, a novel concept that requires someone to point out.  In the hierarchy of victimhood, rape of males falls way down the list, if it makes it onto the list at all. And that’s unsurprising, as males, even high school boys, aren’t their concern. Their cries and tears are saved for their own gender. The other gender can fend for itself.

But at the same time, it reveals the emptiness of their claim to such horrific, such exhausting, pain and suffering.  If every female who is subject to the “violence” of conduct at the hands of a male can ride that trauma to national fame and sympathy, why aren’t males doing the same?

harassment

Too flip?  Try this, though be warned that you can never unhear it.

Were these five young men deeply hurt by having been raped by this teacher?  Beats me. There is no information to suggest they were or weren’t. Speculation is obvious, but no need to go there. The point is that the world didn’t explode as a result of this crime or its sentence.

Could it be that guys are just that much tougher than girls*? Could it be that the insanity surrounding any offense, real or imagined, against a female causes neo-feminists to lose their shit, not because it’s real but because they’re empowered to indulge their wildest impulses to create the worst victimhood ever?  Are the cries of the post-regret survivors just a dog and pony show of drama queens, feigning suffering for imagined intolerable harms?

Whatever it may be, this puts the lie to it. There are real harms done to real people. Just because someone said hello to you uninvited doesn’t give you PTSD. And that you don’t give a damn about these five boys is fine, but don’t expect your outrage over other crimes to be taken seriously. Not everybody wants to play the game of phony victimization.

*Okay, one more time:

TANTRUM

20 thoughts on “Teacher Rapes 5 Students, Gets Probation

  1. REvers

    “Were these five young men deeply hurt by having been raped by this teacher?”

    If they weren’t, this must have occurred at a school for the blind.

  2. Erik H.

    At this point you can write the Vox article yourself. Don’t forget to begin with a Getrtrude:

    Of course teachers shouldn’t have sex with students, and of course it should be illegal. But while we condemn it, we should also acknowledge that 17 year olds are basically men and they benefit from the patriarchy and from rape culture. If it wasn’t for social support of rape culture this would never have happened.

    The power of the patriarchy is so great that it can override traditional power dynamics of the teacher/student relationship. Moreover, it is a near certainty that the way this woman was treated by other male teachers and faculty would have given implicit support to her regard primarily as sexual object. Either the boys, or the other men in the school, bear ultimate responsibility. As this woman is punished–by a male court, and male cops–we should consider: What social pressures brought us here?

    Sigh. I wish that was total satire but I”m waiting to see it.

    If you want to see the “teen boys are all rapists” meme in a national paper, google “My teen boys are blind to rape culture Washington Post.”

      1. Nigel Declan

        That article reads like Don Quixote accusing his children of being dragon sympathizers because they refuse to tilt at every windmill.

  3. Adam

    That “Hugh Mungus” video is sad more than anything. It reminds me a lot of the effectsofmaledominance youtube channel:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzdf4V7Cf_M

    I don’t really have much to add on-topic (largely because I think you’re consistently, fundamentally right on this topic and you cover most of the angles thoroughly and eloquently), so you can trash this comment if you like, you won’t hurt my cheeto-dusted feelings.

  4. Osama bin Pimpin

    Or, teachers getting with teenagers of either gender of high school+ age shouldn’t count as rape, or at least not rape-rape. Just garden variety teacher’s pet favoritism, and the real victims are the other students who didn’t get the automatic A (which I’ve seen IRL as a student and assume was inducement here for those boys to jump on the grenade). Half the time the teachers are the prey not vice-versa at least based on the complete dog-like behavior of some female friends I cam up with.

    I know so sick of me to think that way. As well as anyone my age who was into The Police.

    Hugh Mungous is lame. Got nothing on my other alter-ego Dr. Heywood Jablomi.

    1. JimEd

      Ok this is really bothering me. Why are you posting a mutt shot of the perp. Why are you wallowing in the same cesspoool of official narratives that you decry otherwise.

      A good point ruined because you can not help yourself.

    1. SHG Post author

      When it’s teacher/high school student, it’s always going to be an issue. If it was prison guard/inmate, age doesn’t factor in, but it’s still rape. There are some sexual relationships that shouldn’t happen. And if they’re “in love” (with all five) let ’em wait until the kid graduates or the convict is released.

Comments are closed.