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How common is it for teachers to sleep with their students?

Nationwide, about 10 percent of all students experience sexual misconduct by a school employee sometime between kindergarten and the time they graduate from high school, according to a 2017 study funded by the U.S. Justice Department.

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Amanda Garrett, Akron Beacon Journal, GateHouse Media Ohio

Tiffany Eichler asked the boy to come to her nearby office.

When he got there, Eichler locked the door, flipped off the lights and began pulling down his pants, the boy later told police. The boy didn’t try to stop Eichler, a 36-year-old married mother of four who taught the boy’s swim class the previous semester. But as the two fell to the floor and started having sex, the teen was troubled. “The whole entire time, I knew it was wrong, so I, I had to stop,” the boy later told police. Eichler also had sex with two other teenage boys during the winter months of 2018 before she got caught. She is one of at least five female teachers, counselors or school administrators in northeastern Ohio schools — city, suburban and rural — to face charges of having sex or sexual contact with students during the past two years. Most recently, Windham Schools Superintendent Laura Amero, 35, was indicted in April on six felonies involving sex with students and intimidation of a crime witness. Amero, who has pleaded not guilty, is scheduled to stand trial June 18. Some have downplayed or even laughed off the seriousness of female educators having sex with teenage students, playing into the trope of hormone-driven boys lusting after the women at the front of the class. But many prosecutors and people who work with the abused say female teachers having sex with male students are doing just as much harm as their male counterparts who prey on girls. Nationwide, about 10 percent of all students experience sexual misconduct by a school employee sometime between kindergarten and the time they graduate from high school, according to a 2017 study funded by the U.S. Justice Department. Male abusers outnumber female, the study said. But the number of reports of female educators charged with sex abuse of students is rising — not necessarily because there are more women abusing children, but because they’re getting caught, some experts say. In Stark County, Eichler pleaded guilty last year to three felony counts of sexual battery. Prosecutors asked a judge to sentence her to four years in prison, but the judge thought Eichler — who surrendered her teaching license and will forever have to register with authorities as a sex offender — had largely suffered enough. He sentenced her to 30 days in jail and another 30 days in what Stark County calls “half-jail,” a sort of day detention room for adults. An attorney who represented Eichler did not respond to a reporter’s call and Eichler could not be reached. This story — of Eichler, the boys she had sex with and the justice meted out — is based on hundreds of pages of police and court records, along with interviews with the leader of the Rape Crisis Center for Summit and Medina Counties and a psychologist and author whose career is focused on sexual predators.

Texts lead to more

The 18-year-old McKinley High School student was immediately suspicious when a text popped up on his mobile phone from Eichler, the woman who taught his sports psychology class. It was around February 2018 and Eichler wished the boy luck before his sporting event. “I just found it weird. Like she just found me on [Facebook] Messenger and just text me when she coulda like told me in class,” the boy later told police. Things escalated around Valentine’s Day when Eichler asked the boy if he was dating anyone.

No, he told her; he and his girlfriend had broken up.

Through a private message on social media, Eichler told the boy she wanted to be his valentine and that he could “have whatever he wants,” the boy told police.

The boy was stunned.

“And, like, that’s when I took a step back and like, whoa, what?” the boy said. “And I said I don’t want anything.” Eichler, however, persisted. She asked the boy for his Snapchat account. The boy said he didn’t give it to her at first, but relented after Eichler asked a second time. Eichler started sending him pictures. Nothing racy at first, but then, on a Sunday, she sent the boy a picture of herself and said she was on her way to church. The picture, a selfie, showed a side view of Eichler in her underwear, a reflection in a bedroom mirror, the boy said.

“I’m, like, this is crazy,” the boy told police.

Finally, on the day of McKinley High’s parent-teacher conferences, the boy and Eichler agreed over social media to have sex. Eichler told him she would pick him up after she wrapped up meetings with parents. The boy, though he had agreed, said he wasn’t sure he would follow through. Yet he was there waiting for Eichler in an alley when she pulled up in her black Ford SUV. It was dark and the boy suggested they drive to nearby Harmont Park with skateboarding ramps and ball fields. She parked next to a path and she and her student got into the back seat and had sex. Afterward, as Eichler drove the teen home, he secretly turned on his phone, hoping to capture audio “proof” of what had just happened.

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During the drive, Eichler and the boy talked about how good the sex was, the boy told police, and Eichler told him that since he was 18, “it doesn’t make it that bad.” But, she warned him, she could still get in trouble if he said anything because she was his teacher.

Types of abusers

Anna Salter — a psychologist and author who has spent decades interviewing, studying and writing about sexual predators — said there are generally three types of women who sexually abuse children. The first target preschool children, often their own, and the sexual abuse is often tangled up with sadistic violence. These women rarely get caught because the level of violence is so severe, the children are afraid to talk, Salter said. The second group of female sex abusers are coerced into sex by their adult male partners. And the third and largest group of female abusers includes many teachers, coaches and school employees who get caught, Salter said.

“They think they love the children,” Salter said.

Often, the women in this group of abusers are in their mid-30s, married and have children, Salter said. These teachers are often popular, both with other teachers and students. Salter warns that people tend to confuse the teachers' likability with trustworthiness. They get caught more often than other sex offenders, Salter said, because their victims are usually teens who have autonomy. Charol Shakeshaft, a professor of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, calls these women “opportunistic abusers.” These teachers “spend a lot of time around groups of students, talking with them, going to the same places they go, and trying to blend in,” Shakeshaft wrote in a paper about the warning signs of educator sexual misconduct. Often, these teachers want to be seen as cool or hip and their conversations about or with students are often inappropriately personal. A “female teacher with a weak self-image might be attracted to a male student in her class and feel excited when she talks with him,” she wrote. “She starts to think that pursuing him is acceptable because he’s a teenager.” Social and cultural norms have taught teen boys that they are supposed to feel honored and engage in sex, she wrote, even if some might feel repelled.

Late-night meetings

The boy wasn’t Eichler’s student, but he knew she was a teacher at the school. In the mornings, Eichler often sent him Snaps asking him how he was doing. Sometimes she sent pictures of her face, but nothing sexy, the boy later told police. About two weeks into their social media relationship, the boy texted Eichler after another McKinley basketball game and told Eichler he was hungry. Eichler picked up food from Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers and headed to his house. She parked on a cul-de-sac and the boy came out and got into her SUV. There was no kissing. No foreplay. They had sex under the windows of his home. And then the boy went back inside and Eichler — who lived in Portage County — drove to her sister’s home in New Franklin. A couple of hours later, the boy sent Eichler a social media message asking her to come back for more sex.

About 2 or 3 a.m., the teacher returned to the student.

This time, with the boy’s mom somewhere in the home, the boy and Eichler slipped into his basement laundry room and had sex again. In the days that followed, the teacher and the boy continued talking on Snapchat. At some point, the boy sent Eichler a Snap telling her that he needed $180 for medication because she gave him a sexually transmitted disease. Eichler later told police she was unaware that she had an STD if she did. But the boy said Eichler paid him $180.

Vulnerable males

People generally don’t think of women as predators, said Sandy Parker, director of the Rape Crisis Center of Summit and Medina Counties. “It’s really kind of ingrained for a very long time,” Parker said. “I think women are thought of more as nurturers and caretakers.” And that, she and others say, can leave boys and men vulnerable. Male victims, children or adults, may be less likely to report sex crimes. And even when they do, sometimes the justice system doesn’t take the crime as seriously.

Psychologist Salter said there have been studies about society’s double standard.

When researchers offer people vignettes — describing a sex crime, a victim and an offender — people consistently say a male offender should go to prison and for a longer time than a female offender in the precise same vignette, Salter said. “We underestimate female sex offenders,” she said. “It’s the old mythology. ‘Boy, did he get lucky,’ still rules.”

Unexpected posts

“Then she had slid up on the Snapchat and said she wanted to do one,” the boy told police. “So I just said OK.” Sometimes Eichler sent the boy pictures showing her sitting in her living room. Other times she was in her SUV. Nothing provocative. The boy said he sent her similar pictures in return until things started to change in January 2018.

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The boy was sending out pictures as part of his Snapstreak and sent Eichler a picture of his bedroom dresser, which is made of wood. Eichler, he said, responded by saying she wanted another kind of “wood” — slang for an erection. The boy didn’t get it. “I sent back question marks 'cause I didn’t know what she was talkin’ about,” the boy told police. Once she helped him understand, the boy said he stopped messaging her and they didn’t talk about it. A couple of days later, the boy started sending random Snapstreaks again, including to Eichler. It went on like that for months. Sometimes the boy would sit in Eichler’s office and she would ask him about his grades or tell him about her husband and kids. Then one weekday afternoon, Eicher Snapped him and asked him what he was doing. When he told her he was getting ready for track practice, she Snapped him to come to her office. The boy told police there was no hint that anything sexual was about to happen. When he got to Eichler’s office, there was no conversation. She just locked the door and turned off the lights. “I was in shock at first and I didn’t know what was goin’ on,” the boy said. “And then she started pullin’ my pants down and just … I wanted to stop. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t think at the time.”

They never talked about what happened afterward, he said.

And he didn’t tell anyone until kids at school started talking about a video going around that proved Eichler had sex with another boy — the secret video the boy who had sex with Eichler at the park made as Eichler drove him home. A former girlfriend of the boy who had sex with Eichler in the park discovered the video on his phone and shared it. As gossip spread, someone from McKinley’s staff pulled aside the boy who had sex with Eichler in her office.

Soon, he was talking to police.

And so was his teacher.

Lenient sentence

During an interview with a Canton police detective in March 2018, Eichler said she had been married about a dozen years, but she and her husband had grown apart. Eichler wasn’t happy and felt particularly bad about herself, so bad she was seeing a counselor, she told police. When the detective asked Eichler when she started reaching out to children at McKinley High, she suddenly seemed defiant and turned the question around. “I would say most of them reached out to me,” Eichler told the detective, adding that students often approached her for sex — contradicting what two of the three boys told police. Regardless, under Ohio law, a schoolteacher having sex with a student violates the law. Weeks later, a Stark County grand jury indicted Eichler on three counts of sexual battery, felonies that could yield five years in prison.

Eichler pleaded guilty.

Prosecutors filed paperwork asking Stark County Common Pleas Judge John Haas to put Eichler in prison for 48 months, 12 months for each time she had sex with a student. Eichler was “grooming” students, a process that led to sex, prosecutors said in court papers. “In a day when strict security measures are put in place in order to keep dangerous people from entering schools, the last thing that parents should have to fear are that the teachers inside could be taking advantage of those same protected individuals,” prosecutors said. Prosecutors told the judge in court paper they had “always been concerned that the sentencing in this case would be considered differently because [Eichler] is a female teacher with male student victims, and that there would be a level of sympathy given to [Eichler] which would not have been given if the genders of the parties were reversed.” On June 19, 2018, Eichler appeared before Judge Haas to learn her fate. The mother of one of the boys who had sex with Eichler told the judge her son was a good boy who didn’t get into trouble. “You,” the mother said, addressing Eichler, “were supposed to be looking out for my son but ... you were only looking out for yourself.” The judge said Eichler was sorry for what had happened and it was very unlikely she’d target teenage boys again. He pointed out Eichler had already lost her teaching license, respect for herself and the respect of others. “I’m not going to send you to prison,” he told Eicher. “It would serve no real purpose in this case.” The judge decided on a 30-day jail sentence, along with a slew of requirements, including Eichler registering as a sex offender, completing probation and seeking counseling. Eichler — still married and now working at a car dealership in Kent — is also forbidden from Snapping with anyone under 18.