![]() And where all this gets very, very toxic is when the “other woman” is little more than a child. But to do so is to accept the dubious idea that men are mere helpless slaves to their urges, while women are the ones who really ought to know better (and therefore to take responsibility when it all goes wrong). It’s all too easy for discarded wives to blame the other woman, rather than the man who so painfully betrayed them. But there was something sad and disconcerting about hearing her make such excuses for him. Williams was talking, of course, about a relationship between two grown adults. ![]() Poor helpless Bernard: what chance did a mere moral philosopher have against those odds, eh? Because he was clever and good-looking he had been, she explained, “pinioned by quite a number of – I have to say – hopeful ladies”. Shirley Williams said this week of her adored but unfaithful first husband Bernard, who left her for another woman, that he was “always a bit …vulnerable”. But it’s surprising how many intelligent women buy into it too. ![]() It’s not hard to see why the myth of the predatory minx, in whose hands all are helpless, might appeal to men: it is, sometimes quite literally, a get-out-of jail-free card. This whiny, couldn’t-help-myself nonsense needs to stop. It is acting on desire, rather than merely feeling it, which is criminal – and any teacher prepared to break the law for a fumble behind the bike sheds should be nowhere near a classroom. It’s true that you’ll never stop teenagers having crushes on their teachers, and nor will you ever stop some teachers secretly fancying their sixth-formers right back. The only bright spot is the flurry of complaints it has attracted, although it emerged yesterday that the attorney general is powerless to refer the sentence for review despite complaints that it was too lenient (Kerner was convicted on two counts of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust, but received a suspended sentence).īut there will still be plenty of people, not all of them lecherous old gymslip fantasists, who won’t get what the fuss is about who think it’s inevitable that the odd teacher, surrounded by surging adolescent hormones, will give in to temptation. ![]() So much for training judges to discard the victim-blaming myths with which they may have grown up so much, arguably, for trying to diversify the judiciary when this verdict was handed down by a female judge, Joanna Greenberg QC. This is the sort of story that makes one weary, deep down in the bones: oh Lord, not this again. Which does raise the question of who, exactly, was vulnerable to whom. Oh, and if you’re wondering why the judge deemed him “vulnerable”, it’s because his wife had had a difficult pregnancy the week she miscarried, he slept with his student. ![]()
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