07.02.2002

Victims and victimisers

Yet again, we have another scandal and minor moral panic about underage sex. Remember the Jonathan King story? This time the drama is centred on the hapless Amy Gehring, a 26-year-old biology teacher from deepest Canada. On Monday the jury at Guildford crown court cleared her of "seducing" and "indecently assaulting" two teenager brothers aged 14 and 15. Gehring had been sent by a private teaching agency, Timeplan, to schools in Surrey. These were her first proper teaching assignments. As the drama unfolded, there was absurd talk about how Gehring was a threat to "boys" - she was branded "a risk to children". The media went into full scare mode - how many more Amy Gehrings are out there, ready to swoop on innocent young adult men and force them to have sex? Some were incensed that the 'predatory' Gehring had escaped scot free. Maureen Freely, for one, felt the urge to sermonise in The Guardian: "If it were a man, it would be different. We'd be outraged at his acquittal. But no one seems bothered that Amy Gehring will not be doing time for indecent assault. This is as it should be, as she's been cleared of all charges. But why is no one worried about the prospect of boys having sex with female teachers?" (February 5). What is truly outrageous of course is that the case went to a criminal court at all. Whatever the exact - possibly unedifying - details may be, a cursory examination of the facts clearly reveals that we are looking at consenting sexual activity. Indeed, the jury was explicitly told by the judge that, although the boys had obviously been willing sexual agents, Gehring's conduct was criminal by mere virtue of the fact that they were under the legal age of consent (ie, 16 years old). The nonsense starts from here. So, Gehring was supposed to have "seduced" one 15-year-old teenager three times: once in a back alley, in broad daylight, near the school where she taught; then in a toilet at a house party; and again at a new year's eve party. She was also cleared of "indecent assault" on another 15-year-old pupil, a friend of the two brothers. Giving evidence, Gehring said she could not remember whether she had sex with him or not, but admitted that the next morning she had sent her 'victim' an urgent text message asking for 'clarification'. In her own words: "I texted him and said, 'What's happened?' He said, 'I think we had sex' and I said I didn't remember." Not entirely surprisingly, Gehring rushed out to see her doctor and get the morning-after pill. Hardly the actions of a calculating 'predator' or quasi-rapist. It quickly emerged that there had also been an alleged "assault" on a 15-year-old boy at another Surrey school where Gehring had been initially placed by Timeplan. It was said she had kissed him. However, the teenager did not want the allegation pursued. We learnt as well that a second "assault" on a 16-year-old had been investigated, but as he was over the legal age of consent she had not been charged. These revelations sparked off a round of mutual blame. Surrey police say both Timeplan and the department of education had been told of the "risk" she posed weeks before she started work at the school in question. Timeplan confessed that they had made "a monumental error" and two officials lost their jobs. True to form, the department of education denied ever receiving such a warning. Interestingly, we also discovered that Gehring had been placed on what is known as the 'level 99 list' - which contains the names of education/teaching staff who are alleged to have had sexual relations with children or teenagers. Apparently, there are some 2,500 adults on the list, not all of whom have court convictions. What a grotesque way to deal with Gehring. True, you can broadly classify her actions as rather "inappropriate behaviour" for a teacher, as she readily admitted in court. Yet it is obvious that she needed help, not punishment and public humiliation. She had fled an unhappy relationship in Canada. She had never been abroad before. This was her first experience of being 'thrown to the wolves' in a rough British secondary school. Predictably, this left Gehring feeling isolated and lonely. The actual teachers at the school were - in her words - "quite a bit older" than her, hence she found it difficult to make friends with them - so she turned to the pupils for companionship instead. Though conscious of the age gap, Gehring would go shopping with them, attend their parties, drink and get drunk with them. During one shopping trip with the mother of one of her pupils, she had her navel pierced. Gehring told police: "Obviously, to people who don't know the situation, it seems silly. At the time it was hard. I had been really lonely. It was hard for me to make friends. So any little bit of attention was good." In her defence, Gehring described her role in the school as that of a "glorified babysitter" and claimed she had been the victim of unwanted sexual gestures and advances herself. Sounds credible. The whole Amy Gehring episode prompted Richard Morrison of The Times to write: "What is the purpose of the crown courts? If it is to provide an inexhaustible fund of salacious stories to titillate the nation over breakfast, then the case of Amy Gehring was surely one of British justice's finest hours" (February 5). As in the Jonathan King case in November last year, we had so-called 'victims' lining up to take the cash. Fascinating how 'suffering' soon has the pain rubbed off it when it assumes a fiscal value. Perhaps the turning point in the Gehring trial came when the prosecution witnesses were compelled to reveal how much each had been offered for their stories in the event of a guilty verdict - admittedly after they had already given evidence. The share-out between eight teenagers would have amounted to more than £40,000. Not a bad way to supplement your pocket money. You have to ask - where was the exploitation? Was it in the courtroom, as teenager after teenager queued up to recollect - in perfect and prurient detail - exactly who did what to whom when they were all smashed on Malibu, Budweiser, Smirnoff Ice and Bacardi Breezers at Christmas parties more than a year ago? Or in the car parks outside the courthouse, as the same 'victims' struck instant deals with tabloid newspaper reporters? Hypocrisy abounds. After all, if the concern had genuinely been that the boys had suffered some sort of 'trauma' from the encounters they were forced to endure (like being given a blow job by an attractive 25-year-old, for instance), such an effect would surely only have been compounded by the ordeal of having to relive their horrendous experiences for the salacious entertainment of the general public. The Gehring case - as with the King trial - has furthermore highlighted the UK's backward, conflicting and irrational laws on 'adult-child' sex. A law dating from 1956 prohibits a man from having sex with a girl aged 15 or under, but does not stop a woman from having sex with a boy of 15. If an adult woman does have sex with a teenager aged 14 or 15 she can - like Gehring - only be charged with "indecent assault". The word "assault", however, implies that the woman must have played an active role in the encounter, and also perhaps that she inflicted a degree of coercion on her 'victim'. From a legalistic point of view, this means that - as the judge graphically pointed out in the trial - an adult woman who removes her clothes, lies on a bed and passively allows an all-too-willing-and-eager 15-year-old boy to have sexual intercourse with her is committing no offence. However, if she merely kisses the boy - defined as an "active" move - she may well be guilty of an offence "¦ as long, of course, as he is under the legal 'age of consent'. What a farrago of reactionary prejudice. Which brings us back to Maureen Freely's Guardian article, where she somewhat priggishly ventures: "But why are we so sure than a man who has sex with a girl is scarring her for life, and that a woman who is in the next bedroom with her brother is doing him a big favour? "¦ Boys are, if anything, less prepared for that roller coaster than girls are. If anything, they're even more vulnerable than girls are. If something does go wrong, and they go for help, no one takes them seriously. Everyone laughs." In fact it is a mistake to assume that a girl, or young woman, who has sex with an older man will be scarred for life, particularly if the liaison is entirely consensual, any more than a teenage male who has sex with an older woman will automatically be traumatised. We need to make a clean sweep of all these repressive laws - first of all starting with the abolition of the 'age of consent' legislation. Young adults must be able to enter freely into sexual relationships whenever they feel ready. Obviously the age will depend on the individual. Older people of either sex who engage with them in a genuinely consenting relationship must not be criminalized. Danny Hammill