Looks like Glasser’s going away
In the beginning of June I found out that someone I used to play in a band with had been arrested for 8 counts of sexual assault because he was a teacher who decided to ignore the law and have sex with one of his students. After the arrest, Matthew Glasser decided he was too good for the law and put together a defense based on his right to privacy. Well, according to Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, it looks like prison is in Glasser’s future.
From Today’s Hartford Courant:
If there is such a thing as consensual sex between schoolteachers and their students, it would have to occur under the rarest and most unusual circumstances.
The very nature of their relationship, in which the teacher has influence and authority over the student’s intellectual development, argues very strongly against the notion that any sex between them could be consensual. Whatever a teacher does to encourage a sexual bond with a student must almost by definition be interpreted as coercive.
That’s why there’s a state law making it a criminal offense with a minimum mandatory sentence of nine months in prison for a teacher to sleep with a student, regardless of the student’s age. Sex between prison guards and inmates are prohibited by statute for the same reason.
But the solid logic behind the law didn’t prevent two Connecticut teachers accused of having sex with their students from trying to avoid jail by making the reprehensible argument that the statute violates their state and federal constitutional right to sexual privacy because the students involved had already reached the age of consent, 16.
One of the former teachers, Matthew Glasser, is facing eight counts of second-degree sexual assault for sleeping with a student while he was employed at Northwest Catholic High School in West Hartford. The other teacher, Van McKenzie-Adams of New Haven, was convicted on 13 counts of second-degree sexual assault and is appealing the verdict in state Supreme Court.
Their constitutional rationale for having sex with students so befuddled the state Board of Education that the panel requested an official opinion from Attorney General Richard Blumenthal last week on whether there might be some validity to the claim.
Mr. Blumenthal, to his credit, responded swiftly that there was none. The courts should rule accordingly.
Glasser probably won’t like prison too much, there’s even less privacy there…
The views expressed on this blog are the opinion of the author and should not be taken as fact.