California Teacher, 41 resigns after leaving wife, kids for student, 18

[Deberg_1990]

Can you really stop true love?


http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headline...ormer-teacher/



An angry California mother is alleging abuse now that her 18-year-old daughter is living with her former high school teacher, who left his wife and children to move into an apartment with the young woman.

James Hooker, 41, quit his job after going public with his love for Jordan Powers, who stopped attending classes at her Modesto high school and left home to be with her former business teacher.

The girl’s mother is skeptical of the couple’s claims that nothing sexual happened between them, and exactly when the relationship became physical has become the center of a police investigation.

“She looked up to him,” mom Tammie Powers said. “[He was in the] position of an educator, [and you] don’t abuse your student. Period. She’s still in high school. She still lives at home. She has a curfew. … That’s not OK.”

The couple maintains that their feelings for each other blossomed slowly by spending time together during and after school, and then via phone calls and text messages. The two first met when Jordan was a high school freshman at James Enochs High School, but they say they only developed romantic feelings after she turned 18 in September.

“[He's] my best friend. I mean, he’s more than just a lover,” Jordan Powers said of Hooker, who has a daughter a year younger than her and attended the same high school.

Hooker said that while Jordan Powers was a student in his business class, he didn’t think twice about her. “She was just a student,” he said. “There was no attraction. There was nothing that was out of the ordinary, as opposed to any other student. We were very much a teacher-student role.”

Tammie Powers is unconvinced. As soon as she discovered a long log of text message exchanges, she went straight to the police. She waged her own war on Facebook, posting a letter that went viral telling everyone that classmates took photos of her daughter sitting on Hooker’s lap when she was still his student.

She says that she also discovered 8,000 text messages between the two, along with late-night phone calls and email exchanges that took place when she was still a minor.

“That’s pursuit, in my opinion, with some type of intent,” she told ABC News 10 in California.

But none of the late-night calls or endless texts were a red flag of inappropriateness to him, and says that people looking for proof of an unacceptable relationship before Jordan was 18 are just inquisitive about their connection, Hooker said.

“I think that they’re just digging for something that wasn’t there. I mean, of course, they’re going to be curious,” Hooker added. “But I know for a fact that there was nothing.”

Although Jordan has stopped attending classes, she is now doing independent study through the school and plans to walk at her graduation.

Hooker confirmed that he is under investigation by the Modesto Police Department, but is confident he will be completely cleared of any allegations of inappropriate behavior. He said that he understands that people don’t understand their relationship.

“I think the stigma of the teacher-student relationship just makes it messy, makes it really hard for people to get through to the point that we really do like each other, he said. “We really do want to have a future together.”




http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/29/430...gns-after.html

[qabbaan]

I'd bet pretty good money her father wasn't in the home. A 17 year old girl who is reasonably attractive and should have normal options doesn't do this without father issues.

[RockChalk]

Only one thing is for certain here: this girl will never have any sort of a "normal" life from this point on.

[Frazod]

This may be legal, but it is definitely ****ed up and deeply wrong. People like cops, coaches and teachers who have positions of authority over children and abuse them for their own sexual gratification should be held to a higher standard.

The standard I have in mind would leave them publicly twitching at the end of a rope.

[loochy]

Originally Posted by frazod

This may be legal, but it is definitely ****ed up and deeply wrong. People like cops, coaches and teachers who have positions of authority over children and abuse them for their own sexual gratification should be held to a higher standard.

The standard I have in mind would leave them publicly twitching at the end of a rope.

I agree, but she's not a "children"

[Frazod]

Originally Posted by loochy

I agree, but she's not a "children"

Do you really believe he waited until she turned 18 to tap that shit? Really?

[ShortRoundChief]

Originally Posted by RockChalk

Only one thing is for certain here: this girl will never have any sort of a "normal" life from this point on.

Really? How did you arrive at that conclusion?

[ShortRoundChief]

I heard her father caught her posting some shit about him on Facebook. Afterwards, he made a video of him shooting her laptop.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by frazod

This may be legal, but it is definitely ****ed up and deeply wrong. People like cops, coaches and teachers who have positions of authority over children and abuse them for their own sexual gratification should be held to a higher standard.

The standard I have in mind would leave them publicly twitching at the end of a rope.

I definitely agree in theory that you have to keep a distance, but I've always wondered about teachers' situations and how difficult it is over the course of a career. More so at the college level, but I guess at the upper high school level as well.

You're a teacher who teaches 3 courses, and there are 10 females in each course. You get to know them over the course of 16 weeks or so. Now multiply this by 3 semesters a year over the course of a 30-year teaching career.

You've now gotten the opportunity to meet and know almost 3,000 young women. If you ascribe to the theory that there's not just one woman in the world for every man and that (for example) 1 percent of women are good marriage material for you, the odds are pretty good that you'll see 30 women over the course of that career that you fall in love with during those 16 weeks. It doesn't seem infeasible that sparks could ignite.

The numbers are different for high school, but the theory's the same. I wonder how many high school teachers and college professors, if being completely honest, would tell you that they've had a crush on X number of students in their career, even if the majority never act on it.

In my grad school, two professors ended up marrying students in my class, plus or minus a year. It was minorly scandalous, particularly since one of them had been married, but life went on for them.

cdcox, what say you?

[ChiefsHawk]

snaggletooth....pass

[Bump]

Originally Posted by frazod

Do you really believe he waited until she turned 18 to tap that shit? Really?

well this site eagerly anticipates when a hot celebrity chick is about to turn 18. Have you forgotten the threads like "Miley Cyrus is 3 months away from 18!!!!"

[RockChalk]

Originally Posted by J Diddy

Really? How did you arrive at that conclusion?

Do you seriously believe that their relationship is going to work out? This guy has been "courting" her since she was 15. Now it may have started off as innocent, and she may very well initiated taking things to a more serious level, but it was all guided by an adult. A teacher at that. This girl has no clue what she wants, because in all likelihood, he may be all that she's ever had.

Things will end between them, and a messed up teenager will be all that is left.

[saphojunkie]

Originally Posted by frazod

This may be legal, but it is definitely ****ed up and deeply wrong. People like cops, coaches and teachers who have positions of authority over children and abuse them for their own sexual gratification should be held to a higher standard.

The standard I have in mind would leave them publicly twitching at the end of a rope.

They ARE held to a higher standard, usually by school policy. If this happened in Texas, however, he could be sentenced to up to TWENTY YEARS in prison. Texas removed the age provision when passing anti-student/teacher relationship legislation about five years ago.

[GloryDayz]

They're of legal age.... Let's move along; nothing to see here!

[Frosty]

Something like this happened at my school when I was in high school. When I was a junior, my chemistry teacher married one of his former students a couple of months after she graduated. Rumors were that they married so quickly because she was pregnant. I don't know if that's true, though. He was single so didn't leave a wife for the student like this guy did.

He was teaching the next year, so nothing was done about it. Nothing was really even said about it. This was in 1981, though. Times change.

[Kyle DeLexus]

Originally Posted by Frosty

Something like this happened at my school when I was in high school. When I was a junior, my chemistry teacher married one of his former students a couple of months after she graduated. Rumors were that they married so quickly because she was pregnant. I don't know if that's true, though. He was single so didn't leave a wife for the student like this guy did.

He was teaching the next year, so nothing was done about it. Nothing was really even said about it. This was in 1981, though. Times change.

That same situation happened in the 90's in a neighboring town from where I grew up. Then when I was in school, one of the teachers decided he was going to leave at the end of the year and then knocked up a married teacher and a student. He ended up marrying the student.