My Affair With My 16-Year-Old Student
Totally legal. Completely ethical.
Please be reassured that this is a serious article about ethics. It contains no lurid sexual descriptions and no glorification of any form of exploitation. No exploitation was involved. Everything that happened was entirely legal here in England.
This article contains merely my straightforward and honest attempt to sketch the legal situation and explain why I don’t personally believe there was anything unethical about our relationship. Many people will probably wish to condemn me for ever entering into such a relationship. But do their objections hold up to scrutiny?
In my early 40s, whilst working as a teacher at an 11–18 school here in England, I was in a sexual relationship with one of my 16-year-old students. For the purposes of this article, I’ll refer to her as Samantha. Her real name will remain a secret.
“How did you get away with it?” you might ask.
The answer is simple. I’d done nothing wrong. It was all perfectly legal — and, in my view, perfectly ethical too.
Perhaps you live in a country or state where the age of consent is 17, 18, or even higher. But here, the age of consent is 16.
