I'm not sure what I think of this particular story.

I was looking through some news websites and came across this article about a teacher that was arrested charged with inappropriate sexual behavior with a student. I read the article (there was video but I'll get to that in a moment) and it seemed like a cut and dry case. The Escondido California teacher, 35, was accused of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with an underage girl when she was 16. The 16-month relationship started in 2007 and the victim described two incidents of sexual contact.

It seemed pretty simple to me but when I read the comments left, it showed another picture. To say people blamed the victim would be an understatement. Of the 22 comments left, only 2 barely gave sympathy to the victim. While the majority fell the teacher should be fired, the focus on the almost three year 'relationship' with only two incidents of contact at that time, and the usual refrain of 'have you seen what young people wear today' and 'if she was with him for so long without saying anything means something else happened to the nice arrangement' had me a bit hot under the collar. I couldn't believe the harsh stance of the people making comments.

At this point I watched the two video news reports of the events, and probably because I read so many comments questioning motives, when I watched the two reports I found myself being less sympathetic to the victim. The victim was out of state and had come back to the area to visit and this is when she pressed charges. It seemed odd to me that within an almost three year time span there were only two sexual incidents mentioned by the victim. To put an even stranger spin on things, one supposedly happened in the classroom with students, but was 'digital stimulation' according to the police, the other, which also happened in the classroom but with no other students present, was oral copulation.

I'm listening to all this and my cynical nature wondered, like the people commenting, about the savvy of the victim. It wasn't just the why wait so long issue but I started thinking about teenagers I have seen in the past few days. It's killer hot out here and seeing some of them you kind of wonder why their parents would let them dress like they do. Admittedly, this is the thinking of an old fart, but it would be the same line of thought a lot of people might use.

This all reminds me of a LA Law episode where an older man was accused of rape and when the accuser, a 16 year old, went into court, she was all pig-tails, glasses and looked just like everyone's little ray of sunshine. The LA Law lawyer was losing the case, and morally felt bad because he felt he was defending someone, the man, who should have known this little girl was underage. When they got hold of surveillance photos (this was , of course, before everyone carried cellphone cameras) and the girl was ordered to be presented in court the way she looked at the time of the incident, it was a different story. Looking at her she didn't look like the innocent. While she was scared, that didn't hide the fact it was impossible to see her as a 16 year old.

Now, I'm not condoning the actions of the teacher. Considering he didn't meet her at a bar but in the classroom, it would be fairly obvious to assume he knew she was underage. I don't care if she came to class in a wet T-shirt looking like Denise Richards from Cruel Intentions, she was in a classroom which just signals underage and you don't touch.

What is disturbing is how many people are willing to look for something, anything to put blame on th victim.