Petah Tikva teacher fired for having threesome with students

A 43-year-old English teacher from Petah Tikva was fired after being convicted by the Civil Service Commission of having a threesome with two 17-year-old students from her school.

The female teacher, who has not been named, admitted to having sex with two male students in a plea deal following a months-long investigation and was immediately fired. As a result, she will never be able to work for the Education Ministry again, is forbidden from working with children and youth for eight years, and will be unable to work for the state for three years.

Speaking to Hebrew media, the teacher apologized for the incident, saying it was a “one-time thing” and that she didn’t want to “harm [her] family.”

She told Ynet that the incident had ruined her life.

Channel 12 reported that a criminal investigation was opened months ago but was closed due to a lack of criminal guilt.

The teacher’s lawyer told Ynet that the prosecutor closed the case because she “understood pretty quickly that the actions were done with consent and that she was not their direct teacher.”

The legal age of consent in Israel is 16, but it can be as low as 14 if there is a three-year age gap or less, and all parties fully consent.

However, a Civil Service Commission tribunal ruled that the teacher’s actions “radically exceeded the basic professional boundaries required of a teacher in her position.”

The verdict added that the teacher’s inappropriate behavior began with smoking with students in the school before she started a personal relationship with students on social media and invited two to her home, where they had sex with her while a third watched.

The Education Ministry said that the teacher also admitted to driving the students to parties she attended.

Channel 12 reported that the teacher’s inappropriate interactions with students began in September of last year and ended in January.

“This is exceptionally grave behavior that grossly betrays the public’s trust in the whole education system and particularly that of the parents who entrust their kids to the school’s teachers,” the verdict said.

It added that the commission took the teacher’s personal circumstances as a mother of two children aged 8 and 11 into account.

The Education Ministry added in a comment on the affair that the teacher said in a hearing that she had sex with the students because her husband was in reserve duty and she felt “lonely and in crisis.”

“The ministry looks severely upon any deviation from the teaching values and the trust placed in education staff,” the ministry said.

“In this case, the ministry led a thorough disciplinary process that ended with the decision to fire her and distance her entirely from the education system. The ministry will continue to work diligently to preserve the purity of the education system, the students’ safety and wellbeing, and the public’s trust in teachers.”

The father of one of the students told Channel 12 that he had never imagined something like this could happen at their kid’s school.

“We don’t know her because she wasn’t our son’s teacher; it’s just hard to believe this incident is real,” he said.

One of the students involved told the publication that the incident was “well-known around the school” and that “everyone talked about it.”

“She flirted with us. We would smoke with her during recess. We felt like she was our friend,” he said. “I don’t know a student our age who wouldn’t have sex with a teacher who looks like that and who initiated the relationship.”

Yael Tal-Po’a, head of the education division in the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, told the Maariv news outlet that she considered the incident rape.

“There could not have been free consent in this relationship by its nature. It’s clear to all of us that if this had been a male teacher and female students” there would have been a much more severe reaction, she said.

“The denial of abuse of male students normalizes their assault. Even if the vulnerability is different among boys and girls, the lack of social recognition of boys’ abuse exaggerates the trauma and leads to underreporting. The fact that the punishment was presented as severe when the teacher hadn’t even been permanently forbidden from working with minors is inconceivable and shows the commission’s leniency when dealing with abuse of boys and men.”