California Agriculture Teacher Given 5-Month Sentence, Had Sex With Underage Student

Merced, CA – Melody Carter-McCabe was arrested and retained on a $250,000 bail last summer for allegedly engaging in a relationship with one of her students. The 27-year-old carried on a yearlong sexual relationship with a 15-year-old beginning back in 2010. McCabe was the boy’s mentor in the Future Farmers of America program.

The Livingston High School agriculture teacher initially faced up to 12 years in prison if convicted, as she had been charged with nine felony counts of unlawful sex with a minor.

However Monday, after McCabe pled no contest to the charges, a judge sentenced the former educator to five months in the Merced County jail. She is scheduled to report to the jail on Thursday to start her detainment and will be given credit for any time she’s already served leading up to the sentencing. After release, McCabe will be under a five year felony probation but will not have to register as a sexual offender.

There is a growing prevalence of female teachers who are criminally exploiting underage students. Women are rarely seen as predators or as potential threats against children as they are wholesomely categorized as mothers or nurturers, seen as incapable of such reprehensible behavior.

McCabe is a mother of a 6-year-old, yet she still repeatedly performed illicit sexual acts with a teenager while under the auspices of mentoring him.

Is there more institutional denial on school campuses as to the possibility of a female teacher victimizing her students? As reported recently in The Inquisitr a former teacher, Kimberly Crain, aided a pedophile named Gary Doby in the exploitation of several of her female third graders, even video-chatting with Doby via Skype from her work computer in the classroom. The girls knew him as Uncle G.

Last November, 28-year-old Stephanie Fletcher, a biology teacher at Walton High School in Walton, New York was arrested on allegations of having sex with two 16-year-old students at times between class breaks or during study halls.

Fletcher was charged with two counts of third-degree rape, one count of a third-degree criminal sexual act, and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

In many of these cases, the female teachers are not nearly as demonized or branded with the same level of perversion as male teachers who are equally old enough to know better.

Female predators hunt with the similar cunning as their male counterparts – targeting vulnerabilities within impressionable children they can easily manipulate, keying in on those with early development and exploitable sexual interest. Many demonstrate the same techniques of gradualism and flirting when grooming a potential target, according to Psychology Today.

However, motivations behind the pursuit can differ between the sexes. The female can be drawn towards the urge to care for a male student from a broken home, which then de-evolves into sexual comforting. Or, in cases where the female teacher has been flagrantly promiscuous, it can be assessed she isn’t necessarily seeking the physical intimacy as much as fulfilling an emotional and psychological need of her own weakened self-esteem and a blatant neediness to feel desired. As was the case with Fletcher, who was married, having an extra-marital affair with a co-worker, all alongside having sexual trysts with minors.

Regardless of the motivations, educators of either sex should be held to a professional standard and be held equally accountable for their actions if they violate physical and ethical student teacher boundaries.

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