Digital Age Adds New Dimension to Incidents of Staff-Student Sex

The 44-year-old guidance counselor would send text messages to the 15-year-old boy on the boy’s cellphone in the middle of the school day. But the messages had nothing to do with academics or counseling.

With words along the lines of “see u soon” and “how about now?,” the female counselor would then arrange to get the boy a pass to leave class and come to her office. Sometimes, she and the student would have sexual contact in her office. Other times, she took him off campus to have sex.

“Text messaging actually made it much easier for the liaisons to take place,” said Mary Jo McGrath, an education lawyer in Santa Barbara, Calif., who testified as an expert witness for the boy’s family in their lawsuit against the New Jersey school district where he was a...