The leafy lanes of rural Rhode Island are not normally abuzz with scandal. But last week was no ordinary week.
A high school gym teacher, married to a neighboring district's former teacher of the year, was in court on March 25 to face accusations that she had sex with a student. The 39-year-old mother of a young son admitted sending the teenage boy naked photos of herself but pleaded not guilty to sexual abuse.
Three hundred miles to the west, in the Philadelphia suburbs, a similar scene was playing out.
There, on the following day, a 36-year-old former teacher was arrested on allegations of a sexual relationship with her student in 2021. The accuser claimed that the pair had sexual encounters in her car and in classrooms - including, according to a report, the one in which her husband, also a teacher, proposed to her. She denied the allegations, according to the affidavit, and is yet to appear in court.
What is going on? If the allegations are true, is this a dark new 'trend' - an epidemic of female teachers preying on their students?
No, says Dr Laura Berman, a sex therapist and author. That doesn't, however, make it any less disturbing.
'It has always happened,' she told the Daily Mail. 'But a lot of adult men who had these kinds of things happen to them when they were young thought they were supposed to be high-fiving, and proud of 'getting with the hot teacher.'
'It's only in recent years that boys and men are even able to conceptualize this as abusive, let alone bring it forward and come out with it.'
It is a grossly under-reported and under-analyzed phenomenon, she said. Young men have traditionally been reluctant to see such encounters as abuse and bring them to the attention of investigators. Researchers have not been encouraged to investigate the full scale of the problem.
But what evidence there is suggests the issue of female teachers sexually abusing their students is more widespread than many may think.
Between April 2023 to April 2024 there were 468 reports of sexual misconduct by teachers and other school employees, according to analyst Billie-Jo Grant, a leading expert in school employee sexual misconduct prevention. A quarter of those complaints - 113 cases - involved a female abuser, she found.
'Even 20 years ago, if a male teacher had sexual relations with a female student, there would be no question that it should be reported,' said Berman. 'In general, men and boys will report sexual abuse at a one to five ratio, compared to girls.'
Berman also said that those who have been abused themselves are more likely to abuse others later in life, and in some cases, may still be stuck in a childlike mental state.
She said: 'It is almost universal that every sexual abuser or molester has been abused or molested. And so these women who are molesting these young boys, I guarantee you, the majority of the time, they are victims with unresolved trauma and abuse themselves.'
Berman said their past did not excuse their actions, but it perhaps helped to understand them.
'There is a way in which a part of ourselves stays at the age we were before the trauma happened,' she said.
'So in many cases these women, these predators, are emotionally teenagers themselves. They're the 'cool' teachers because they're like kids themselves. And they're very emotionally immature.'
Berman also pointed out that modern technology was making liaisons with teachers and other members of staff easier to initiate.
'In the classrooms of old, you had to keep the kid after school or for some extracurricular activity to build that relationship,' she said. 'Now the teachers are on social media, and the pupils can just slide into their DMs. Teachers are on TikTok or Snapchat, sending vanishing messages. There's a myriad of ways of generating these intimate, emotional connections.'
Social media certainly played a part in the Rhode Island case, according to the affidavit.
Prosecutors claim that Alisha Crins communicated with the child from the time he was in tenth grade 'via text message and through social media.'
Crins, who taught at Ponaganset high school, 20 miles west of Providence, allegedly was flirtatious with the boy, telling him, according to court documents, that he 'looked good.' She allegedly asked to borrow his sweatshirts, and once wanted to wear his athletic jersey during the school's pep rally.
At prom, witnesses recalled Crins’s inappropriate slow dancing with the teenage football player in front of stunned classmates.
On her birthday she allegedly asked him for a kiss and the teenager drove to her house in the Providence suburb of Cranston. Crins climbed into the car and - allegedly telling the child: ‘I can’t believe I’m going to do this - you can’t tell anybody’ - kissed him for 15 minutes.
Crins is accused of having bombarded the boy with texts after their initial encounter, saying according to the complaint that she ‘can’t stop thinking about him’ and ‘his lips,’ and noting that she was ‘impressed’ the child was a ‘good kisser.’
She is also accused of inviting the boy to her home once more and, after kissing in his car, climbing into the back seat and perching on his lap. They did not, however, ever have sex.
Crins pleaded not guilty to two counts of third-degree sexual assault.
In the New Jersey case, Ashley Fisler, a social studies teacher at Orchard Valley Middle School, is accused of having multiple sexual encounters with the boy aged 13-16 in 2021.
The boy told police they twice had intercourse and oral sex in her car, and twice she performed oral sex on him in her classroom.
The classroom appears to be the one where, in November 2018, now-husband Paul Fisler proposed to her in front of her stunned pupils.
Fisler left the school in 2023 and launched her own business selling unofficial merchandise for the Philadelphia Eagles; she also worked with her husband’s landscaping company.
She remains in jail awaiting her next hearing.
On Friday her lawyer Rocco Cipparone told the New York Post that she plans to ‘aggressively present a defense to those charges.’
The Daily Mail has reached out to Cipparone for comment.
Of course New Jersey is no stranger to such cases - nor indeed is any state.
In April 2024 married New Jersey teacher Jessica Sawicki 37 was arrested after police found her half-naked in the back seat of a teenager's car at a wildlife refuge.
The mother-of-two who worked at Hamilton High School West in Mercer County allegedly admitted to police she and the student had 'unprotected' sex at least five times.
Monmouth County prosecutors told the Daily Mail that Sawicki was sentenced to five years in state prison and placed on the sex offenders register.
That same month in Nebraska a 45-year-old substitute teacher Erin Ward was arrested after being caught naked in the back seat with a teen boy.
Ward who was married at the time to a Department of Defense official was arrested at the scene by police.
In November 2024 she pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting a minor and in January 2025 was sentenced to three years probation for felony child abuse.
In Arizona meanwhile three teachers from the same town Buckeye were charged with committing crimes against students.
Alyssa Todd then 23 was caught by her husband—a teacher at the same school—abusing a 15-year-old boy. He found handwritten notes from the boy in her possessions and then saw messages on her laptop.
Prosecutors claimed the pair “would sit in her car and sneak into her husband’s office at the school to kiss each other.”
She bought condoms for a planned encounter and investigators found a used condom in her car containing both of their DNA.
The pair however told investigators according to local news website In Buckeye that “only grinding occurred.”
She was sentenced to three years in prison in July 2025.
A second teacher at Odyssey Institute for Advanced and International Studies Jessica Kramer was 42 when she was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old male student.
She was also sentenced to three years.
And a teacher’s aide Diana Pirvu 23 was spared prison despite similar accusations involving a 13-year-old.
Pirvu was offered a plea deal due to police errors prosecutors said.
And last month a special education teacher in Wisconsin was charged with multiple child sex crimes.
Nadia Horn a 22-year-old teacher at Eau Claire North High School was accused of abusing two 16-year-old boys and one of the students told police that Horn did ‘everything sexual you can do with a person.’
According to a criminal complaint obtained by WEAU News she confessed to having sex with two minor students last month including times when both were in the same room.
She was arrested on March 25 but posted a $15,000 cash bond and was released.
After her arrest the Eau Claire Area School District sent a letter informing families that Horn would be suspended without pay as they await the outcome of the legal case , WEAU reported .
Her charges include second-degree sexual assault of a child under 16 , two counts of child enticement and two counts of sexual assault by someone who works or volunteers with children .
If convicted , she faces up to four decades in prison and/or a $100 ,000 fine . She is scheduled to appear in court on May 20 .
Berman said with more cases being reported , it's had an effect on society's overall attitude towards female teachers' predatory behavior in general . She said : 'There persisted this myth that boys were just supposed to be excited for any sexual contact ; that it was something to brag about , rather than feel victimized by . 'But that's beginning to shift , with education and with society . Attitudes are changing .'