Happily Ever After: Myth, Rape, and Romance in the Mary K. Letourneau Case.

This study draws on previous research that argues journalists rely on myth to tell stories, explain the unexplainable, and reaffirm social ideals. We analyze articles in Time and People magazines of a teacher/student rape case that does not fit cultural perceptions of rape because the teacher is a woman convicted of raping her 12-year-old male student. The story is unusual since our cultural understanding of rape points to men as perpetrators. The research illustrates how journalists rely on rape misconceptions and myths of proper (hetero)sexual roles, including the Good Mother and Heroine in romantic fairy tales, to report this story. We argue journalists do this in an effort to make sense of the tale but in doing so ultimately construct a narrative that erased the seriousness of the crime and turned a tale of rape into a romance the (re)established masculine hegemony. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]