There Are Female Sexual Predators in Our Midst
And most people have trouble believing they exist
Janice Fiamengo, Mar 15, 2025
Jacqueline Ma, 35 [pictured above], was an elementary school “Teacher of the Year” who pled guilty, last month, to sexually abusing two boys, aged 11 and 12. She had previously been facing 19 felony counts, but ended up pleading to four. It is a notable case not only because of the boys’ youth and the severity of her abuse, but also because little effort has been made in news reports to excuse or soften what Ma did.
I have been unable to find in any of the reports an expert quoted to say how rare it is for adult women to abuse boys of 11 and 12. (Actually, as I’ll show, it’s not that rare.)
So far, there has been no mention of mitigating circumstances that reduce Ma’s culpability: a difficult childhood, abusive boyfriend, or history of mental illness.
The prosecution, in initially asking for a sentence of 180 years (which one report called “staggering”), did not seem softened by the sight of Ma’s tear-stained face. Even after she entered her sobbing guilty plea, she is still expected to receive “30 years to life” when she is sentenced in early May. We’ll see what actually happens then.
Thus far, Ma has been written about, without special pleading, as a dangerous woman who irreparably damaged the lives of two young boys.
That is a small step forward, given our cultural propensity to make excuses for vicious women and to downplay or outright dismiss the harm they cause.
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There were, however, a number of red flags apparent to those of us concerned with men’s and boys’ issues. For example, the Daily Mail characterized Ma’s crimes (twice) as “sexual relationships.” It’s impossible to imagine any male teacher who committed statutory rape and assault of young girls having his crimes called relationships.
Moreover, it was often difficult to tell from the reporting what Ma’s offences actually were, and I remain uncertain whether the vagueness was due to sloppy reporting, squeamishness about child sexual abuse, or reluctance to expose a woman’s bad actions.
A relatively substantial news item in the New York Post, for example, never revealed the basis for the charges, mentioning love letters, explicit texts, and sexy pictures only. Readers could have been left with the impression that the “relationships” were carried on at a distance—weird and wrong, perhaps, but not depraved.
The Daily Mail was similarly vague, telling readers no more than that “Ma is said to have had a months-long relationship with the boy and sent him explicit pictures of her, asking him to do the same back.” In addition to the focus on the pictures, it’s not clear why the journalist chose the passive voice (“is said to have had …”) as if the abuse were an allegation only. Ma has confessed to sending the pictures—and to much more than that.
It takes some digging to discover that Ma, in fact, “pleaded guilty to oral copulation and sexual intercourse with a minor student. She also admitted to causing another student to touch [himself] and to possessing matter depicting a minor in sexual conduct.” This was a woman who had sexual intercourse and oral intercourse with a 12-year-old boy and would almost certainly have done the same, if she’d had the chance, with the 11-year-old she had begun grooming around the same time. Upon learning of her guilty plea, some students from her school went on record to say that she had had a history of unusually close relationships with students and former students. “Maybe whatever’s been going on has been going on for a long time,” speculated one. In other words, there may well be other victims, going back years.
One unfortunate result of the guilty plea is that much about Ma’s actions will probably never be known, and although it is likely a relief to the victims to be spared the ordeal of a trial, an important opportunity for public understanding has been lost. The prosecution has had in its possession the messages exchanged between Ma and the students. In one of these, one of the boys was provoked to write “Sometimes I think you don’t understand that I am a kid still.” What exactly had caused him to say that? What did she respond? Were there other instances of the boys expressing unease? We will probably never learn what was in most of the messages.
