The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 16

THE GUARDIAN Tuesday February 16 1988 Fighting sexual harassment in class School for sex In LA, former junk dealers have become the city's finest antiquarian booksellers Word power 16 TUESDAY WOMEN Lucy O'Brien pappy, white, bespectacled bloke, and, after he said that, I was shaking, feeling really dirty. The fact that be told me somehow included me in his sense of guilt." A teacher's sexual advances Hollywood, in Anaheim. Two of the youngest, Ben and Louis, now own Heritage, and Jerry runs it with them. Jerry led the way. In 1961 when their father died, Jerry went out to Gary, Indiana, to bury him and to empty out the old junk shop he had on Skid Row there: old towels, pillows, sheets, coats.

He hauled much of it back to LA and, with his younger brother, Ben, opened up a junk shop in the rough area of Compton. you don't have anything," Ben says, "you're not afraid of anyone taking On his rounds one day, Jerry found 5,000 dirty old books for sale in a basement, a nickel apiece. "Books to me then," says Jerry, fat and cheerful, "were like old toasters and irons. Hey, this was pretty nice. Gee, you pay five cents a book and you get 50 cents, even a dollar." Young Louis was summoned to join them.

Jerry says: "I was young, I had other things on my mind a woman, gambling and dissipation, so I gave my share over to him." Compton was not much of a place for a bookseller; they got rid of the old toasters and rubbish and moved out to Hollywood Boulevard. Jerry eventually opened another bookstore nearby: Book City, a marvellous shop, full of rickety and crowded rooms, winding stairs, 100,000 books and an old piano that jazz bums wander in to play. His sister runs that now. Jerry came back to Ben and Louis to run Heritage. "Look, there are used furniture stores and antique dealers," says Jerry.

"A Louis XIV desk is a piece of used furniture. Only it isn't. And there's Book City and there's Heritage." All the brothers are shy of ALWAYS did what he told me. I trusted him." This was one of the most memorable lines 18-year- old Aneela Page uttered before Liverpool Crown Court found her guilty of helping her teacher-lover murder his wife. Philip Ashcroft, a 31-year-old biology teacher and leader of the brass band in which Angela played flugel horn, was sent down for life, and she was detained at Her Majesty's pleasure.

Whether their relationship was a genuine love affair or a teenage infatuation which went tragically wrong, it gave the tabloid press a welcome opportunity to revive the myth of the schoolgirl Lolita, implying that Angela was the gymslip sweetheart and marriage-breaker from the fifth form. Extreme though it is, the court case exposes an issue which has literally slipped through the investigative net. Very little is known about teacher-pupil love affairs, and the extent to which sexual harassment is an issue for the classroom as well as the workplace. Like the recent revelations of child abuse, there is mounting evidence that sexual exploitation at school is a much bigger problem than previously supposed. Ironically, the most dramatic analysis of the issue appeared in Channel 4's soap opera, Brookside, in which the pugnacious Billy Corkhill had to face the fact that his wayward daughter Tracy was in love with her teacher.

For a tense month, the Corkhills had to forget fiddling the electric meter and deal with a more devastating family problem. The Brookside saga reflected a relatively common teenage experience. Alison, who is now in her early twenties and works as an art editor for a commercial women's magazine, recalls prolonged sexual harassment at school in East Grinstead, Sussex, when a popular, jolly English teacher took to following her home and sitting outside her house in his car. "When he first cornered me," she says, "he told me I was his dreamgirl, and 'I can't stop thinking about you when I make love to my I. was totally revolted.

He was a PICTURE BY GARRY WEASER but the problem Is often there, waiting In the classroom. The tabloid Lolita may be so going to the teacher's house became a regular thing. And when the sex started I couldn't drop out of it because I needed him, the talks and the affection." Her sixteenth birthday was a turning point. I think he had it planned. After my last O-levels, he took me for a celebratory drink, then to his house, where he seduced me.

I couldn't cope with it. The sex part was the worst thing, and after a while it became the only thing! He'd got what he wanted and all the talking had gone. That's when I realised I was being used." Tired of the affair and intend ing to pre-empt school gossip, the teacher informed the head mistress that stress of O-levels had driven Caroline to halluci nate and imagine the affair. I was asked to make a statement. Being over 16, yet under 18, my parents had to sign it.

The can have a damaging effect on a pupu academic performance. Alison remembers that he passed her a love letter during her O-level English exam, undermining her confidence. When Alison reported the incident to the headmaster she was told: "A young woman oF your age should be flattered." According to Alison, "they wanted to sweep it under the carpet, and made me feel a silly hysterical girl for bringing it up in tne iirst place. Caroline Watson is another woman who was caught in the. school crossfire.

Her story goes beyond Harassment ana reveals the blurs, loopholes and injustices of our legal system. She's the brain behind Britain's first campaign network for women who are, or have been, involved with their teachers. It is called simply Teachers And Girls (TAG), Now 27 and a postgraduate student at Newcastle University, Caroline recalls her days at an all-girl school near Nottingham and the problems she en- -countered with a "lounge lizard in leather He was the music teacher, attractive with a flashing charisma which he cultivated the mad musician with violent displays of temper who used to throw things and couldn't remember what he'd done." He commanded the church choir and a musical clique who were in awe of him including Caroline, who became head chorister and favourite pupil. We'd talk about politics and religion. He was the first man I'd spoken to on an equal basis who seemed to understand me.

I'd heard rumours of his affairs with former pupils, but this somehow added to the excitement." More interested in his libido than his lesson plans, Caroline's teacher persuaded her to visit his house during free peri ods and drink homemade wine. I thought it was weird, but when you're that age you do what teachers tell you." To some extent Caroline saw her teacher as a father figure. I was unhappy at home, I didn't get on with my parents, The men's anger at what they saw as a breach of the marital contract was matched by that of their wives. One said: "No matter how tired I am when I come home from work, when he wants to have sex, I'd better get up in that bedroom and perform. Now, when I want to have sex, that's a different matter." A woman lawyer said: "It's like he's afraid when he sees me winning.

Three months ago, I got a really big case. He never congratulated me at all, just sort of grunted when I told him. Later in an argument, do you know what he said 'Just because you're handling a big case now, you don't know So what has gone wrong with the egalitarian marriage According to Ms Campbell's research, it comes down to. a power struggle: who comes first in a marriage of equals Husbands who were originally committed to an equal relationship dislike what they regard as their loss of control and privileges, feel neglected, and are threatened by their wives' growing independenceand success. had seven years of just the two of us and her career.

I felt it was time for a more traditional life," said one husband.) Wives find they don't, after all, have the kind of equality, they thought they were promised and feel let down by their husbands having withdrawn their support. Their bewilderment is compounded by guilt at having all the ingredients women's magazines tell them should make life exciting husband, children, wonderful job and not making the mix ture work. There are too lew Husbands of career wives are fighting to regain their dominance Who is first among equals Linda Blandford yNTHE outskirts of this, largely godless and un-read, city an extraordinary sale has been going on. The books, manuscripts and prizes of the Estelle Doheny Collection have been auctioned by Christie's of Beverly Hills to raise money lor the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Fifteenth century books, fine buildings, first editions, private press books, slim volumes and minor classics: a great collection is scattered again by the winds of fortune and death.

Edward Doheny said that his finest discovery was not oil but his wife. Photographs of Estelle came Betzold Doheny show a forbidding and Victorian matron, ample and strong, and pretty charmless. But she' amassed fantastic treasures in this restless frontier town trpasures left not in perpetuity behind glass in a dusty seminary but as a living gift to be used as needed 25 years after her death. So now it is all being sold to help His fight on the rough and secular streets of this sprawling city. Dealers have come from across the world for the sales.

The Bel Air Hotel is full of them, enjoying the gliding swans, the tiny banana muffins for breakfast, among the rich and knowing. It is therefore, a local's pleasure to report that well-represented among the Doheny buyers, have been the former junk dealers and rag and bone men of east LA now the city's finest antiquarian booksellers, the Weinsteins of the Heritage Book Shop. The Heritage is housed in a cottage on Melrose Avenue these days, a huge, restored "cottage" modelled on a cross between a Tudor Churclf and a Norman barn (usual LA historic detail). It has vaulted timbers, stained glass windows, a hard and worn floor. It was a famous Hollywood mortuary for years.

Spencer Tracy's last days were spent here. It is hard to tell the story of the Weinsteins, largely because there are so many of them now: sons, nephews, sisters-in-law. Originally there were eight brothers and sisters. Their mother drowned in the bathtub when they were young: their father's small radio shop burnt down six months later. The children were scattered to the wind.

One or two stayed together: there was an aunt herb, an uncle there. All of which makes it even more amazing that most of them are here now in Los Angeles. They run between them wondertui old bookstores in the Valley, in Pauline Willis Publications What Bin Eves You've Got ed. by Fitzgerald Maloney (Overdue, 3.95) Prose and poems all about grandmothers. A collection, bv 50 writers, of fiction and life-stories covering a range of styles and ideas.

Overdue Books (0422 844089) is funded by Yorkshire, Northern and North West Arts and their books especially feature the work of northern women writers. A Dream Of Belonging by Janina Bauman (Virago, 4.95) Bauman: flight from Poland Janina Bauman lives in Leeds having left Poland in 1968 when increasing anti-Semitism forced her and her family to leave. This second volume of her autobiography recounts her postwar years in Poland, Israel and Britain and is in the same simple, moving style as Winter In The Morning: A Young Girl's Life In The Warsaw Ghetto and Beyond (Pavanne). Janina Bau man will be at the Library Theatre. Tudor Sauare.

Shef field, on Thursday at 7.30 pm. women atlgue (Papermac, 5.95) If you are not feeling too tired to read 319 pages by an American doctor and medical journal Teachers have to have a good working relationship and any thing beyond that would be un professional. Obviously sometimes there are genuine cases, but a teacher must exercise restraint and not exploit the pupil's respect." Deliberate acts of interference are allegedly rare, but teachers abusing pu pils often do so under mental strain or The effect on schoolgirls in such cases is often lasting and probably incalculable. In set ting up the TAG network, Caro line Watson aims to cut down pupil isolation. She hopes to advise girls on the problems that might arise should they tell the school, or their parents.

But first," she says, tell someone. Get an adult on your side." TAG (Teachers And Girls), co Caroline Watson, Percy Building, Dept of English, Newcastle upon Tyne University. PICTURE BY NEIL LIBBERT husband like someone I was managing," said one. Stage three is all-out war when both partners sometimes turn to adultery as an outlet for hurt feelings. Even at this apparent point of no-return, a backlash marriage can be saved.

But, warns Bebe Moore Campbell, it means bringing the issues out of the closet, admitting guilt, hammering out terms and learning it's not always what you say, it's the way that you say it. "I feel I need more help with the housework" is less antagonistic for instance, than "you never help me with the housework' Couples aren't helped by society's attitude to dual-career marriages; working mothers are still made to feel guilty; men still find it professionally unacceptable to take time off to look after sick children. Practically there are still far too few creches at work and insufficient day-care for young children. But career-minded couples now about to skid to a halt halfway up the aisle should take reassurance from the fact that dual-career marriages based on friendship can be happy. I actually know some.

The world is not yet full of successful working wives claiming their husbands don't understand them or warding melted chocolate. Successful Women, Angry Men published by Arrow, 2.95. I've met girls since who the same thing happened to. This man had a whole history of exploitation. It was then I realised it wasn't fay ault." Male teachers, especially those who work in a girls' school, can be a risk; to a teenager testing her sexuality they can seem exciting, mature, and a liberating experience.

The problem arises, when a teacher abuses the power projected on to him. Because pupils always move on, schools tend to protect the teacher, hoping the problem will simply disappear. For the National Union of Teachers, the position is unequivocal. There are two categories," says Graham Clayton of the union's legal department, those involving a criminal offence with under-16s and the more difficult area of sixth-formers. As a rule we're against teacher-pupil affairs.

the struggle for equality at home riage is capable of being saved if both partners are aware that the divorce time bomb has been set and, unless stopped, will tick on to destruction. Stage one is when husbands, trying to regain the dominance they once gracefully abdicated, abandon household responsibilities and take up psychological warfare. They start subtly criticising their wives, pressurising them to put home before work. (One husband more understandingly said: "I think the woman should have a career but maybe something that runs nine to Wives tend to avoid a head-on clash by turning themselves into instant wonder-woman, trying frenziedly to do a superlative job at home and at work. This leads to fatigue, sexual shut-down and a sharp rise, in America at least, of stress management seminars on "The After-Effects of the Superwo-man Stage two is when subtle criticism turns into unleashed hostility from husbands who are furious at getting what they see (and quite rightly sometimes) as their wives' leftover time, enthusiasm and attention.

The men's attack, directed smack at their wives' jobs, reflects their insecurity, particularly if a wife earns more. Wives admit their husbands have occasional justification for anger. "There have been times that I've had trouble shifting gears and I'd treat my off is teacher threatened to sue my mother if she signed, and, already unsympathetic to me, her whorish daughter, she didn't sign' After a governors' inquiry, Caroline was suspended for making allegations about a member of staff. My education was she says. Nobody did anything.

Everybody church, school, family all the institutions you're taught to rely on, let me down. They didn't want to sacrifice a good music teacher who was fine for their reputation. There are so many complications that a 16-year-old doesn't understand. At that age you have no power but you're not protected by the law." After moving to the local technical college where she got A-level grades well below her capacity, it took Caroline a long time to regain her intellectual and emotional confidence. and nightly rows.

There are rows over whose turn it is to see to the child; who should take time off to take it to the doctor when ill; whether the wife is being too possessive over the child. The rows often begin with the pregnancy itself. One woman told Bebe Moore Campbell that the first thing her husband said to her, on hearing the news, was that she would not have to work. She recalls: "And I remember thinking: 'What does he mean I want to work. He knows that What's he talking Ms Campbell's own memories (her first dual-career marriage ended in divorce) sum up what the AB wives told her: "Before the baby there had been sharing and equality and time for making dinner, for making love.

Before the baby there had been the apartment that would sparkle from a monthly wipe with a damp paper towel. Whose turn to put the two plates, two forks and two cups in the dishwasher Before the baby equality was, well, it was kind Of cute. Now there was a big house in a residential neighbourhood and there was a baby inside and two adults fought about who would vacuum and who'd broken the promise." Such fighting only leads to escalating stages of "husband It's important to recognise these stages, as. the mar talking about what books mean to them now. They talk about the continual treasure hunt, about books being a business and they all drop their voices when they say that none of them finished college.

"You didn't want to look like an idiot every time you talked to customers," says Jerry. "You couldn't possibly say: 'John Steinbeck, who's that' so I wanted to learn about books, about writers." Ben remembers being stationed in the Air Force, at an early warning site up north, 60F below in winter. He ran the library: "I felt there that I was missing an education and somehow I felt I was less than the others because of it." The first year they qualified to join the Antiquarian Booksellers of America Association, they showed up to find it full of 70 to 80-year-olds in suits, ties and frosty suspicion. "We felt like we were the children we were there to wrap thousands of bricks in brown paper as book-ends for the first show. We thought that's what it is: 'You join the club and do the dirty That's life." Last week.

Louis paid $93,000 at the Estelle Doheny sale for a Durandus printed in 1459: was a little insecure; a little nervous." A little nervous and enormously proud. It was a long journey from Compton to Melrose and perhaps that is why they are as kind to those who come with $10, as those who park the Rolls out back- In the end, toasters are not books. The magic of the word has reached them all. ist who has been called the Jane Fonda of medicine, this paperback will advise you on how to discover the cause of your fatigue and then how to organise your time and energy. Lots of encouraging wisdom.

Events Speaking For Ourselves Akina Mama wa Afrika, a voluntary development organisation for African women, is continuing its tradition of dedicating March to a Focus on African Women organising talks, seminars and exhibitions highlighting literature, art, science, culture and liberation in conjunction with the Africa Centre. March 8, International Women's Day, will spotlight Mozambican women. Ring Mable Ikpoh at 01 430 1044. Careers For Women A look at your future. The National Advisory Centre On Careers For Women in collaboration with New Directions For Women are organising a day of career planning based on the needs of individual participants.

March 22. Lunch is included in the 30 fee. Contact NACCW, 8th Floor, Artillery House, Artillery Row, London SW1P 1RT. (01 799 2129). Publishing news More movements in women's publishing.

Grapevine will be the name of a new imprint for women being launched by Thorsons with informative books on many subjects: Unwin Hyman have purchased Pandora Press, the well-known five-year-old feminist imprint of Associated Book Publishers and the Explorations In Feminism Collective originally with Hutchinson has announced it will be publishing with The Women's Press. Virago and their staff of 20 are now in new offices at 2023 Mandela Street, London NW1. (01 383 5150) Joy Melvllto THE wife of T.S. Eliot once became so furious at not being able to contact her husband at work, always being told that he was at a meeting, that she took herself off there and poured melted chocolate through the letter-box. A womanly reaction Not entirely.

Men can be equally jaundiced (if less imaginative) when faced with the reality of working wives. This week's publication of Bebe Moore Campbell's book, Successful Women, Angry Men, brings to light stories of furious husbands calling the office and demanding that secretaries interrupt their wife's meeting, or asking their wife why the hell she has to go to meetings that contain so many men. With the rapid rise in the number of dual-career marriages, this male backlash has shocked, younger women. Having avoided marrying "traditional" men who want cosy, homebound wives, they now find that the "liberated" man they married, who promised to share their chores and encourage their professional development, reverses his ideas when his wife's career threatens his happiness. "I didn't sign on to cheer-lead a workaholic phantom," one husband told Bebe Moore Campbell, who talked to 100 dual-career couples and watched most of their marriages struggle, falter and fall apart.

Another angrily told his wife: "I'm sick of you being too tired to cook, too tired to change the baby's diaper, too tired for sex. You're never too tired for that damn job." Women at the top on Wall Street: but how are they coping with r- I (til ltfrflHBIRQlli ttHUMHft I older, two-career couples who have weathered such marital difficulties to turn to for advice. The expectations of the marriage on both sides have also soured. Women, brought up in the more liberated atmosphere of the last 20 years, spurn the "oppression" of the lives of their own housebound mothers and regard satisfaction in marriages and their jobs as their right. Men who may agree intellectually with the feminist movement emotionally fail to understand its impact in real life.

When they respond to stress by collapsing across the couch with the television on, they are taken aback to find their exhausted wife stretched out beside them instead of getting them a nice cup of tea. One thing is clear: many an egalitarian marriage prospers with only minor loving arguments before a baby arrives (BB); but after baby (AB) it is usually a different story. AB, among the dual-career marriages, invariably heralds daily InexpensWedrawers.record units wardrobes.cupboards shelving Inwhlte.black.etc forhomaworK Mall-order catalogue (or visit us) CubeStore 58 Pembroke Rd W8 01-994 6016 (also Sflk Notts) WnK-P DESKS ETC To encourage more women to join its prestigious postgraduate programmes, a number of special bursaries covering course fees is offered. These bursaries apply to: MBA Master of Business Administration A broadly based foundation for top business careers. The MBA provides the tools and skills necessary to lead and innovate in business.

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