"We're still in the process of trying to determine exactly what happened," Edson said. "We're working it as quickly as we can, because we know it's an issue of community concern."

Although the age of consent in Connecticut is 16, it is illegal for a person in an official school position - such as a teacher or coach - to have sex with a student under their care, regardless of age.

Edson said that the investigation should be concluded within weeks, and that investigators are considering a charge of second-degree sexual assault but do not yet have probable cause to make an arrest.

Edson said that the probe has been under way for "a while," and State's Attorney Kevin Lawlor said he has been made aware of the investigation. If charges are filed, it will be the second time in a little more than a year that someone affiliated with the school system has been charged with having an affair with a student.

Youth coach Robert Dulin, a major fund-raiser for the Jonathan Law High School girls' basketball team who held summer basketball camps on school grounds, was arrested in late 2005 for allegedly having an affair with a 16-year-old student. His case is pending.

Robert White, president of Milford's Parent Teacher Association and the father of a Jonathan Law student, said he was unaware of the ongoing police investigation Monday.

While experts say that sexual abuse of high school students is much more likely to be carried out by men, a spate of female teachers having affairs with male students has grabbed headlines and sparked nationwide attention in recent years.

In late February, 24-year-old Allena Ward, a former middle school teacher in Clinton, S.C., was arrested for allegedly having sex with at least five boys who were 14 and 15 years old, some of whom were her students. On March 16, Rachel Holt, a 35-year-old former sixth-grade teacher in Delaware, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having sex with a 13-year-old student 28 times.

David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, doesn't believe that the number of such affairs is increasing, but that the influx of women into law enforcement fields has changed police attitudes.

"I think (the rise) is probably because there are people quite interested in establishing this rule, so they're going to prosecute them," Finkelhor said. "They're not as strengthened in the old view that this is just a kid that got lucky."

The age difference in the alleged affair is fairly small, only three years, but a spokeswoman for the National Center for Victims of Crime in Washington, D.C., said that the imbalance of power between a teacher and her student makes true consent impossible.

Boys who are the victims of sexual abuse by female teachers are less likely to report fear and negative consequences from the affair, spokeswoman Mitru Ciarlante said, but the damage can be real: Studies show that victims are more likely to become involved in sexually exploitive or abusive relationships in the future, regardless of how they feel at the time, she said.

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