A Mobile math teacher is convicted of having sex with a teenager. A fifth-grade teacher is implicated in Pell City. A foreign language teacher is charged in Tuscaloosa. A Sheffield Junior High School teacher, in a car, having sex, with a 15-year-old.

All of the accused are women. In fact, about one-third of the cases of possibly inappropriate relationships investigated by Alabama education officials in 2013 involved women.

"It may not be happening more, but now there's more punishment,'' said Josh Klapow, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at UAB's School of Public Health. "We don't know those incidents that aren't being caught and aren't being reported."

Social media, authorities say, helps to fuel the fire.

"Cell phones. Apps. We say and do things on social media and cell phones that we wouldn't say and do in person,'' said Blount County District Attorney Pamela Casey who, on Monday, announced a guilty plea in the case of a Susan Moore High School teacher who admitted to sexting (sending nude pictures via text message) to a 15-year-old student. "As a result, there's a wall that's been removed. Things people would never say to a person they now will say over the phone or on Facebook or things of that nature. We just live in a different world."

A 2010 law made it a felony for a school employee to have sex with a student 19 or younger. (Other Alabama laws had set the age of consent at 16). Since then, high- profile cases were brought against women teachers on charges ranging from sodomy to rape of underage students. More are under investigation.

Between 2008 and 2013, there have been about 150 cases of inappropriate relationships reported to the Alabama Department of Education. These "relationships" include not only sexual intercourse between a teacher and a student, but also inappropriately romantic or sexual communications between the two, said Susan Tudor Crowther, an attorney in the Office of General Counsel for the Alabama Department of Education.

For 2013, 66 percent of those complaints involved male teachers, while 34 percent involved female teachers. Are the numbers on the rise? It appears so, said Crowther who recently wrote an article for a trade publication called "Hot For Teacher: When Good Teachers Go Bad."

"It is not clear why they appear to be on the rise. It is possible that we are simply getting more reports of such behavior,'' Crowther said. "In 2010, a law was passed criminalizing sexual relationships between teachers and students. This may have prompted increased reporting. "

Before the infamous 1997 case of Mary Kay Letourneau, who twice became pregnant by her 12-year-old student and eventually married him in 2005, such prosecutions seemed rare.

Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar, assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama, said she isn't aware of any increase in the number of female teachers accused of sexual relationships with underage students. "I think we need to remember there is a double standard in society,'' she said. "A male teacher arrested for having a sexual relationship with an underage (female) student may not be as 'newsworthy' compared to the female teacher having a sexual relationship with an underage (male) student."

The apparent influx, Seigfried-Spellar said, might stem from the fact that victims are now more willing to report the crimes. "In other words, these types of sexual relationships between female teachers and underage students may have always existed, but went unreported,'' she said.

UAB's Klapow said it's important to remember that while many of these cases involve "consensual" sex, many of these teens are too young to know what that means. "When you're talking about a 29-year-old woman and 14-year-old boy, no matter how consensual, it's not truly consensual because that boy is in a psychologically vulnerable situation,'' he said. "From my position, psychologically by definition it's not consensual by nature of the relationship. While intellectually and physically consensual, psychologically it can't be."

The closer in age it gets, the more the lines get blurred, he said, such as a teacher in her mid-20s with a 17-year-old boy. "It's still nowhere near appropriate, but physically the attraction can be there. Is it completely inappropriate, illegal and stupid? Yes,'' he said.

Students, he said, often develop what they think are feelings for their teachers, much like patients do with their doctors and therapists, and clients and lawyers. "The feelings of intimacy get clouded because you have a teen feeling close to the teacher, and that's misinterpreted as love."

Technology has made it worse. "Text messages can fuel the relationship, perpetuate miscommunication and foster misinterpretation,'' Klapow said. "A text with a smiley face or 'I care about you' can be misinterpreted."

Texting, sexting, and other electronic messaging provides access like never before. "Before there was less touchpoint,'' he said. "Sexting can absolutely support this continued, inappropriate but real set of feelings."

So, what's in it for the older women? "They're thinking about how they feel, the excitement and the attention they're not getting someplace else,'' Klapow said. "They're doing what lots of people do, which is having an inappropriate relationship for sexual and emotional reasons."

Recent high profile cases in Alabama:

- On Monday, former Susan Moore High School teacher Crystal Gilliland Clowdus, 32, pleaded guilty to transmitting obscene material to a child. Court records show Clowdus sent nude and partially nude pictures of herself to a 15-year-old male student. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with nine of those years suspended. She will serve six months in jail and six more months on house arrest. She will be on probation for five years, a lifetime sex offender, and forced to surrender her Alabama teaching certificate.

-Alicia Gray, a 28-year-old Mary G. Montgomery High School math teacher was convicted Jan. 10, 2014 of having sex with a student under the age of 19. Her victim was 14. She was sentenced to a five-year split sentence, with six months to serve and five year probation. She also surrendered her teaching certificate. She made this video apology

- Jennifer Collins McNeill, a 39-year-old sixth grade teacher and cheerleading sponsor in Thorsby, was indicted Feb. 14 on six counts of second-degree rape and two counts of second-degree sodomy. Authorities said McNeill had sex with a 14-year-old boy, the same boy, a number of times, but prosecutors chose to seek indictments on the eight best cases. Though no longer employed by the school system, McNeill is free on $160,000 bond. Her arraignment is set March 10.

- Stephanie Suggs Millard, 34, pleaded guilty in December 2013 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but the sentence was suspended. Instead, the former Spain Park High School teacher will be under the supervision of a state probation officer. She will also have to register as a sex offender and complete a sex offender program. Millard was arrested in 2012 after authorities learned she had sex with a 17 year old male student over a two-month period.

- Catherine Michelle Bell, 33, the assistant principal at Pelham High School, was arrested in December 2013 and charged with three counts of "School Employee Engaging in a Sex Act or Deviant Sexual Intercourse with a Student Under the Age of 19 years." Authorities didn't release specifics about the allegations against Bell. She was one of four assistant principals at the high school. Court records show she and her husband divorced in August 2013, and have shared custody of a 4-year-old son. Her case is set to go on trial Wednesday, but is expected to be continued.

- Selma Middle School teacher LaTengala Williams was arrested April 19, 2013 on charges relating to sexual misconduct. She is charged with possession of obscene matter containing visual depiction of persons under 17 years of age involved in obscene acts, electronic solicitation of a child, enticing a minor for immoral purposes and school employee having sexual contact with a student. Efforts to obtain a disposition on her case were not available in Alabama court records.

- Heather Whitten, a 38-year-old fifth-grade teacher at Williams Intermediate School in Pell City, was convicted in 2012 of second-degree rape, meaning she had sex with someone between the ages of 12 and 16. Married with three children, Whitten was sentenced to 5 years, a split sentence with one year to serve.

- Jennifer Hawk Elebash, 41, was a teacher at Central High School in Tuscaloosa. The foreign language teacher was charged with engaging in a sex act or deviant sexual intercourse with a student under the age of 19, one count of school employee having sexual contact with a student under the age of 19, and one count of harassment. She was scheduled to go on trial Monday, but her case was removed from the docket. No other information was immediately available.

- Amy Kathleen Caudle, 31, was a special education teacher at Andalusia Middle School. She was found guilty in 2011 of sexually abusing three students. She entered guilty pleas for two counts of second-degree sodomy after she was arrested after admitting that she performed oral sex on two underage victims. She was sentenced to 15 years with 12 under supervised probation. She also surrendered her teaching certificate.

- Amanda Watkins, 39, was a former Sheffield Junior High teacher convicted in 2011 of raping a 15-year-old student. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and released after serving nearly two years. She will serve the remainder of her sentence under supervision by the Colbert County Community Corrections Center. She was convicted of rape and sodomy for having sex with a former student in the school parking lot. The student was 15, and the sex took place in the back seat of her car.