Florida woman gets probation for sex with student
Tue Nov 22, 2005 1:31 PM ET
TAMPA, Florida (Reuters) - Debra LaFave, a former Florida school teacher, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to having sex with a 14-year-old male student and was sentenced to 10 years of community control and probation.
LaFave, 25, pleaded guilty to committing two counts of lewd and lascivious battery on the Greco Middle School student.
LaFave could have been sentenced to 30 years or more in prison if she had been convicted in a trial, which had been scheduled to begin next month in Tampa.
Under a plea agreement with Hillsborough County prosecutors in Tampa, LaFave agreed to accept three years of community control, including electronic monitoring, and seven years of probation.
She must enter a sexual offender treatment program and cannot have any unsupervised contact with children.
"I accept responsibility for my actions. I'm very sorry for everything that has occurred," LaFave said in court before she was sentenced.
Another condition of the agreement is that LaFave cannot profit from her conduct through book deals, television appearances or other commercial activity.
Her attorney had planned to offer an insanity defense if there was a trial.
LaFave was married at the time she began having sex with the student, but is now divorced. She had taught reading at the school for two years prior to her arrest in June 2004.
After the boy's parents found out he was having sex with LaFave, they allowed police to tape telephone calls between the two, which led to her arrest. The boy has not been identified.
Prosecutors said the boy's parents approved of the plea deal because they did not want him to testify at trial.
The case gained national attention after pictures of LaFave wearing a bikini and straddling a motorcycle appeared on the Internet.
LaFave's attorney, John Fitzgibbons, made headlines in July when he said his client was too pretty to survive prison. "To place an attractive young woman in that kind of hell-hole is like placing a piece of raw meat in with the lions," he said then.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
Now....I just don't get it. If this had been a man and a 14 year old girl, he'd have been nailed to a cross and burned alive. He'd have been in prison by now. But, this was an "attractive young woman" and a 14 year old boy.
Disgusting. Shameful. How could she? An innocent young child like that!
I have now given proper lip service to my rightwing moral outrage.
That said....I shall now allow my inner pig to roam free:
SHE WAS EFFIN HOT! BLONDE, BLUE-EYED, BEAUTIFUL...A BODY TO KILL KITTENS AND PUPPIES FOR---SHE WAS A MODEL, FOR PETE'S SAKE! THAT LITTLE BASTARD HAS TO BE THE LUCKIEST 14 YEAR OLD KID IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE!!!!
Yeah, yeah...it was wrong of her to do it. Blah, blah.
They were talking on CNN (where they were interviewing her ex-husband---how's that for seeking a fair, unbiased opinon?) about how the kid "may be traumatized by the incidents"....traumatized? Man, I remember what I was like back when I was 14. Hormones raging out of control....walking around with a constant stiffy and nothing to use it on. Believe me; the only trauma he's suffering is that he knows he's not gonna to be boning her anymore.
He'll be telling this story when he's 95 and in the home, sitting around the Parcheesi table with the other geezers.
When I was his age...hell, when any of us normal, hetero guys were his age, we'd have pulled out our own eye teeth with dirty pliers and no anesthetic to get the opportunity to be "molested" by a woman that hot. It was a fantasy.
All us guys at Wheeling Jr. High were gaga over the new Geography teacher, and, while very pretty, she looked nothing near to what this lady does.
Besides...in today's wide-open, sex-obsessed culture, 14 is the new 21, as far as sexual knowledge goes. Kids today know sexually relevant, and even perverted things, for fact that we only whispered in specualtion in the locker room and read our dad's dirty magazines for some confirmation of our suspicions.
It was very wrong of her to do, yes... but traumatized? Naaahhhh.....