"State prosecutors decided Tuesday to drop charges against a former Tampa teacher accused of having sex with a 14-year-old middle school student.
The decision, announced hours after a judge rejected a plea deal for Debra Lafave, means the victim won’t have to testify.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys had urged the judge to accept the deal for the sake of the boy involved. A psychiatrist who examined the teenager told the judge at a previous hearing that the boy suffered extreme anxiety from the media coverage of the case and does not want to testify.
Marion County Circuit Judge Hale Stancil, however, said the lack of prison time for Lafave under the plea deal “shocks the conscience of this court,” and he rejected it.
Assistant State Attorney Richard Ridgway, in explaining the decision to drop the charges, said: “The court may be willing to risk the well-being of the victims in this case in order to force it to trial. I am not.”
Lafave, 25, already faces three years of house arrest and seven years probation in Hillsborough County, where she was charged with having sex with the same boy in a classroom and her home. She pleaded guilty Nov. 22 to two counts of lewd and lascivious battery under a plea deal there."
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I got the Fox New Alert right before Stop the ACLU sent their usual update on all things important, and this isn't tongue in cheek bullswaddle because I rely on these guys. Fox and Stop keep me abreast. And aleg and a damned fine looking CENSORED, too.
For anyone to say that society doesn't treat men and women differently would be silly. You won't hear the National Organization for Women bitching about this particular case because all they've ever wanted was to be superior, not equal, and allowing this woman to get off scot-free suits them just fine. I don't for a moment believe that this 14-year-old boy is so sensitive as to fall apart were he to be questioned about the crime, but the prosecution found itself caught between conflicting politically correct paths and did what all lawyers, cough, cowards, do.
They gave up. It was a joke from the get-go, her defense being the fact that she's pretty and shouldn't go to jail. Jails are for pretty people too. Saying otherwise is as biased as biased can be, but the prosecutors probably figured on not getting much hate mail from uglies-anonymous.
They tried to prevent a circus and instead became ringmasters to the absurd. And let me clue in the clueless here; this happens with far more frequency than anyone is admitting to. Male students seduced by female authority figures.
2 comments:
When I was 14 I would have been all over her like [insert your favorite metaphor]. The kid didn't want to testify out of gratitude, not shyness.
Society treats males and females differently because we are different. If an adult male teacher had seduced a 14 year old girl it would have left a scar. The media attention might hurt this kid (grownups have been hounded to the point of suicide by the press) but the sex will never be anything but a pleasant memory for him.
It’s hard wired into us at the genetic level. Blame God or Darwin (whichever you believe in).
Can't argue with common sense. All through this investigation the DA's office has been saying that the boy was traumatized and they didn't want to push him into testifying. Something stinks. In my entire life I've never met or heard of such a thing. This led me to believe one or two things was going on; they didn't have enough evidence, or the DA was so incredibly incompetent as to be beyond belief. Just falling for the "I'm too pretty to go to jail" meant that the entire justice system of Tampa Florida is fucked beyond repair because of political correctness.
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