11:30 PM
I read with some disgust that Debra LaFave, the young Tampa Bay middle school teacher arrested for having sex with a fourteen year old boy, has been released from jail and will do no time other than a house arrest and psychiatric counseling.
Quick internal reference: this isn't the first time this subject has surfaced in this blog.
Former middle school teacher Debra Lafave will avoid prison for a number of sexual dalliances with a 14-year-old student after pleading guilty Tuesday to two counts of lewd and lascivious battery.
Less than two weeks before Lafave, 25, was set to face her teen victim at trial, the former Tampa schoolteacher agreed to three years of house arrest and seven years of probation for having sex with the student in her home, in a classroom and in a car in June 2004.
Dressed in a conservative black suit, Lafave quietly replied "yes" as Hillsborough Circuit Judge Wayne Timmerman asked if she agreed to several conditions as a registered sex offender.
Included in the conditions are a curfew and treatment in an outpatient program for sex offenders.
(Attribution: Court TV website, copyright 2005 Court TV)
Basically, the lady walks. There's some stipulations, like the house arrest, which might suck, but there'll always be plenty of teenaged pizza boys handy. And the psychiatric counseling, yeah, that's right.
The defense attorney, John Fitzgibbons, stated at one point that putting LaFave (pictured in the cheesecake photo above, back in her modeling days) in the general population of a prison would be tantamount to throwing "raw meat at a pack of circling sharks". Wow, he's right, pretty people shouldn't have to go to jail! I mean, ewwwwwwwwwww....
I kid,I kid. Actually, I'm incensed over this verdict. What kind of double standard is this??? What message does this send? If you're an attractive white female you CAN get away with crimes of a sexually predatory nature, because it was with a guy, and he's no victim, right? right? Already I'm seeing blogs about the nameless "luckiest student on earth" guy...
What if she had been a he? and the victim a she? A white he? or a black he? They would have thrown away the key, that's what if.. Picture even a black female committing this action... what would the verdict be?
There's a hideous double standard at work here, folks. Somehow I'm getting visions of those bad comedies from the 1980s where all the pretty blonde semi-nordic people are the bad guys and the hapless average looking schlubs (much like myself) are going to go through life making pratfalls for their benefit. I'm glad I don't live in Hillsborough County..
