6:22pm EST
FLA TEACHER DEBRA LAFAVE PLEADS GUILTY: A story that certainly shocked the nation ends today with a guilty plea by the woman who was charged - yet does anyone believe that justice was served?
Moreover if this had been a man...would our culture even dare allow such a bargain be made?
In case you've forgotten who she was...she was a 23 year old teacher who was charged with having sex on multiple occassions with a 14 year old student. In her home, car, and classroom she seduced the 14 year old.
Her background seemed to indicate no significant problems in her upbringing.
Still today, I was a wee bit shocked that she got no jail time whatsoever for engaging in multiple sex acts with the 14 year old. Seems to me if you're guilty, you're guilty...
"I accept full responsibility for my actions," Greco Middle School teacher Debra Lafave, 25, said during Tuesday's trial in Tampa.
The deal provides that Lafave will not serve any jail time in connection with multiple sex acts with a 14-year-old student unless she violates the terms of the plea agreement, which includes three years of house arrest and seven years' probation.
Admittedly 3 years house arrest, and 7 years probation isn't like life as normal - but its not anywhere near punishment. And why did she deserve this very special form of sentencing?
"To place an attractive young woman in that kind of hell hole is like putting a piece of raw meat in with the lions," Lafave's attorney, John Fitzgibbons, said in July of the possibility of jail time. "I'm not sure she would survive."
And what difference should that reasoning be to the tax-payers who need their children protected from such predatory weirdos as LaFave in the future?
And this doesn't even begin to address the insanity this sentence would look like if it were a man in the situation the "attractive young" 25 year old woman now finds herself in.
Debra LaFave, for whatever reasons there were, behaved in excessively dangerous ways. The damage done to the 14 year old boy will be laughed off. He will be seen as a hero amongst his peers - at least for a while.
