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For contact with a student, James Paul Hymiller gets house arrest and probation, which many criticize.
By CHASE SQUIRES, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 25, 2002
DADE CITY -- Circuit Judge Maynard Swanson on Thursday chastised a former Wesley Chapel High School teacher for having sexual contact with a teenage student and could have sentenced him to nine years in prison.
But instead, he sent the ex-teacher home.
Swanson suspended a nine-year sentence for James Paul Hymiller, 28, and sentenced him to two years of house arrest and seven years of probation. The judge ordered Hymiller to surrender his state teaching license, continue receiving counseling and stay away from children.
Hymiller, who taught social studies, pleaded guilty in December to having unlawful sexual contact with a minor. He had a 15-year-old female student perform oral sex on him in a break room at Wesley Chapel High School on last year's last day of school.
He was fired over the summer and school officials recommended that the state pull his teaching license.
Swanson -- who has a daughter in high school -- said he wouldn't be bullied by public sentiment and ruled the girl was a "willing participant" in the sex act.
Prosecutor Manny Garcia objected to the sentence and demanded the full nine years in prison.
"I believe this is the most reprehensible crime a teacher could ever commit," Garcia said. "There was trust that he violated."
Neither the victim nor her family appeared at Thursday's hearing.
The girl's mother, reached at her home Thursday night, said she was surprised by the sentence and said she wasn't notified of the hearing.
"You mean he's back out on the street?" she asked on learning of the sentence. "I think he should have at least served something, at least two years."
She said her daughter is receiving counseling and is adjusting to what happened.
Advocates for sexual assault victims said the sentence was light for such a serious breach of confidence.
Hymiller told the judge he was sorry and ashamed.
"I get sick when I think about what I have done," he said. "What I have done is horrible. I hurt my wife, my family, my friends. . . . Most of all, I hurt (the girl). I'm sorry for that."
The girl, whose name is being withheld by the Times because of the nature of the crime, told attorneys in a deposition last month that she didn't care whether Hymiller went to prison.
"I kind of want him to go to jail," she said. "But it doesn't matter."
In her deposition, the girl described how she engaged Hymiller in conversations about sex, and the two joked about sexual situations. According to the girl, Hymiller said if she led him to a break room, he would follow.
After the sex act, the girl said Hymiller said, "That was bizarre."
She said she cried when it was over.
"He asked me if I was okay, and I told him that I didn't know, and he said he wasn't going to let me leave until I told him I was all right, so I told him I was fine and then left," the girl told attorneys.
Defense attorney Randall Grantham argued it was a one-time occurrence. He presented Hymiller's friends and co-workers, and he produced a petition signed by more than 60 students asking that Hymiller be spared prison.
The girl, Grantham argued, was sexually suggestive.
In a letter to the judge, Hymiller's parents also said the girl played a role.
"She initiated the events that occurred," they wrote. "We also believe that today's permissive society is at least partially to blame."
Hymiller's wife also wrote to the judge asking him for a probationary sentence.
Sunrise of Pasco domestic and sexual abuse shelter executive director Penny Morrill said letting Hymiller avoid prison was too lenient.
Even if a child flirts with a teacher, it is the teacher's duty to be the adult and back away, Morrill said.
From the state headquarters of the Florida Counsel Against Sexual Violence, executive director Beverly Harris Elliott, said: "It's a pretty light sentence. . . . Let's say she did have a crush on him, she did flirt with him, does she have the maturity to understand once a relationship has begun? He has a responsibility to say no."
Swanson said he wrestled with the sentence.
"One of the considerations I have is that perhaps as a parent myself of a 16-year-old girl in high school I must reflect upon what my reaction would have been were it my daughter," the judge said.
He said he did not accept the girl's actions as an excuse for Hymiller, but said the girl, "despite her age, was a willing participant."
He said Hymiller showed initiative by seeking counseling and he said the support of a counselor helped him make his decision. The sentence, he said, would not be made to please society or make an example of Hymiller.
State officials said Hymiller's teaching license remained active as of Thursday.
Sex cases involving teachers and students are not common, but they do occur. Sentences appear to vary.
MARCH 2001: Daniel A. Evans, 30, a former teacher at North Florida Christian School in Tallahassee, pleaded no contest to charges that he had sex with one of his students over a 21/2-year-period, starting when she was 14. He was sentenced to four years of probation. He could have faced a maximum of 90 years in state prison if convicted by a jury.
JUNE 1999: Horace Mackeroy, 31, a former physical education teacher at Kathleen Middle School in Lakeland, was convicted on four counts of sexual battery involving a 14-year-old girl. He was sentenced to 43 years in prison. Mackeroy later pleaded no contest to four other counts of sexual battery and one count of committing lewd acts on a child and one count of battery, all charges involving sex with underage students at the school.
FEBRUARY 1998: Eva Ellen Summerlin, a former teacher at the Vanguard School, a Lake Wales boarding school for students with learning disabilities, pleaded guilty to a charge of committing a lewd act on a child. She had been accused of having sex with a 16-year-old student. In a plea deal reached with prosecutors, she avoided prison but was placed on probation for five years.
APRIL 1996: Michael Bush Hammond, a former teacher's aide at LaVoy Exceptional School in Tampa, pleaded guilty to one count of a lewd and lascivious act on a child and one count of sexual battery on a mentally defective person. Hammond was convicted in 1994 of five charges ranging from sexual battery to a lewd and lascivious act on a child. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but an appeals court ordered a new trial last year, saying the trial judge had made multiple errors. LaVoy teacher John Michael Conklin, Hammond's former roommate who admitted to bringing young men home for sex, pleaded guilty to charges in 1994 and was sentenced to six years of house arrest.
AUGUST 1995: Karen Roberts, a former Merritt Island High School teacher, was convicted of having oral sex with four students in her classroom. She was sentenced to 10 years in state prison.
-- Compiled by Times news researcher John Martin.