Debra Beasley Lafave is already accused of having sex with the 14-year-old at the center of the new charges.
By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published June 26, 2004
TAMPA - Debra Beasley Lafave, the middle school teacher arrested in Temple Terrace on charges of having sex with a 14-year-old boy, faces additional charges in Marion County involving the same teen.
Marion County sheriff's investigators issued a warrant Friday for Lafave's arrest on two counts of lewd and lascivious battery and one count of lewd and lascivious exhibition.
Lafave's attorney, John Fitzgibbons of Tampa, said his client will surrender Monday to Marion County officials in Ocala.
The warrant comes three days after Lafave, 23, was released from the Hillsborough County Jail on $5,000 bail. The day before, she had been charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious battery involving the 14-year-old.
Marion County sheriff's spokeswoman Susan Livoti said that on at least two occasions earlier this month Lafave went to see the 14-year-old while he was visiting a 15-year-old cousin there.
"She came here and picked him and his cousin up," Livoti said. "She had the cousin drive the car and got in the back with the student. While he was driving, she was having relations with the student in back."
Livoti said this happened "on at least two occasions." The first time Lafave went to Marion County was June 15, Livoti said.
Temple Terrace police and Hillsborough County School District officials will not say whether the 14-year-old is or was a student at Greco Middle School, where LaFave worked. But Livoti said the 14-year-old was LaFave's student.
According to the criminal report affidavit issued by Temple Terrace police, the 14-year-old told investigators he and Lafave had sex in a portable classroom at Greco Middle on June 14. The teen also told them that on June 3, in an undisclosed location, Lafave performed oral sex on him.
Police arrested Lafave this week at a private residence in Temple Terrace. They won't say if that was the teen's home.
Fitzgibbons, her lawyer, did not comment on the allegations. The school district has put Lafave on administrative duty status. When the School Board meets next month, Lafave likely will be suspended without pay pending the outcome of the case, said school district officials.
Lafave grew up in southern Hillsborough County and graduated from Bloomingdale High, one of two daughters of Larry and Joyce Beasley. The 1998 yearbook from her senior year lists her as a member of the chorus and the Ambassadors, a singing club.
She went to the University of South Florida, where she earned a bachelor's degree in English.
While she was a student there, her sister Angela Beasley - five months pregnant at the time - was killed in a drunken driving accident by Joseph F. Piotrowski, who has since been dismissed from the Army and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
In February 2003, Debra and Kristian Lafave, 25, bought a $93,000 townhouse in Osprey Run in Riverview, according to county records.
They married in Hillsborough County five months later, in a civil ceremony that was the first marriage for both.
