Making light of heavy charges

An attractive teacher facing serious charges of having sex with a 14-year-old student has become the subject of talk show and Internet jokes. Officials say it's not so funny.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published July 1, 2004

Debra Beasley Lafave

TAMPA - MSNBC's Scarborough Country aired a segment this week about the 23-year-old Greco Middle School teacher accused of having sex with a 14-year-old student.

The title: Hot For Teacher.

Radio host Howard Stern declared Wednesday that Debra Beasley Lafave should be thanked, not jailed, for making every schoolboy's fantasy come true.

Lafave, charged with four counts of lewd and lascivious acts against a minor and one count of lewd and lascivious exhibition, is not the first teacher accused of having sex with a student.

But the combination of her striking model-like appearance, the oddity of a woman being accused of predatory behavior with a boy and the lurid details of the charges against Lafave have made the newlywed the fodder of talk shows nationwide.

"Would we be talking as much if she were 200 pounds and unattractive?" said longtime Tampa defense attorney Norman Cannella. "Probably not."

Although Lafave faces serious charges, they've become the subject of water cooler whispers and adolescent jokes in the vein of: "How come I never had teachers like that?"

School district and law enforcement officials, as well as Lafave's attorney, have fielded dozens of interview requests from media heavyweights such as Matt Lauer, Larry King and Greta Van Susteren.

"It has been a rather hectic past two days," said John Fitzgibbons, Lafave's attorney. "We have had over 50 calls from virtually every media source in the country."

The Smoking Gun Web site posted Lafave's arrest photos and the arrest affidavit from Marion County.

Jim Rome, host of a nationally syndicated sports radio show, told listeners this week that the teen will be "the most popular kid" in school.

Mark Hart, spokesman for the Hillsborough County school district, said that kind of attitude is unfortunate.

"They say "boys will be boys,' but this one is very troubling," Hart said. "I would like to see the street talk about this stop - this idea that if you were the mother of the child you'd be horrified, but if you were the dad, you'd be patting him on the back.

"That's degrading to women," he said, "and it minimizes the severity of these allegations."

Lafave has a face and physique that landed her a modeling job a few years back with the automotive publication Makes & Models. But beauty alone might not garner attention from the likes of 20/20 and Good Morning America.

Also fueling the media frenzy is the arrest report released this week by Marion County sheriff's officials, who on Monday charged Lafave with two counts of lewd and lascivious acts on a minor and one count of lewd and lascivious exhibition.

The week before, Temple Terrace police arrested Lafave at the home of the 14-year-old on two charges involving sex with a minor. Temple Terrace investigators released scant information about their case.

Not so in Marion County, where the arrest affidavit contains graphic details about what allegedly happened between Lafave and the 14-year-old Greco Middle School student over the past month. It includes information such as the color of her underwear and design of her three tattoos. It also contains statements taken during interviews with the 14-year-old student and his 15-year-old cousin.

The older boy told investigators he drove Lafave's Isuzu sport utility vehicle around Ocala while she and the 14-year-old had sex in the back. The teens told detectives that the first sexual act was in the master bedroom of her Riverview townhouse, and recalled how Lafave once took them to a Best Buy to get an iPod for her husband.

Those nuggets have given commentators like Howard Stern plenty to talk about. The Internet is now sprinkled with pictures from Lafave's Bloomingdale High School yearbook, from her wedding last summer and even from a modeling shoot in which she wore a tight black dress and fishnet stockings.

Pam Bondi, spokeswoman for the Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office, said her office isn't happy that so much information about the case is already public.

"As prosecutors, we don't want a lot of facts released about our cases before trial because we have to pick jurors who are fair and impartial," Bondi said.

Marion County sheriff's spokesman Lenny Uptagraft said his department had no choice but to release the affidavit.

"It's public record once she's booked into the jail," he said. "Our affidavits may be a little more detailed than others. But we follow the same procedure as other agencies."

State prosecutor Mike Sinacore, who will handle the case for Hillsborough County, said there's a perception that fewer women have sexual liaisons with underage boys.

In fact, one researcher estimates that 13 percent of the public school employees accused of sexual misconduct with students are women.

But Sinacore said male victims are less likely to come forward than female victims.

Some boys fear the stigma of people knowing they were victimized by a woman. In other cases, the underage boy might think at first that the sex is fun, that it makes him cool, said Robert Shoop, a professor of educational law at Kansas State University.

"But a young child, even 14 or 15, is not intellectually or emotionally prepared to have that kind of relationship with an adult," Shoop said.

Florida law says sex with anyone under the age of 16 is illegal, whether the minor consents or not. The severity of the crime depends on the ages of the victim and the perpetrator.

In Lafave's case, the charges are second-degree felonies punishable by up to 15 years in prison for each count, Sinacore said.

A report released Wednesday, and commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education, concludes that little is known about the prevalence of sexual misconduct by teachers or other school employees.

Charol Shakeshaft, a professor of educational policies at Hofstra University in Huntington, N.Y., concluded that between 1991 and 2000, about 315,000 students per year experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee, mostly teachers.

But because only about 6 percent of victims report their abuse, school authorities probably only knew of fewer than 19,000 of the incidents, Shakeshaft estimated.

She estimates that in 57 percent of cases, teachers were the reported perpetrators. Only about 13 percent of the offenders were women, according to her research.

Denise McBryde, a former Tampa private school teacher with a husband and three children, was sentenced in 1998 to three years in prison for having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student.

In the past year, two female public school employees in South Florida were sent to prison for having sex with underage boys. One was a teacher. The other worked in the school office. Sinacore said it's more challenging to prosecute cases involving an accused female perpetrator.

"Society generally treats female perpetrators differently than male perpetrators, particularly when the victim is a male," he said. "There's a long-standing double standard."

Shoop said his research has shown that females convicted of having sex with minors typically get less severe punishments than convicted male perpetrators.

Lafave has been placed on administrative duty and likely will be suspended without pay until the case is resolved, said Hart of the school district.

He said Lafave could be fired if "we determine there is probable cause that something happened."

For now, he's most concerned with giving students the right message about this case - and that's not the message he's seeing on television and hearing on the radio.

"This kind of attitude where everyone is kind of grinning and shrugging about the notion of a 14-year-old having sex with his teacher is unfortunate," he said. "This might be a good opportunity, especially for dads, to talk to their sons."

- Times researchers Caryn Baird and Cathy Wos contributed to this report.

[Last modified July 1, 2004, 01:00:36]