Trauma might be factor in sex case
The tragic loss of her sister may have affected the teacher accused of intercourse with a 14-year-old male pupil.
By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published July 7, 2004
TAMPA - In the weeks after a drunken driver killed her pregnant older sister, Debra Beasley Lafave could not sleep.
Lafave had nightmares about the man who ran through a stop sign in April 2001 and rammed into 24-year-old Angela Beasley's 1998 Nissan.
"I have been depressed," Lafave testified during the August 2001 court-martial for Joseph Piotrowski, the former Army captain now serving 30 years in prison for Beasley's death.
"It's hard to concentrate on anything but that," she said. "Angry. I'd snap at my family for no reason. I've been sick. I've lost a piece of me."
Lafave was almost 21 and close to graduating from college, yet her mother testified that she called for her in the night. She couldn't stand being alone.
"Debbie is pretty much a basket case," Joyce Beasley, told the military court.
While the research is mixed, some psychologists who specialize in sex crimes committed by women believe there's a link between past trauma and criminal sexual behavior. Three years after her sister's death, Lafave has been arrested for having sex with a minor, a former student at the school where she was teaching.
She and her family have not spoken publicly since her arrest, and attorney John Fitzgibbons will not discuss his defense strategy. But as the case makes its way through the courts, it's possible the death of Lafave's sister and its effect on Lafave will be addressed. Local defense attorneys say the shock o f the sister's death won't hold up as a defense, but it could be used as a mitigating circumstance to reduce the jail time Lafave faces if convicted.
Lafave, now 23 and newly married to Owen Lafave, 26, was arrested in Hillsborough and Marion counties last month. She is accused of having oral sex and intercourse with a 14-year-old male student who graduated in May from Greco Middle School, where Lafave has been a reading teacher for two years. She is charged with four counts of lewd and lascivious battery against a minor and one count of lewd and lascivious exhibition. The charges are felonies, with maximum sentences of 15 years each.
Records from the Piotrowski court-martial portray a close-knit southern Hillsborough family crushed by the loss of a daughter and sister and unborn grandchild - a family that only three years later finds itself facing the nationally publicized allegations against Lafave.
"To say Debbie was devastated by the sudden traumatic death of her sister would be an understatement," Fitzgibbons, her attorney, said Tuesday. "It was a horribly difficult experience that had a very significant impact on Debbie."
The research on female sexual offenders is limited, in part because women make up only a small percentage - estimates range from 6 to 10 percent - of known sex offenders in the United States.
Some experts who have studied female offenders say personal tragedy alone does not prompt a woman to do such things.
"Things like that are horrific, no question," said psychologist and researcher Anna Salter, who wrote a book about female pedophilia.
"But ... the vast majority of people who lose a relative don't go out and have sex with a student," said Salter. "To tell you the truth, female sex offenders aren't a group we understand very well."
Yet other researchers and psychologists believe female offenders seek sexual relationships they can control as a way to satisfy emotional needs - needs that can be triggered by a great loss.
Alison Tarlow, a licensed clinical psychologist at the Renfrew Center in Coconut Creek, said Lafave has experienced "a significant loss, and certainly that might contribute to some sort of emotional instability.
"When we're in that state, we're not thinking like you would expect a teacher to think," said Tarlow, who specializes in treating sexual abuse. "We're not making the choices a teacher should make. She may be seeking to fill the void of the loss of her sister, and doing that with inappropriate relationships."
For Lafave, the loss of her older sister and confidante in April 2001 came as she prepared for happy milestones. She was finishing up her bachelor's degree at the University of South Florida, and after 21/2 years in a serious relationship, she was beginning to think about a wedding, with her sister as maid of honor.
Lafave had been looking forward to early June of that year, when Angela was planning to take time off from her job as a credit union loan officer in Riverview for the family's to join the family for their annual beach vacation.
Lafave had felt her unborn niece kick, and she told the court she cooked dinner for her pregnant sister with all the salty things she craved, like extra olives on her salad.
"She was the person that I looked up to, that I confided in, that I admired," Lafave told the court. "She had a smile that would light up a room. She was, she was - me and mom said that she was a butterfly."
For Beasley's grave, Lafave bought a statue of a butterfly, her mother testified.
Lafave also has two butterfly tattoos on the small of her back, according to authorities. And Temple Terrace police last month seized from Lafave's Riverview townhouse two belly rings. Both were in the shape of a butterfly.
Could that type of evidence be used in the trial to suggest Lafave is still deeply affected by her sister's death? Defense attorney Brian Gonzalez said it likely wouldn't be enough to argue mental instability during a trial.
"Obviously she's not insane," Gonzalez said. "So I don't think it (the sister's death) would be a jury-friendly fact to try."
Florida statutes allow a convicted person's prison sentence to be less than what's laid out in the law if certain factors, called mitigating circumstances, are proven.
"Potentially, using that tragedy in mitigation might lessen the sentence," said Gonzalez. "Now you can't come in and say, "She was grieving for her sister and that's why this happened.' The defense could suggest that her ability to conform to the law was impaired by this, or they could suggest she should get some specialized treatment instead of prison."
During the court-martial, Lafave and her parents recalled memories that suggested they were a closely bonded but unremarkable nuclear family, one that reveled in the holidays and summer vacations together.
Lafave and her sister were born four years and two months apart, but they were close. They grew up in the Ruskin home their parents moved into in 1970. Their father, Larry Beasley, was a water fuels analyst for Tampa Electric Co. for 27 years before retiring in 2002. Their mother was a hairdresser.
The family made a big deal out of birthdays and holidays, and Lafave loved it when her sister helped make a bonfire so they could roast marshmallows and cook hot dogs. At Christmas the two baked cookies together, and they woke up together Christmas morning to open their stockings.
Every year at the beginning of June, to celebrate their wedding anniversary, Joyce and Larry Beasley would vacation with their daughters at the beach.
During Piotrowski's court-martial, Lafave recalled those summers with her sister.
"We'd play together and watch the sun set, and we'd fish with my dad," Lafave said. "And we like to dig for these little critters in the sand called sand fleas, and she would put them down my pants. Then we'd run along and, and we'd just look silly.
"It was our time, even though we had all veered our separate ways, to get back together."
Beasley had promised her little sister a cruise to celebrate her 21st birthday.
"I miss, I, I'm graduating college, and I was really excited when I found out that I was going to graduate early, and - and my natural instinct, I wanted to call my sister," Lafave said. "So I miss calling her for the little things and talking to her about my problems, things that only she would understand probably."
- Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at 813 226-3373 or svansickler@sptimes.com