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Lafave not the only one whose fate is in judge's hands

By SUE CARLTON
Published March 17, 2006

Forget those sky-blue eyes and corn silk locks, that ankle monitor over sleek black pumps. Forget those "Too Pretty For Prison" news stories.

Try to put aside all that saucy innuendo reminiscent of that Jessica Simpson TV commercial - you know, the one where she's a short-skirted pizza waitress sashaying toward a teenage boy who passes out at the sight of her.

Truth is, at the heart of the Debra Lafave case is a sobering legal question: Why would we make a victim into a victim all over again?

Unless you read only the Financial Times or watch only the History Channel, you probably know Lafave was the blond babe of a middle school teacher who had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student. It happened in her classroom, her Riverview townhouse and her SUV when they drove to Ocala, which is how she ended up charged in two counties.

Ultimately, the boy's mother wanted him to be spared the circus of a trial and the scrutiny of the battalion of reporters who can't get enough of Lafave. So lawyers hammered out a plea deal, and a Hillsborough judge signed off on it.

But when prosectors brought that same deal to Ocala, Marion County Circuit Judge Hale Stancil balked. "I don't make decisions based on how someone looks," he all but harrumphed to the Ocala-Star Banner. "They could be a model or at the end of the line." He also has said - before any trial, mind you - that he would be inclined to impose a guideline sentence that would send Lafave to prison.

At a hearing before Stancil last week, a psychiatrist testified that the boy wants to move on with his life and would be "revictimized by the system" if forced into the frenzy of a trial. He essentially said the kid should be left alone to be a kid.

The judge said he would think about it. He also read a prepared statement. This included a comment on how the victim was not a 5-year-old, and an observation that this happened a year and a half ago.

So he should buck up and be a big boy?

No one wants to think any judge would be looking for 15 minutes of fame in a case that guarantees endless Court TV reruns. But no one should want a judge to serve as rubber stamp at the whim of lawyers, either.

Asking questions about a plea deal is a good idea. Here are some answers in the Lafave case: Prosecutors had no guarantee of a guilty verdict. The victim has grown up, maybe more young man than boy in the eyes of a jury. Some people have complicated ideas about a teenage boy and an older woman. Lafave's lawyer John Fitzgibbons had a pretty good shot at sympathy, given traumas she has suffered. She could have walked with no sentence at all.

Most important: A doctor said a trial could victimize the boy. Again.

Maybe you're in the camp that believes he wasn't much of a victim in the first place, given Lafave's good looks. Most of us would disagree, as does the law. She's an adult. He's a child. She was a teacher, an authority. He's a child.

But we can probably agree that the boy was a victim of the madness afterward: reporters stalking his neighborhood, national media clamoring for interviews, kids at school knowing every detail. Who could have known this would make news around the world?

Maybe it's okay to push a reluctant victim to testify in some situations, like when a criminal is about to walk away free and likely to do it again. In this deal, Lafave is labeled a sex offender, on house arrest for three years, on strict probation that keeps her away from children and prevents her from profiting from her celebrity for seven more. It's not prison, but it's not freedom, either.

Plea deals aren't uncommon in sex crime cases. In Inverness, a female former Lecanto High coach and teacher recently got two years' house arrest and eight years' probation for a sexual relationship with a female student.

Any day now, Judge Stancil is expected to announce his ruling on whether he will set somebody free. Not Debra Lafave, but the teenage boy who didn't deserve any of this.

Sue Carlton can be reached at carlton@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 17, 2006, 01:54:15]