Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Lafave case 'over for good'

When a judge rejects a plea deal for the former teacher, prosecutors say they have no choice but to drop the charges.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER and ABBIE VANSICKLE
Published March 22, 2006

[Times photos: Melissa Lyttle]

Addressing the media Tuesday, Debra Lafave said of the teenager with whom she had sex: "I only pray the young man and his family will be able to move on with their lives."

	Getting back to normal By Sue Carlton The Lafave sex scandal placed the victim's home under siege. How does a mother protect her son from further harm? Go to article | Timeline | Key players
	Debra Lafave, all smiles after the charges against her were dropped, was joined at a news conference by her mother, Joyce Beasley, and fiance, Andrew Beck.
	Judge Hale R. Stancil wrote that the plea deal "would undermine the credibility of the court, and the criminal justice system as a whole."
	Debra Lafave said she is being treated for bipolar disorder. "Mental illnesses can cause good people to do bad things," she said.

TAMPA - The criminal case against Debra Beasley Lafave, the former Temple Terrace teacher who gained worldwide notoriety after being accused of sexually assaulting a student, ended Tuesday as bizarrely as it began.

First came a Marion County judge's rejection Tuesday morning of a plea deal, a rare and controversial move that meant Lafave could face a sensational trial and as many as four decades in prison.

Next came the stinging response from a prosecutor, who criticized factual errors in Judge Hale R. Stancil's rejection order.

Then Tuesday afternoon, the State Attorney's Office for the 5th Judicial Circuit announced a decision that ended all the drama and assured Lafave would stay out of prison.

Prosecutors dropped charges of lewd and lascivious battery and lewd and lascivious exhibition against Lafave, 25, after concluding that the emotional welfare and privacy of the victim was more important than sending Lafave to prison.

"Well, this case is really over," said Lafave's attorney John Fitzgibbons. "Over, and over for good."

The judge had forced the state's hand, prosecutors said.

"I'm not satisfied with the resolution, but I'm satisfied this is the only resolution that protected the victim," said Ric Ridgway, chief assistant state attorney in Marion County.

In a written response to Stancil's ruling, Ridgway's tone was more biting: "The court may be willing to risk the well-being of the victims in this case in order to force it to trial. I am not."

Had Marion prosecutors not dropped the charges, Lafave and the former student from Greco Middle School would have had to go forward with a trial guaranteed to draw media from around the world. The victim, now 16, likely would have had to testify in detail about his sexual encounters with Lafave when he was 14.

If convicted, Lafave could have been sent to prison until she was in her 60s.

Instead, Lafave will live under the terms of a plea deal she reached in Hillsborough County in November. She is serving three years of house arrest followed by seven years of probation in exchange for pleading guilty to two counts of lewd and lascivious battery stemming from her conduct in June 2004.

On Tuesday, speaking at length for the first time since her arrest, Lafave apologized.

"I only pray the young man and his family will be able to move on with their lives," Lafave said, reading from a piece of yellow paper as her parents and fiance stood behind her. "His privacy has been violated. His picture has been on the Internet."

Worldwide media attention, which intensified as Lafave's scheduled trials drew closer, led prosecutors in Hillsborough and Marion counties to offer Lafave the plea deals late last year.

They had the blessing of the victim's mother, who did not want her son to go through a trial in which his identity might be revealed.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Wayne Timmerman accepted the plea in November, but when Marion prosecutors presented their proposal to Stancil in December, he balked. He said he needed more evidence of the trauma a trial would cause the victim.

During a March 8 hearing, Marion prosecutors called Hillsborough prosecutor Mike Sinacore and child psychiatrist Martin Lazoritz to the stand.

Sinacore testified that the attention on the case has been like nothing he ever has experienced, with various media outlets visiting the home of the victim and his neighbors, sending flowers to the home and incessantly seeking interviews.

When Lafave was in court, cameras followed her every move as if she were "a runway model," Sinacore said.

Lazoritz, chairman of the department of psychiatry at the University of Florida, met with the victim for 90 minutes. He concluded the teen would be "revictimized by the system" if he had to testify during such a highly publicized trial about his sexual encounters with Lafave.

The teen doesn't like to talk about his feelings and "is not the kind of young man" that responds well to counseling, he said.

Stancil wasn't convinced.

"Rarely does one find a witness who enjoys testifying in a courtroom before a jury and being cross-examined by attorneys," Stancil wrote in his order, adding that the victim in this case isn't any different from "most witnesses in any other case."

Stancil wrote that Marion prosecutors' proposed plea, which would have given Lafave the same house arrest terms as the Hillsborough deal, "would undermine the credibility of the court, and the criminal justice system as a whole, and would erode public confidence in our schools.

"Quite frankly," Stancil concluded, "if the allegations against the defendant are true, the agreed-upon sentence shocks the conscience of this court."

"It isn't normal that a judge would go against prosecutors like this," said Tampa defense lawyer Joe Episcopo. "The judges tend to acquiesce to the state, because the state controls the charges."

Stancil could not be reached for comment Tuesday. But in his order, he wrote that he would like to have heard from a victim or witness advocate and from police officers who spoke to the victim.

He said the prosecution or defense should have tried to take a deposition of the teen and his cousin, 15, who drove around Marion County while Lafave and the victim allegedly had sex in the car, to gauge whether they had difficulty testifying.

Ridgway said the teen's cousin was deposed.

According to investigators, Lafave and the teen had sex on a couch in her portable classroom at Greco Middle School, in the Riverview townhouse she shared with then-husband Owen Lafave, and in her Isuzu sport utility vehicle.

Lafave was 23; the victim was 14, and had just graduated from Greco, where Lafave taught reading.

She was arrested June 21, 2004, in the teen's Temple Terrace driveway, where police waited.

In the nearly two years since, Lafave lost her job and divorced. She recently got engaged to a former boyfriend, Andrew Beck, and is working as a waiter at a Sun City Center diner.

"I've lost family, friends. My face has been plastered everywhere," she said. "It's not easy."

Lafave said Tuesday that she has been getting treatment and counseling for bipolar disorder.

"Mental illnesses can cause good people to do bad things," she said.

Asked what she wants to do with her future now that she cannot teach, Lafave replied that she is taking an online journalism course.

So, after all this, a reporter asked, you want to be one of us?

Her face lit up. She smiled.

"Yes," she said. "I would hope that I could reach people through my writing."

Debra Lafave pleaded guilty in Hillsborough County last year to two counts of lewd and lascivious battery in exchange for this deal:

Three years of house arrest and seven years of probation.

Classification as a sex offender. She can no longer work with or near children and can't live within 1,000 feet of a school, church or playground.

She must wear an ankle monitor and adhere to a 10 p.m. curfew. She must undergo psychological therapy for four years and a polygraph test once a year.

Upon successful completion of the first two years of house arrest, she can ask a judge to waive the last year of home confinement.

[Last modified March 22, 2006, 02:16:23]