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Clues scattered in Lafave's denial, deflection of blame

By SUE CARLTON
Published September 20, 2006

Did you think you could you stand one more story about America's most notorious ex-schoolteacher, Debra Lafave?

Ready or not, there she was, blinking those baby blues at Matt Lauer and talking about her internationally infamous relationship with a 14-year-old student.

Why did any of us want to see that heavily hyped Dateline NBC last week? Didn't we suspect watching it might be like eating a half-dozen Twinkies at once - knowing it might make us a little ill, but unable to resist?

We watched because we wanted to hear why. We wanted to figure out how someone like Lafave - "a woman that by every societal standard can get a date," as her lawyer John Fitzgibbons put it - could do something so risky. So damaging. So utterly dumb.

So there she sat, ankle-banded, red-lipsticked and heavily mascaraed, telling of her troubled past. The rape by a boyfriend at school when she was 13. Her big sister killed by a drunken driver five years ago. Her deep depression. Her drinking. Her bipolar disorder. It was grim stuff.

She said her father was "emotionally absent" when she was growing up. Lauer, on behalf of viewers who started yelling at their TVs at this point, noted that most of us with imperfect parents don't deal by sleeping with teenagers.

You got the idea Lafave started acting weird, dressing and behaving like a teenager, because something was seriously wrong behind that doll-perfect face. Interesting to think how this might have played to a jury had she gone to trial and used her planned insanity defense.

But at some point in the interview she lost us. If she ever had us.

The boy flirted with her, she said. (A 14-year-old boy flirted with a gorgeous blond teacher who was paying him attention? Get out!) Later, he "wanted it." She seemed to blame him even while denying she was blaming him.

Most incendiary of all: She said the boy came to her classroom with a friend, held her against a wall and put his hand up her shirt to expose her.

"I felt violated," she told Lauer.

The boy told investigators he jokingly asked her to flash them and she obliged. (This does not seem completely implausible for a woman who later let a 15-year-old drive her SUV while she and the 14-year-old were occupied in the back seat.)

Lauer pointed out another detail that made her story "hard to believe" - she had sex with the boy a week later.

The allegation that he acted aggressively outraged the prosecutor and the boy's mother.

His mother, who has focused on getting her son's life back to normal, found herself defending him, in shadow, on MSNBC. She said she could not let Lafave go unchallenged on this.

Lafave, by the way, also opined that the boy will have "a hard time trusting women one day." Maybe not, if his ideal comes in part from watching his mom.

She agreed to a plea deal to shield her son from the kind of international publicity onslaught that would have rattled even Paris Hilton. She gave up the satisfaction of seeing Lafave tried and possibly convicted.

Another notable interview moment came when Lafave said, "I think I should be in jail." Those words could come back to haunt her should she blow her house arrest and probation and face a judge again.

Lost in that TV hour were words that sounded like pure remorse. She said she "crossed the line that never should've been crossed." She said she "made a really, really, really bad choice."

Clues to why someone like Lafave would do something like this are in the details of her messy life and her mental health issues. They're also in her denial, and in her willingness to spread the blame.

At one point, Lauer asked her if anyone raised an eyebrow about her behavior during her downward spiral. She was, after all, a grown woman and a schoolteacher.

Lafave said she didn't care.

"I was in a world of my own," she said, and that we can believe.

Sue Carlton can be reached at carlton@sptimes.com.

[Last modified September 20, 2006, 01:05:07]