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Father stays part of growing family
By CARY DAVIS, Times Staff Writer Chris Boudreau was a worried man in early 2001. Not only did he have a wife and a baby girl to support, Boudreau also faced a felony charge of lewd and lascivious battery. His crime: Boudreau had sex in 1999 with a 14-year-old girl who eventually became his wife and the mother of his child. Boudreau, who was 17 when he started dating Denise Weaver, was looking at the possibility of going to prison. Adding to his worries, Denise was pregnant at the time with the couple's second child. So it was a huge relief to Boudreau when Pasco-Pinellas State Attorney Bernie McCabe agreed on April 25 to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor. Boudreau pleaded no contest to contributing to the delinquency of a minor and was placed on six months' probation. Now that the criminal case is behind him, Boudreau has something else to worry about. Only this time, it's the good kind of worry. In August, Denise, now 17, gave birth to the couple's second daughter, Hailey. Chris and Denise aren't getting much sleep these days, but that's just fine with them, considering what could have been. "It's been really good," said Chris, now 21. There was a time when Chris worried he wouldn't be there for Hailey's birth. Denise worried that she would have to apply for welfare to support herself and their two young girls. They were both angry at prosecutors for interfering with a young family struggling to make the best of a difficult situation. With those days in their past, the Boudreaus had a happy Christmas. Santa brought Hailey "little stuff," Chris said. And 2-year-old Adrian, the couple's older daughter, can't get enough of her little sister. These days, Chris is working as a mechanic, awaiting the results of his high school equivalency exam and planning his future. He's thinking about joining the Army. "I'm just getting back on my feet," he said. He's too busy, he says, to dwell on the court case, which made headlines and raised questions about the criminality of consensual sex between teens. Asked last week to reflect on the case, Boudreau said the ordeal made him realize just how much he values being a family man and not an inmate of the state of Florida. Did the case change him in any way? "Not really," he said, "except maybe the way I view the government. I don't really trust the government anymore."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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