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Debra Lafave
American teacher From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Debra Jean Williams (née Beasley; born August 28, 1980),[1] better known under her former married name of Debra Lafave, is a former teacher at Angelo L. Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida. In 2005, she pleaded guilty to lewd or lascivious battery against a teenager. The charges stemmed from a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old student in summer of 2004 when she was 23. Lafave's plea bargain included no prison time, opting for three years of house arrest due to safety concerns, seven years of probation, and lifetime registration as a sex offender.
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Early life and education
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Lafave attended East Bay High School until 1996. From 1995 to 1996, Lafave dated Nick Carter. She also had a lesbian relationship with a classmate by the name of Casie Diana Martinez, and it was because of that relationship Lafave's parents withdrew her from East Bay.[2] She graduated from Bloomingdale High School in 1998. Around that time, she took a gig as a Pin-up model for the magazine Makes & Models (M&M);[3] later, when the sex scandal made the news, her modeling photos contributed to the sensationalism of the story.[4] She attended the University of South Florida,[5][6][7] during which time her five months pregnant then 24-year-old older sister Angela “Angie” Beasley was killed by a drunk driver on April 2001[6]. The driver; Army Captain Joseph Piotrowski had crashed his jeep into “Angie” Beasley’s 1998 Nissan[8]. Piotrowski was convicted in August 2001 under Court-martial and sentenced to 30 years in prison[9]. Despite the tragedy and trauma of losing her older sister, Lafave still managed to graduate with a degree in English.[10][11][12] After college graduation in 2002, she was hired as an English teacher at Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida. In July 19, 2003, following her first year of teaching, she married Owen Lafave.[10]
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Crime, first arrest and trial
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Lafave, then 23, was charged with statutory rape for having sex with a 14-year-old male student; she engaged in oral sex and vaginal intercourse with the student on four occasions:[13] once in the bedroom of her Riverview town house Condominium, once in her portable classroom, and multiple times on the back seat of her car, a silver 2002 model Isuzu Rodeo Sports.[14][15]
In April 2004, Lafave first met the boy while she was helping out a colleague, the football coach, at the school’s tag football game. Lafave had already garnered a reputation among the male students as being the young attractive “hot” teacher. Despite the fact that the boy was not Lafave’s student, he knew of Lafave beforehand. The boy approached Lafave along with his friend.
In May 2004, during the final week of school, on grad night, where the graduating class (including the boy) took a trip to SeaWorld Orlando, which Lafave chaperoned, the boy and Lafave got a chance to get acquainted. They developed a close relationship with one another, despite the presence of Lafave’s husband, Owen Lafave, on the trip.[16] That week, Lafave went out of her way to put the boy on detention to spend time with him in the detention room, even sometimes inviting his friends. Other times she would ask the boy to stay after school to be with her. Around that time, the two allegedly first kissed. On one of the occasions Lafave asked the boy (along with his friends) to clean her portable classroom. The boy asked Lafave to flash her breast at him. Allegedly Lafave only pulled up her shirt to reveal a tiny bit of the bottom of her bra, but when the boy’s friends left and Lafave was alone with the boy, the boy alleged they kissed. On the last day of school, one of the other students hosted a party inviting the boy. Lafave came with the boy to the party being the only teacher at that party.[17][18] When curiosity arose about Lafave's presence, the boy referred to her as his "girlfriend". By the end of the party, after driving all the other students home Lafave gave the boy her number and allegedly was already talking about plans to have sex with the boy. During the start of the summer holidays leading up to the first sexual encounter, Lafave and the boy would talk on the phone often and Lafave would regularly drive the boy to his summer activities and would regularly kiss on those car rides. It was around that time that Lafave opened up to the boy that she was thinking about him a lot and had feelings for him which "made her smile" and that she could not get rid of those feelings. Allegedly in the police reports, Lafave told the boy that she was having marital issues and because of that, she was "turned on by the fact that having sexual relations with him was not allowed"[19].
At one point in the sexual relationship, Lafave gave the boy a pewter key pendant that was a butterfly on one side and the word “Hope” on the other. She told the boy that she had one just like it for herself and wanted him to have one also as a symbol of the bond of their relationship.[20]
Lafave’s sexual relationship with the student was exposed when the two went to visit the boy’s cousin in Ocala, which would end up being their final sexual encounter. His aunt saw the pair in a parking lot and was alarmed at seeing the boy in the company of a provocatively dressed woman. She asked her son (the boy's cousin) about the situation; he told her that Lafave was the sister of a mutual friend of theirs from the University of Florida and that they were buying Father’s Day presents together. Unconvinced, the aunt then alerted the student’s mother. Under intense questioning from his mother, the boy admitted that the woman was Lafave.
Officers in Temple Terrace recorded conversations between Lafave and the boy in order to get a verbally recorded statement from Lafave which would confirm from her that she indeed had unprotected sex with the boy. Once the statement was secured, the officers then had the boy arrange a meeting with Lafave at his house on the pretense that his mom was out for the entire day for a sales meeting, then arrested her when she arrived at their next meeting place. Two separate sets of charges were filed, because the alleged incidents occurred in both Riverview, in Hillsborough County, and Ocala, in Marion County.[21] A trial date was set after the prosecution and defense could not agree on a plea bargain that involved prison time. Lafave faced a sentence of 5 to 15 years for each of the two counts of which she was accused.[22]
Shortly before the trial was scheduled to begin, the victim's mother learned that Court TV was going to cover the first trial and would not agree to keep her son's identity private. The pretrial publicity was already taking a noticeable toll on him; he had a difficult time talking to an assistant prosecutor from Marion County. The victim's cousin also indicated that he was not willing to testify under the circumstances. Eventually, the victim's family decided that sending Lafave to prison would not be worth the emotional trauma of the proceedings. They were especially concerned they would have to repeat the process two years later, since there would be separate trials in Tampa and Ocala. They asked the prosecutors to offer Lafave a deal that would avoid a trial. The defense was willing to agree to a plea deal, provided that Lafave would not have to serve jail time. As part of the deal, Lafave pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years of community control (house arrest) and seven years of sex offender probation. Prosecutors defended the deal, saying that sex offender probation in Florida is quite difficult to complete; Lafave could have gone to jail if she violated any of the probation terms.[21][23]
Lafave's guilty plea ended her teaching career. As part of her plea deal, she was required to surrender her teaching license and was banned from ever teaching in Florida again.[21] Under the terms of her probation, she had to be home by 10 p.m. every day, could not leave Hillsborough County without a judge's permission, and could not be around minors. She also had to register as a sex offender.[21][24] There was widespread skepticism as to whether a man guilty of lewd or lascivious battery would have received equally mild punishment.[21][25]
On December 8, 2005, Marion County Circuit Judge Hale Stancil rejected the plea deal, claiming that any agreement that did not require Lafave to serve some prison time "would undermine the credibility of this court, and the criminal justice system as a whole, and would erode public confidence in our schools." He set a trial date for April 10, 2006. The Marion County state's attorney subsequently dropped the charges.[26] In a statement, the prosecutors cited an assessment by psychologist Martin Lazoritz that found the victim would be so severely traumatized by a potential trial that it would take as long as eight years for him to recover.[23]
Physical appearance
The issue of Lafave's attractive physical appearance became a point of argument in court. Lafave's lawyer John Fitzgibbons stated, "To place Debbie into a Florida state women's penitentiary, to place an attractive young woman in that kind of hellhole, is like putting a piece of raw meat in with the lions." Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian asserted that Lafave avoided jail time due to a faulty belief among Americans that she was "too pretty for prison".[27] Ariel Levy, writing in New York, called Fitzgibbons's statement "notorious",[28] and Lafave's ex-husband criticized it.[29] Commentators have claimed that the attention given to this particular case arose from Lafave's physical appearance.[27][28][30][31] Provocative modeling photographs of Lafave have circulated on the Internet since she first gained notoriety.[32]
The Temple Terrace Police Department came under scrutiny for taking graphic nude photos of Lafave while Lafave was in stirrups in a jail cell. The lead detective who requested the nude photos of her was arrested before the trial in an unrelated prostitution sting.[33]
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Second arrest and violation of probation
Lafave was arrested on December 4, 2007, for violating her probation by speaking with a 17-year-old restaurant co-worker.[34][35] The court ruled, however, that the violation was neither willful nor substantial, and it did not revoke her probation.[36]
Aftermath
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Lafave later attributed her criminal actions to bipolar disorder, which is associated with intense and irregular mood swings, and with hypersexuality and poor judgement during manic episodes. She was also treated for bipolar disorder after allegedly being raped at age 13 by a classmate.[31][37]
In July 2008, within the terms of her plea deal, Lafave petitioned to convert the remainder of her house arrest to probation, having satisfied other terms such as sex offender therapy and community service. Her petition was granted and her house arrest ended four months early.[38] On October 29, 2009, Lafave was cleared to have unsupervised contact with some children.[39] On September 22, 2011, Lafave moved to end her probation four years early, based upon having completed all other obligations.[40][41] Her petition was granted and her probation ended that day. The victim's family stated that they would appeal the decision.[42] The early termination of probation was reversed by the 2nd District Court of Appeals on August 15, 2012.[24]
Lafave asked the Florida Supreme Court to reinstate her release from probation.[43] On January 24, 2013, Lafave was ordered to continue her probation while the Florida Supreme Court waited to hear the case.[44] In October 2014, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lafave.[45]
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In popular culture
The novel Tampa, by Alissa Nutting, was inspired by the case of Debra Lafave.[46]
See also
References
External links
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