But your Honor, I’m too HOT to go to jail!

November 30, 2005

Will counsel please approach the bench and prepare to be bitch-slapped back to the gallery?

In an affront to gender equality, and an utter mockery of justice EVERYWHERE, Debra Lafave has successfully avoided stay in prison. In case you don’t recall, Lafave is the gorgeous blonde, twenty-something Florida teacher who has been found guilty of having sex with a 14 year old student of hers.

Lafave claims to accept “full responsibility” for her actions. The guilty plea was somehow able to keep her out of jail. She faces 3 years of house-arrest, and 7 years of probation. She would’ve faced 15 years in jail for each count, had the case gone to trial.

Lafave’s attorney thinks this is a “a fair resolution.”

I just wanna throw this out there: I’d like to ask anyone who agrees with this verdict, would you spare a man who had sex with your 14 year old daughter from the loving arms of his potential cell-mates in prison?

For christ’s sake, there are 19 year olds who get jail-time, hard jail time for having sex with their 16 year old girlfriends. And this is a “fair resolution.” Methinks not.

Now, I’ve got several close friends who teach 14 and 15 year olds. I even considered pursuing a teaching career in my younger, probably wiser years. If one of us were caught having sex with *any* 14 year old girl, or even her 16 year old sister, there is no doubt in my mind that the swift arm of justice would quickely delegate the next 10 to 20 years of our lives behind bars here in Michigan. Or Florida. Or wherever it happened. There is no defense I could raise that would spare me time in jail. None. And I’d be going straight to jail, the “pound-me-in-the-ass” type of jail.

Because, and this is key, there is no such thing as consesual sex with a minor. It may be voluntary, he or she may have agreed to the act, but in the eyes of the law, a minor cannot grant consent. This is what we call statutory rape. It is often the charge against defendants when the “victim” is is not willing to press charges. That, in many cases the alleged “victim” refuses to press charges indicates at least some degree of complicity in the act. But that’s a digression - right now I’m just trying to look at the law as it is, whether I agree with it in principle is really beside the point. The issue I want to raise is the gross inequity in punishment here, for Ms. Lafave, viz-a-viz a man accused and found guilty of the same crime.

Aristotle once said that justice was treating equals equally, and treating unequals unequally. I’m having a hard time differentiating the degree of crime based solely on the sex (and relative attractiveness) of the offender.

At least she’s on the Florida sexual offenders registry.


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