Re: Former teacher, 25, who had sex with 14-year-old student (pic)
TAMPA, Florida (Reuters) - Debra LaFave, a former Florida school teacher, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to having sex with a 14-year-old male student and was sentenced to 10 years of community control and probation.
LaFave, 25, pleaded guilty to committing two counts of lewd and lascivious battery on the Greco Middle School student.
LaFave could have been sentenced to 30 years or more in prison if she had been convicted in a trial, which had been scheduled to begin next month in Tampa.
Under a plea agreement with Hillsborough County prosecutors in Tampa, LaFave agreed to accept three years of community control, including electronic monitoring, and seven years of probation.
She must enter a sexual offender treatment program and cannot have any unsupervised contact with children.
"I accept responsibility for my actions. I'm very sorry for everything that has occurred," LaFave said in court before she was sentenced.
Another condition of the agreement is that LaFave cannot profit from her conduct through book deals, television appearances or other commercial activity.
Her attorney had planned to offer an insanity defense if there was a trial.
LaFave was married at the time she began having sex with the student, but is now divorced. She had taught reading at the school for two years prior to her arrest in June 2004.
After the boy's parents found out he was having sex with LaFave, they allowed police to tape telephone calls between the two, which led to her arrest. The boy has not been identified.
Prosecutors said the boy's parents approved of the plea deal because they did not want him to testify at trial.
The case gained national attention after pictures of LaFave wearing a bikini and straddling a motorcycle appeared on the Internet.
LaFave's attorney, John Fitzgibbons, made headlines in July when he said his client was too pretty to survive prison. "To place an attractive young woman in that kind of hell-hole is like placing a piece of raw meat in with the lions," he said then.
Re: Former teacher, 25, who had sex with 14-year-old student (pic)
Quote:
The boy told investigators the two had sex in a classroom at the Greco school in Temple Terrace near Tampa, in her Riverview town house and once in a vehicle while his 15-year-old cousin drove them around Marion County.
