LA: After admitting sex with 3 boys, substitute teacher spared jail and barred from class only two years
There is something wrong with the justice system when a female teacher gets probation and is only barred from teaching for two years. Had the teacher been male, I’ll bet he would have gotten 20 years for each victim.
Below is the story from USA Today:
After pleading guilty to having sex with three underage teenagers and sending lewd messages, a substitute teacher in Louisiana was spared jail and could even be headed back to the classroom, New Orlean’s station WDSU reports.
As part of a plea deal, 34-year-old Heidi Domangue Verrett pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of carnal knowledge of a juvenile and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile. When she was arrested in 2016, the Terrebonne Parish instructor faced three felony charges, according to the report.
A district judge then suspended Verrett’s six-month jail term and sentenced the substitute teacher and teacher’s aide to two years of unsupervised probation and ordered her to pay $900 in fines, Houma Today reports. She did not have to register as a sex offender.
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While we may question the actions in this case, if the truth be known, this is probably the resolution most sex offender cases should have come to. With the exception of the most heinous, and considering the low recidivism rate of sex offenders, many families could have been saved with such an outcome. Even though most of us ‘got the book thrown at us’, when such a common sense decision is made, maybe we should applaud it vice condemn it. It may represent a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.
Cap…I am in total agreement with your take on this. Thx. for ur input!
Her punishment is fair and sufficient, and this is a good outcome. Per the source,
“Anybody who might want to hire this woman in the future, especially when it involves kids, is going to see that on her record,” [assistant DA] Elfert said. “I would suggest there won’t be many school systems at all that would hire her.”
Do we want to reform Florida’s criminal justice system to look more like this? Or, as some have suggested below, do we want to spread Florida’s more severe system to other states, particularly in cases where men are involved, in the interest of “fairness”?
My view when it comes to criminal punishment is that we level down, not up, and that is one of the reasons I joined FAC.
The problem with this case is that people read the story and think that punishments are too lenient – then demand harsher sentences.
Yes, there seems to be huge disparity between female sentences and male sentences.
Remember Mary Kay Letourneau? I seem to recall she was a teacher who had an ongoing sexual relationship with her 13 year old (male) student. She got like 6 months!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay_Letourneau
Doesnt have to Register! These laws Target Men.
They say Justice is blind, but it obviously is skewed one direction. A male teacher would lose everything, be in jail for years and be on the registry forever. It would be interesting to see how he has sentenced similar cases involving males.
Un-bloody believable. In Florida that would have been twenty in and at LEAST twenty out, and INTENSE supervision! Plus life-time registration and harassment!
Please excuse the language FAC and all on here…
But thats F%*k#d up