Debra LaFave Bipolar Syndrome
Category: Education, Sexual Life, Relationship, Gossip, Personality
Debra LaFave was given her freedom nearly two years after she engaged in sexual acts with a 14-year-old boy in her classroom, house, and a car, in Florida. State prosecutors dropped charges against a blond, blue-eyed former Tampa teacher on 22 March after the boy reported to be uncomfortable testifying on live court television. A psychiatrist who examined the teenager told the judge at a previous hearing that the boy suffered extreme anxiety from the media coverage of the case and does not want to testify.
Marion County Circuit Judge Hale Stancil, however, said the lack of prison time for LaFave under the plea deal “shocks the conscience of this court,” and he rejected it.
Assistant State Attorney Richard Ridgway, in explaining the decision to drop the charges, said: “The court may be willing to risk the well-being of the victims in this case in order to force it to trial. I am not.”
LaFave, 25, already faces three years of house arrest and seven years probation in Hillsborough County, where she was charged with having sex with the same boy in a classroom and her home. She pleaded guilty November 22 to two counts of lewd and lascivious battery under a plea deal there. In Marion County, she was accused of having sex with the boy in a sport utility vehicle.
Debra LaFave, a platinum blond, blue-eyed blamed bipolar disorder for her sexual encounters with the boy, but she is now undergoing therapy for ”mental illness” (a bipolar disorder) and was apologetic to the boy she calls a “young man.” LaFave said, “I have a lot of things in my past that have unfortunately become public,” and she added, “My greatest regret would probably be the fact that I put this young man through this.” The boy has said Lafave engaged him three times during June 2004 for sexual conduct.
In November 2005, Debra LaFave pleaded guilty in Hillsborough County, Florida, court to two counts of lewd and lascivious behavior. She was sentenced to three years under house arrest and seven years of probation, and was required to register as a sex offender in Florida. She currently has a fiance whom she said has unconditional love for her and has stood by her during the ordeal.
Due to the case, LaFave has grown into a staunch media critic, claiming that reporters hound her and her family and the student she molested. Lafave has decided to take journalism courses, to which she says “God has given me a great outlet to write, and I would hope I could reach people through writing.” LaFave criticized the extensive media coverage her case received, accusing reporters of invading the privacy of her former student.
Hillsborough County prosecutor Mike Sinacore has said the victim’s family had anticipated a trial, but the media attention prompted the boy’s mother to push for a plea deal. “There is no one that wanted to see Debra Lafave serve jail time more than myself,” the boy’s mother wrote in an e-mail to the Ocala Star-Banner over the weekend. But she said the welfare of her son was more important.
The boy’s mother told WTVT, “Do I believe she has bipolar? Absolutely. Am I glad she’s getting treatment for it? Yes. But is that an excuse to say, ‘I had no idea what I was doing on five different occasions,’ when she molested my child, that’s a stretch.”
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September 19th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
[…] Debra LaFave painted a picture of herself as a modest person who developed an emotionally destructive identity early in her life in part due to her own sexual experience. She had emotional problems that stemmed to her childhood - she suffered serious depression and manic phases. Her boyfriend raped her in their bathroom school when she was in 8th grade and her father was emotionally absent. She has a bipolar disorder. She cried for no reason and sometimes found it impossible to do the most basic things in life: brush her teeth, fix a meal, get up from bed. She described her 14-year-old student victim as being very flirtatious, yelling out to her with his friends from the ballfield. Of her first time engaging in oral sex with him, she said, “Yeah, he wanted it, and yeah, I gave it to him.†Though LaFave admitted she crossed a line, she said she felt her victim did, too. According to her account, the teenager at one point held her against the wall and lifted her shirt to expose her breast to another boy. […]