Child-sex cases raise questions of gender bias
Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News
March 11, 2006
Author: Rene Stutzman, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.
Dang Van Dinh, a male chemistry teacher at Orlando's Boone High School, was ordered to prison for five years for having sex with a 15-year-old girl.
But Debra Lafave, a female teacher who had sex with a 14-year-old student in suburban Tampa, was merely placed on house arrest for her crime.
Dinh and Lafave were both in the news this week, calling attention to their contrasting punishments. It's a familiar pattern, according to a national expert on classroom sexual abuse: Female teachers who sexually abuse students get far less punishment than male teachers who do the same thing.
Robert J. Shoop, professor of education at Kansas State University, has studied teacher sex abuse for 15 years and has written a book on the subject. He said his review of five years of news reports shows that male teachers are likely to get 15 to 20 years in prison, while female teachers typically are placed on probation or go to prison for one to three years.
He said the disparity reflects society's wrongheaded view that adolescent boys are not harmed by having sex with older women.
"No, it's not fair," said David DeMond, president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association. "A predator is a predator is a predator, whether they wear a dress or whether they wear a pair of pants."
But prosecutors, including the one who negotiated the plea deal with Lafave, say they work just as hard to get tough sentences for female teachers who are sexual abusers.
There is "absolutely not" any disparity, said Michael Sinacore, Lafave's Hillsborough County prosecutor.
Lafave now faces similar charges in Marion County because of incidents involving the same victim on a trip to that county. Prosecutors there were in court Wednesday hoping to persuade a judge to accept a plea deal for Lafave similar to the deal three years' house arrest and seven years' probation she struck in Hillsborough County.
That same day, Dinh made headlines in Orlando because Orange Circuit Judge Bob Wattles has floated the idea of having him speak to young teachers about the dangers of becoming too close to students.
Sinacore said Hillsborough prosecutors had previously offered Lafave a plea deal that would have sent her to prison for three years. Then the victim's family stepped in and said they didn't want the youth to have to testify at trial.
That weakened prosecutors' hand, and forced them to offer Lafave a more lenient deal. Such problems often crop up in teacher sex cases involving both male and female teachers, Sinacore said.
"These cases are very difficult to prove," he said.
Sometimes evidence doesn't hold up, a witness changes an account or new evidence contradicts old. When that happens, rather than go to trial and lose, prosecutors will accept a weaker plea deal, he said.
Assistant State Attorney Phillip Havens, who manages sex-crime prosecution in Volusia County, watched as a 2004 case unraveled against former middle-school teacher Paula Cantrell, now 41. She was accused of sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy, but before the case went to trial, the boy changed his story and denied they had had sex, Havens said.
So Havens made the best deal he could, he said: Cantrell entered a plea to interfering with child custody, was placed on probation and ordered to stay away from the boy. A few months later, though, authorities found him at her home, and she was rearrested. She's now in state prison for violating the terms of her probation.
"Our office looks for the maximum sentence we can get in every case," Havens said.
Lafave wasn't sent to prison and Cantrell wasn't initially locked up, but prosecutors and judges do send female teachers to prison.
Last month, Carol Flannigan, an elementary-school music teacher in Palm Beach County who had sex with an 11-year-old boy, agreed to a five-year prison sentence.
And in one of the nation's best-known teacher-student sex cases, Mary Kay Letourneau spent 7 1/2 years in prison for having sex with a 12-year-old student, in Seattle. Last May, nine months after she was freed, she married the boy, Vili Fualaau, then 22.
Winter Park psychologist Deborah Day has evaluated male and female teachers accused of sexually abusing students.
"There is a continued societal belief that female perpetrators are not perpetrators," Day said Friday. "There's also this perception that male adolescents can't be damaged by having sex with older females."
Neither is true, she said. Just like girls who've been sexually abused, boys suffer guilt and shame, she said.
Women should be punished as harshly as men, she said. "It's the same behavior from a different gender," she said.
The emotional damage done to boys is the same as what's done to girls, she said.
So what is the right sentence for a teacher, male or female, who sexually abuses a child?
"I think the punishment that men are getting, 15 to 20 years, seems to be reasonable to me," Shoop, the Kansas State professor, said.
Copyright (c) 2006, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.
