Think molesters are all men?  Think again.

 

Kelsey Peterson

LEXINGTON, Neb. —  The multistate search for a troubled 13-year-old boy and his 25-year-old middle school teacher — on the run after police began investigating a relationship between the two — has moved across the border to Mexico.

A police investigator says the white Pontiac owned by the middle school teacher crossed the California border into Mexico around 11 a.m. Tuesday.

When Fernando Rodriguez called his aunt over the weekend, he asked her whether a visa or passport was required to travel to Mexico, according to court documents.

Police on Monday issued a warrant for Kelsey Peterson, who is wanted on suspicion of child abuse, child endangerment and kidnapping, authorities said.

Last week, Peterson was placed on administrative leave from Lexington Middle School, where she is a sixth-grade teacher and basketball coach, and officials confiscated her school-issued laptop.

Court documents showed authorities had recovered several e-mails and letters between the two from the school and Peterson's father. In them, Rodriguez and Peterson professed their affection for one another.

 

Debra Jean Beasley (born August 28, 1980) was a reading teacher at Angelo L. Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida, when she was charged with several counts of having illegal sexual relations and statutory rape with a minor in 2004.

Arrest and trial

Investigating officers pursued the case after being notified by the 14-year-old boy's mother. Officers tape-recorded conversations between Debra and the boy, then arrested Lafave at their next rendezvous. Compelling evidence was provided by the boy in the form of accurate and detailed descriptions of private characteristics of Lafave's body. One European newspaper published the boy's name and photo; legal action by his mother led to its being removed from the paper's website.

Because the illegal sexual activity occurred in two different counties, two separate sets of charges were filed. A trial date was set for December 5 at a court hearing after the prosecution and the defense could not agree on a plea bargain. The prosecution's plea deal involved prison time, which Debra and her parents found unacceptable. Debra's defense attorney caused a national stir that made headlines by remarking to the media that "to place Debbie into a Florida state women's penitentiary, to place an attractive young woman in that kind of hellhole, is like putting a piece of raw meat in with the lions." In a book written by her ex-husband Owen Lafave, he suggests that this statement was an intentional ploy by the attorney.^[1]

Shortly before the trial was scheduled to begin, the boy's mother, who had been insisting that Debra serve time in prison, learned that the trial was to be covered by Court TV and changed her stance, agreeing to a plea bargain with no prison time to prevent her son from having to testify in court. A new plea agreement was quickly worked out.

On November 22, 2005, Debra pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years of Community Control (house arrest) and seven years of probation, along with a string of other requirements.^{[citation needed]}

On December 8, 2005, the judge in the second county refused to accept plea-agreement terms that included no prison time and set a trial date for April 10, 2006. In an unusual act, the prosecutor announced the charges were being dropped.

After the trial

On September 29, 2006, Backstreet Boy Nick Carter claimed on The Howard Stern Show that he lost his virginity to Debra Lafave when they were classmates.^[2]

Lafave is referenced in the documents submitted to NBC in April 2007 by Cho Seung-hui, who carried out the Virginia Tech massacre^[3]

Lafave later attributed her indiscretions to bipolar disorder, which is associated with intense and irregular mood swings, and with hypersexuality and poor judgment during manic episodes.^[4]

Debra Lafave was arrested on December 4, 2007, for violating her probation. The violation listed says she talked to a 17 year old female restaurant coworker on various occasions.^[5][6]

Pamela Joan Rogers (Turner) (born July 1, 1977), a former elementary school physical education teacher and coach in McMinnville, Tennessee, had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old boy, one of her students in Centertown Elementary School. During the three-month relationship, Rogers and the teen performed both vaginal sex and oral sex more than a dozen times, in the school, in her house, and in the teen's home.

Criminal prosecution

Pamela Rogers faced 15 counts of sexual battery by an authority figure and 13 counts of statutory rape on February 4, 2005. The charges stemmed from her 3-month relationship with a teenage boy. Following her arrest, she posted bail of $50,000. When originally charged, Turner pleaded not guilty.

Rogers later plead no contest to 4 charges of sexual battery by an authority figure on August 12, 2005, as part of a deal with the prosecution. Her sentence was 270 days (about 9 months) in the Warren County jail in Tennessee. During an 8-year suspended sentence, she must also serve a term of 7 years and 3 months of probation, register as a sex offender, and surrender her teaching certificate for life. The sentence not only prohibits her from profiting from the case (including books and movies), but also bars her from granting interviews for 8 years.

Rogers was arrested again on April 24, 2006 on charges that she had sent text messages, nude photos, and sex videos of herself to the same boy while using her father's cellphone. She was also charged for communicating with the boy via blogs and a website. The judge ordered her to remain in jail until her next court hearing. One of the videos surfaced on the internet, on BadJocks.com and showed Rogers - clad only in black underwear and white stockings - dancing provocatively. On July 14, 2006 Rogers was sentenced to 7 years in prison for violating her probation by sending explicit videos to her former victim and maintaining contact with him via online blogs. Rogers asked for mercy and apologized to her family and the teen's family saying tearfully to the judge, "I have humiliated myself. What I did was wrong, I am willing to do anything to rehabilitate myself." She asked for local incarceration with therapy. Circuit Judge Bart Stanley denied her request saying, "You have done everything except show this court that you wanted to rehabilitate yourself." He revoked Rogers' probation and ordered her to serve the rest of a seven-year prison sentence at the Tennessee State Prison for Women.^[1] She received two additional years of prison time in January 2007 after pleading guilty to sending nude photos of herself to the boy.^[2][3]

Joan Schleicher, a psychologist who interviewed Rogers said she was best described as a sex addict as well as suffering from significant post-traumatic stress, from a great deal of trauma in her life and from extreme immaturity. Schleicher is also concerned that Rogers might be vulnerable to lesbian involvement in prison given her now publicized past involvement in lesbian sex, her sexual addiction and her history of vulnerability.^[4]

Mary Fualaau (born January 30, 1962 (1962-01-30) (age 45), formerly known as Mary Kay Letourneau and Mary Katherine Schmitz) is a former schoolteacher infamous for having two children with one of her teenaged students. She was convicted of statutory rape and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Background

Mary Kay's father was John G. Schmitz, a Roman Catholic U.S. Congressman from Orange County, California and a professor at Santa Ana College. He was generally considered one of the more conservative members of the House, and ran for President of the United States in 1972 on the conservative American Independent Party ticket.

Her mother Mary Schmitz was a homemaker and anti-feminist activist. Mary Kay is one of seven children born to John and Mary, and she has two half-siblings that were the result of a longtime affair between her father and his mistress. Another, Joseph E. Schmitz, was appointed Inspector General of the Department of Defense by George W. Bush. Mary Kay Schmitz married Steve Letourneau on June 30, 1984. The couple had two daughters and two sons together.

The teacher-student relationship

Letourneau first met Vili Fualaau (born June 26, 1983) when he was a student in her second grade class at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Washington. He was eight years old; she was 29. She was his teacher again in the sixth grade, and she had sex with him during the summer of 1996, when he was 13. Her husband became aware of the situation and revealed it to family members when he read their letters to each other in February 1997. His cousin reported the relationship to local child protection services.

Legal matters

On February 26, 1997, Letourneau was arrested for statutory rape, called "child rape" in Washington. Four months later, she gave birth to Fualaau's daughter, Audrey Lokelani. On August 7, 1997, she pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree statutory rape. She was sentenced to 89 months in prison by Judge Linda Lau.

The prison term was suspended and she was sentenced to serve six months in county jail and enroll in a three-year sexual deviancy treatment program. She was released from jail early (January 1, 1998) for good behavior, and as a condition was forbidden to see Fualaau; however, on February 3, 1998, police discovered Letourneau in a car with Fualaau and arrested her for violating the conditions of her suspended sentence. She had also failed to comply with her sexual deviancy treatment program. In the car police found $6,500 in cash, baby clothes, and a passport, indicating that she planned to leave the country. The original sentence of seven and a half years was reimposed.

In March, 1998, prison officials discovered that Letourneau was pregnant with another child by Fualaau. Letourneau and Fualaau's second daughter, Alexis Georgia, was born in Tacoma on October 16, 1998. Hours after the birth, Mary Kay Letourneau was returned to prison. In November, 1999 Letourneau was detained in solitary confinement for six months because she smuggled letters to Vili out of the prison. In January, 2001, Letourneau's father died. She asked to attend his funeral, but her request was denied.

Letourneau and her husband Steve were divorced while she was in prison in May, 1999, and Steve was given custody of their four children. He remarried and moved the family to Alaska.

In 2000, Fualaau's family sued the Highline School District and the city of Des Moines, Washington for emotional suffering, lost wages, and the costs of rearing his two children, claiming the school had failed to protect him from Letourneau.^[1] The jury ruled against them and no damages were awarded.

Life after prison

Letourneau was released on parole on August 4, 2004. She will have to register as a sex offender for the remainder of her life unless a judge lifts that requirement.

Two days later, Fualaau, who was by then 21, applied to the court to lift the no-contact order; the request was granted. Letourneau and Fualaau were married on May 20, 2005 in the Seattle suburb of Woodinville at Columbia Winery. Access to the ceremony was strictly controlled by the television show Entertainment Tonight, which paid for exclusive access. Although best known as Mary Kay Letourneau, she now goes by the legal name of Mary Fualaau.

 

Anne Knopf

 

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