Here’s a story about Christine Scarlett, something to add to our recent list of headscratchers about the colonial cousins and the sometimes odd attitudes they have to sex and the law. Rather different from the Genarlow Wilson case though, thankfully.
In fact, the treatment of Ms. Scarlett seems entirely reasonable.
Christine Scarlett, the former substitute teacher whose affair with
a special-education student attracted national attention, has avoided a
potentially salacious trial set to begin Monday.
Scarlett, 40,
pleaded guilty Friday to five felony charges related to her seduction
of Steven Bradigan, who was the 17-year-old captain of the Strongsville
High School football team when the relationship began in 2002. She bore
him a son the next year.
Their affair was exposed last year
after Bradigan, who has a hearing problem and a learning deficiency,
sued Scarlett and the Strongsville School District, accusing her of
taking advantage of his youth and disability and district officials of
failing to report her to police. A Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge
threw out the case, which is now on appeal.
About 6 p.m.
Friday, in a last- ditch attempt to avoid trial, Scarlett pleaded
guilty to three counts of sexual battery and two counts of dis
seminating obscene materials to juveniles. She originally faced 18
felony sexual battery charges.
Punishment was not an element of
the plea deal; that will be entirely up to the judge, said Ryan Miday,
a spokesman for County Prosecutor Bill Mason.
Judge Dick
Ambrose could send her to prison for 17 years if he chooses to give her
the maximum penalty allowable at her sentencing June 12.
17 years would seem a little extreme as a sentence for the seduction of a 17 year old. Yes, I know, she was in loco parentis, was responsible for the young man, but still, that would be an incredibly long stretch for such a transgression.
Amazingly, given Wilson’s ten years, she seems to have faced a sensible judge:
The Strongsville substitute special education teacher who admitted a
lengthy sexual relationship with a student was sentenced to 3 days in
the county jail, six months electronic home monitoring, 5 years
probation and will have the reporting requirements that go with the
designation Sexually Oriented Offender for the next ten years.
Sounds reasonable to me at least. No, we don’t want teachers (male or female) seducing their students but there’s got to be a reasonable level of punishment.
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