Debra Lafave

Debra Jean Williams (née Beasley; born August 28, 1980), better known by her old married name Debra Jean Lafave, is an American former teacher and convicted sex offender. In 2005 she pled guilty to lewd and lascivious battery of a minor for having sex with a 14-year-old student. Her plea bargain controversially allowed her to avoid any prison time, instead serving three years under house arrest followed by seven years on probation.

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Biography

Debra Beasley graduated from Bloomingdale High School in 1998, and obtained a degree in English at the University of South Florida. She was hired as an English teacher at Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida, in 2002, and married Owen Lafave the following year.

Lafave, 23, soon began flirting with a 14-year-old male student, telling she "had feelings for him" and didn't know what to do with them. Her advances soon increased when she convinced the student to stay behind after school to help her clean out her classroom before propositioning him and performing oral sex on him. They later had sexual intercourse at her house, and twice more when they had the victim's cousin drive them across the state to Ocala while they had sex in the back of the car.

Lafave was caught when, during one of the trips to Ocala, the victim's aunt saw them together. Alarmed by seeing him in the company of an older, provocatively dressed woman, she called the boy's mother, who questioned him and discovered that the woman was Lafave and that they had had sex four times. Lafave was arrested and charged with lewd and lascivious battery on a minor.

Shortly before Lafave's trial was due to begin, the victim's family discovered that Court TV were planning to cover the trial and were not willing to conceal the victim's identity. The victim also expressed unwillingness to testify and had trouble talking with prosecutors due to the extensive publicity. Feeling it would not be worth going through a trial, the family asked prosecutors to offer Lafave a deal and avoid bringing the case to trial. According to the terms of Lafave's deal, she would have to serve three years house arrest followed by seven years probation, register as a sex offender and surrender her teaching licence. The deal was widely criticised as many doubted that a male teacher would have received the same treatment and her lawyer's statement that she should not serve time in prison because she was "an attractive young woman" garnered criticism. Lafave completed her probation early in 2014.

Lafave has attributed her actions to Bipolar disorder and hypersexuality, both of which resulted from being sexually assaulted by a classmate when she was 13.