Sexual predators in the classroom: 2006 off to an ugly start
By John David Powell (02/02/06)
Remember the Vermont district judge who got in hot
water for handing down a lenient sentence to a
convicted sex offender? Judge Edward Cashman changed
the original sixty-day sentence to one of
incarceration for five to ten years for Mark Kaplan
who admitted to sexually assaulting a girl under the
age of 10.
Folks in St. Albans and other parts of Vermont are
still fuming about the first sentence, as are various
conservative media folks around the country. A
strange silence hangs over the land, however,
regarding an equally mystifying sentence from a
Massachusetts judge.
Superior Court Judge Suzanne Delvecchio on Jan. 17
sentenced a former high school teacher to a suspended
2 1/2-year prison term and five years probation for
the 2003 rape of a 15-year-old male student. Gregory
Pathiakis of Brockton, who was 23 at the time,
admitted to the assault and to possession of child
pornography. Judge Delvecchio based the sentencing on
her understanding the sex was consensual.
The attorney for the confessed sodomite, Robert
Jubinville, explained the outrageous sentence and the
circumstances surrounding it during an appearance on
Fox’s Hannity & Colmes on Jan. 19. Yes, the act was
statutory rape under Massachusetts law, he said, but
the student was six weeks shy of 16, the age of
consent.
But maybe it wasn’t real sex. As Jubinville
explained, it was only one act of oral sex, which
occurred after the student came on to the teacher and
lied about his age.
Oral sex, together with no criminal record, may keep
Kristi Dance Oakes out of prison. Tennessee Court of
Appeal Judge James Curwood Witt believes the
33-year-old Seymour High School teacher is a good
candidate for rehabilitation, noting Oakes admitted to
only one act of oral sex with her 16-year-old student,
in the back seat of her car at a dam, after their
summer jobs at an amusement park, and that she
apologized to the boy’s mother the next day. Oakes
could get two years in prison, but pretrial diversion,
which seems OK to the judge, could mean probation and
a clean slate.
One has to wonder if Cathy Heminghaus of Ferguson,
Mo., is thinking she had too much oral sex, or wishing
she lived in either Massachusetts or Tennessee.
Police say the 46-year-old special-needs teacher told
friends she had oral sex with at least three of her
middle-school students since October. Nineteen times.
At school and elsewhere.
Garret Yoshina, a former high-school coach in
Placentia, Calif., will spend 90 days either in jail
or under house arrest after admitting to having oral
sex with a minor student who was a member of his girls
basketball team. Yoshina was 30 when he took a shine
to his player and started up an email seduction that
led to six months of sex back in 2000.
Searches on LexisNexis and Google for stories about
teacher/student sex crimes returned a staggering and
sickening number of stories for the month of January.
In addition to those just cited:
Neal Sato, 34, a middle-school teacher and athletics
director in San Carlos, Calif., arrested on six counts
of lewd acts with a child for allegedly videotaping
female students as they changed clothes.
Nicole Barnhart, 36, a high-school teacher in
Ponderosa, Colo., admitted to succumbing to a
16-year-old student’s pleas for her to have sex with
him.
Sherry Brains, 41, a teacher in Buttonwillow, Calif.,
arrested after the mother of a 12-year-old student
found a letter in her son’s backpack that indicated
the teacher had a romantic and physical relationship
with the woman’s son.
Sarah Bench-Salorio, 29, a former charter-school
teacher and one-time school board candidate in Orange
County, Calif., sentenced to six years in prison after
admitting to lewd conduct with three 12- and
13-year-old students who brought their own pornography
and condoms to the encounters.
John “Mitch” Balonek, 48, an English teacher and
unsuccessful candidate for the Toledo, Ohio, city
council, indicted for having sex with a 16-year-old
female student after police found them in a parked
car.
Deanna Bobo, 38, a junior-high teacher in Greenwood,
Ark., charged with two counts of having sex with a
former student who was a minor at the time, while
facing charges filed in November that accused her of
having sex with another 14-year-old male student.
Local media across the country in January reported
almost daily about deviant schoolteachers. As of this
writing, Feb. 1, there are new stories from New York,
Illinois, and Texas.
Thomas Stoyle, 53, a driver-education teacher in
Hamburg, N.Y., admitted to molesting a 16-year-old
girl during driving lessons two years ago.
Jeffrey Link, 26, a trainer for the O’Fallon Township
High School marching band in Illinois, charged with
unlawful solicitation of a child and public indecency
for allegedly propositioning a female student to have
sex with him at his house last summer.
Samantha Drash, 25, a high-school teacher in Cameron
County, Tex., investigated by the school district for
an alleged affair with a male athlete, the third
teacher in the south Texas county accused of sexual
misconduct this school year, according to the local
newspaper.
The Brownsville Herald quotes the district police
chief, Oscar Garcia, as saying a nationwide trend
indicates more parents across the country are
reporting sexual misconduct between a teacher and a
student.
That is true, but what are parents and school
officials doing to keep our nation’s classrooms free
of predatory pedophiles and to punish severely those
sick and wrong individuals who violate our children
and the public trust?
Next time: A review of weak and ineffectual responses
from administrators and judges to some of the crimes
listed above.
(Printer friendly version) Email: John David Powell
