# Debra Lafave

Debra Jean Williams (née Beasley; born August 28, 1980), better known under her former married name of Debra Lafave, is a former teacher at Angelo L. Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida. In 2005, she pleaded guilty to lewd or lascivious battery against a teenager. The charges stemmed from a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old student in summer of 2004 when she was 23. Lafave's plea bargain included no prison time, opting for three years of house arrest due to safety concerns, seven years of probation, and lifetime registration as a sex offender.

## Early life and education

Lafave attended East Bay High School until 1996. From 1995 to 1996, Lafave dated Nick Carter. She also had a lesbian relationship with a classmate by the name of Casie Diana Martinez, and it was because of that relationship Lafave's parents withdrew her from East Bay. She graduated from Bloomingdale High School in 1998. Around that time, she took a gig as a Pin-up model for the magazine Makes & Models (M&M), which when the story of the sex scandal broke, her modelling photos from that time would contribute to sensationalising of the story. She attended the University of South Florida, graduating with a degree in English. After college graduation in 2002, she was hired as an English teacher at Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida. In July 19 2003, following her first year of teaching, she married Owen Lafave.

## Crime, first arrest and trial

Lafave, then 23, committed statutory rape on a 14 year old student engaging in intercourse as well as oral sex with the student on four different occasions: once in the bedroom of her Riverview town house, once in her classroom portable, and multiple times in her car.
In April 2004, Lafave first met the student while she was helping out a friend, the football coach, at the school’s tag football game. Lafave had already garnered a reputation among the male students as being the young attractive “hot” teacher, and the student; being one of the players on the team and not being Lafave’s student, already knew of Lafave beforehand. It was there that the student first approached Lafave along with his friend and it was that moment that Lafave & the student became officially acquainted.
In May 2004, during the final week of school during grad night where the graduating class which the student was a part of took a trip to SeaWorld Orlando which Lafave chaperoned which the student & Lafave got a chance to get to know each other & develop a close relationship with one another despite the presence of Lafave’s then husband on that trip at the time; Owen Lafave. After that, Lafave during that week would go out of the way to put the student on detention to spend time with her in the detention room, even sometimes inviting his friends. Other times she would ask the student to stay afterschool to be with her. It was around that time when the two allegedly first kissed when on one of the occasions Lafave asked the student (along with his friends) to clean her portable classroom, the student asked Lafave to flash her breast at him. Allegedly Lafave only pulled up her shirt to reveal a tiny bit of the bottom of her bra, but when the students friends left leaving only Lafave and the student, according to the student, the two allegedly kissed. On the last day of school, one of the other students hosted a party inviting the student that Lafave had a love interest with and Lafave came with the student being the only teacher at that party. When curiosity arose about Ms. Lafave's presence, the student referred to her as his "girlfriend". By the end of the party, after driving all the other students home Lafave gave the student her number and allegedly was already talking about plans to have sex with the student. During the start of the summer holidays leading up to the first sexual encounter, Lafave and the student would talk on the phone often and Lafave would regularly drive the student to his summer activities; Recreation center, haircut, etc. and would regularly kiss on those car rides. It was around that time that Lafave opened up to the student that she was thinking about the student a lot and had feelings for him and could not get rid of those feelings.
Lafave’s sexual relationship with the student was exposed when the two went to visit the student’s cousin in Ocala; the very trip of what would end up being their final sexual encounter. His aunt (the accompanying cousin’s mother) who was living in Ocala at the time happened to have spotted the student & Lafave in a parking lot and was alarmed at seeing him in the company of a provocatively dressed woman. Upon calling & asking her son (the student’s accompanying cousin) to enquire about the situation, the cousin told his mother that the older woman was the sister of a mutual friend of theirs from the University of Florida and that they were buying Father’s Day presents together. Unconvinced, the aunt then alerted the student’s mother. Under intense questioning from his mother, the boy admitted that the woman was Lafave. Officers in Temple Terrace recorded conversations between Lafave and the boy, then arrested her at their next meeting. Two separate sets of charges were filed, because the alleged incidents occurred in both Riverview, in Hillsborough County, and Ocala, in Marion County. A trial date was set after the prosecution and defense could not agree on a plea bargain that involved prison time. Lafave faced a sentence of 5 to 15 years for each of the two counts of which she was accused.
Shortly before the trial was scheduled to begin, Lafave pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years of community control (house arrest) and seven years of sex offender probation. Prosecutors defended the deal, saying that sex offender probation in Florida is quite difficult to complete; Lafave could have gone to jail if she violated any of the probation terms.
Lafave's guilty plea effectively ended her teaching career. As part of her plea deal, she was required to surrender her teaching license and was banned from ever teaching in Florida again. Under the terms of her probation, she had to be home by 10 p.m. every day, could not leave Hillsborough County without a judge's permission, and could not be around minors. She also had to register as a sex offender. There was widespread skepticism as to whether a man guilty of lewd or lascivious battery would have received equally mild punishment.
On December 8, 2005, Marion County Circuit Judge Hale Stancil rejected the plea deal, claiming that any agreement that did not require Lafave to serve some prison time "would undermine the credibility of this court, and the criminal justice system as a whole, and would erode public confidence in our schools." He set a trial date for April 10, 2006. The Marion County state's attorney subsequently dropped the charges. In a statement, the prosecutors cited an assessment by psychologist Martin Lazoritz that found the victim would be so severely traumatized by a potential trial that it would take as long as eight years for him to recover.
Lafave's lawyer John Fitzgibbons stated, "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." Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian asserted that Lafave avoided jail time due to a faulty belief among Americans that she was "too pretty for prison". Ariel Levy, writing in New York, called Fitzgibbons's statement "notorious", and Lafave's ex-husband criticized it. Commentators have claimed that the attention given to this particular case arose from Lafave's physical appearance. Provocative modeling photographs of Lafave have circulated on the Internet since she first gained notoriety.
The Temple Terrace Police Department came under scrutiny for taking graphic nude photos of Lafave while Lafave was in stirrups in a jail cell. John Gillespie, the lead detective who requested the nude photos of Lafave, was arrested before the trial in an unrelated prostitution sting.

## Second arrest and violation of probation

Lafave was arrested on December 4, 2007, for violating her probation by speaking with a 17-year-old restaurant co-worker. The court ruled, however, that the violation was neither willful nor substantial, and it did not revoke her probation.

## Aftermath

Lafave later attributed her criminal actions to bipolar disorder, which is associated with intense and irregular mood swings, and with hypersexuality and poor judgement during manic episodes. She was also treated for bipolar disorder after allegedly being raped at age 13 by a classmate. At the time of her arrest her sister had also recently been killed by a drunk driver.
In July 2008, within the terms of her plea deal, Lafave petitioned to convert the remainder of her house arrest to probation, having satisfied other terms such as sex offender therapy and community service. Her petition was granted and her house arrest ended four months early. On October 29, 2009, Lafave was cleared to have unsupervised contact with some children. On September 22, 2011, Lafave moved to end her probation four years early, based upon having completed all other obligations. Her petition was granted and her probation ended that day. The victim's family stated that they would appeal the decision. The early termination of probation was reversed by the 2nd District Court of Appeals on August 15, 2012.
Lafave asked the Florida Supreme Court to reinstate her release from probation. On January 24, 2013, Lafave was ordered to continue her probation while the Florida Supreme Court waited to hear the case. In October 2014, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lafave.

## In popular culture

The novel Tampa, by Alissa Nutting, was inspired by the case of Debra Lafave.