He looks happy too.
Posted on 06/13/2007 4:32:23 AM PDT by Loyal Buckeye
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.
Mason said he hopes the case will send a serious message.
"Christine Scarlett has now been held accountable for her improper relationship with this student," he said. "Children of all ages need to be protected from teachers who cross this line."
Scarlett, a married mother of two, could not be reached for comment Saturday. Stacey Ganor, her lawyer in the civil case, said that the affair was not one-sided and that nothing would be gained by putting Scarlett behind bars.
"There's no reason this woman deserves to be in jail given the age of Steven Bradigan and the circumstances of their relationship. It was fully consensual," Ganor said.
Bradigan's parents, Lawrence and Mary, also faced misdemeanor criminal charges for failing to report the affair immediately. Their refusal to admit any wrongdoing threw a wrench into their entry into a court diversion program and threatened to spoil Scarlett's plea deal, but they relented Friday.
All three of the Bradigans attended Scarlett's hearing, which Mary Bradigan said was kept secret to escape the embarrassment a major media event would have caused. The Court TV cable news program had been prepared to cover the trial, she said.
"I'm telling you, it would not have been pretty for anyone," Mary Bradigan said. "I don't think anyone wanted to see that trial take place."
Had the case gone forward, Steven Bradigan was prepared to recount how Scarlett, his 36-year-old English teacher, took him on a date to a Dairy Queen at the SouthPark mall in November 2002, then made out with him in the parking lot afterward.
Their relationship continued after Scarlett left her teaching job early in 2003 and off-and-on for the next two years. The affair was common knowledge in the high school and was the subject of snide jokes by teachers and students alike, the Bradigans' lawyer said.
Any thoughts Scarlett had about denying the criminal relationship were precluded by a DNA test that showed Bradigan was the father of her son and by stacks of X-rated photos of the couple snapped by his high school buddies.
"She's sorry for any pain she's caused the Bradigan family and her own family as well," said John Spellacy, her criminal lawyer. "This was really atypical of her whole life."
Scarlett and Bradigan have shared custody of the boy, now 3. Bradigan, now 22, works as a salesman full time and lives at home with his parents. She has reconciled with her husband.
Mary Bradigan said she also has forgiven Scarlett. She declined to speculate about what she would say at Scarlett's sentencing hearing.
"All I can say is that she's the mother of my grandson, and we want whatever's best for him," Mary Bradigan said.
The two had a child.
The Judge said he ordered probabtion because the teacher had no record and she is a mother.(Per Columbus Dispatch)
She stayed with her husband; they have two kids.
Everyone lived happily ever after.
Wonder how this would have played if the teacher had been a male and the student a 17 year old who had suffered brain damage.
He looks happy too.
If they were both males? Just love that dare not speak its name.
Conservatives who get angry about this are proof that feminists have won.
Women and men are fundamentally *different*. A male predator going after a young women is a completely different crime than an old cougar going after a young man.
Conservatives should be emphasizing this difference. Not playing the victim card.
Well, if they were both males, there wouldn’t be a baby.
FYI..heads up!!!
Note the wedding band on her finger..
The one thing that REALLY stood out in the article was the issue where FREINDS of the kid had been present to take the photo's of the acts! (This tells a lot about this "woman", who would have an audience during the activities....it was not just a romantic relationship, but more of an exhibitionist/show she was participating in).
also sounds like the kid’s parents are being coached by a lawyer, and want to ca$h in BIG on a lawsuit...he wasn’t too “disadvantaged” to be the captain of the baseball team..
There’s plenty of deep pockets in Strongsville, OH, and that’s EXACTLY where this will go. (Our tax dollars at work, again!)
I agree. Far too much has been made of the victimization of 17 year-old boys at the hands of female teachers. Come on, even many years ago, when I was rumored to be young, the idea of a 17 year-old boy being hurt or damaged by the sexual attentions of an older woman, even a teacher, was preposterous and laughable. For some reason, we seem almost desperate to believe that a woman’s sexual interference with a younger male is the same as a man’s sexual interference with a younger female. And that is just not the case!
The article states that the teacher bore the 17 year old a son and DNA confirmed that. The article also states that the married teacher and her husband (the cuckold) remain together and have two kids. So does she have three kids and her husband two? Or is the cheated on husband paying for his wife’s dalliance by paying for another man’s child? That youngest child will be the real victim here, IMHO.
That is my understanding. She has two kids with her husband and one with the then 17 year old.
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