Posted on 09/16/2009 4:37:40 AM PDT by Loyalist
The friendship between teacher and student blossomed into an infatuation on a European high school trip in March 2006.
But Leslie Merlino, then 36, knew she was headed for career-ending danger.
Later, she stroked the girl's hair and began sending emails. That would lead to an assault charge and a court order to stay away from the student.
From January to September 2007, they exchanged sexually explicit emails and talked frequently on the phone and in person.
They held hands during strolls and met secretly in coffee shops. They kissed and fondled each other in their more private moments. By late summer of 2007, the suspended teacher and former student had become lovers.
In the fall of 2007, despite the court order, Merlino took her young lover, then 18, to Quebec City.
Today, Merlino, 39, is living with her mother in London, Ont., where she is unemployed with no chance of ever teaching again.
But there is nothing to stop her from being with her former student.
Merlino avoided jail yesterday but was placed on the Ontario sex registry for 20 years and ordered to submit her DNA to the national data bank.
She received a suspended sentence with a 12-month probation after pleading guilty in a Brampton courtroom to three charges – sexual exploitation, breach of probation and fail to comply with a court order.
While Justice Bruce Durno did not impose non-contact orders on the now 20-year-old student or Merlino, it is not known whether they continue to have a relationship.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestar.ca ...
GUILTY!!!
But think about this:
This story is written in quite a sympathetic light towards the perp and her lover, suggesting that she made a noble sacrifice of her career and reputation for love.
Had it been a male teacher preying on this girl, would the story have been nearly so sympathetic, or the teacher's sentence so light?
Clay Aiken??!! Who knew?
Written in such a way as to “put a human face” on all those faceless perverts.
Sorry - as the father of teenage daughters, this failed to stir any sympathy within me.
I suspect many people are “imprinted” as a result of their first sexual experiences. Although many people are born with an a strong orientation toward the homosexual, for many others it is an acquired perverted fetish.
This teacher needs to be in jail. No sympathy here.
Guilty
If they move to Connecticut, Massachusetts, or Vermont, they could get married.
Wouldn’t that be a truly happy ending!
(BARF!!)
TMI
Disgusting...
Yuck. Guilty. Lol, living in mom’s basement listening to the Indigo Girls..
Guilty!
In the liberal mind, “tragedy” is the criminalization of pedophilia.
HAHHH
In D.C., a charter school teacher, Ricardo Antonio Cuaderes, 44 (on photo he looked like 64), pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a male student, 14. He taught at a school reportedly called "Young America Works."
In addition to all the brainwashing and corruptive influence on our vulnerable, impressionable youth, the schools also serve as a convenient hunting ground for predators. Sex offenders are supposedly restricted from proximity to schools. But too often they are IN the schools.
Pretty much everybody, I suspect...
Do you even have to ask?
Ackk! Guilty BEFORE charged!
Once again the media is defining homosexuality as the norm. But even worse the media is defining homosexual seduction as something to be looked on with sympathy rather than disgust.
Homosexuals do not belong in positions of trust over children.
A homosexual teacher fomenting a same sex relationship with an impressionable juvenile student in their care is not as bad as a heterosexual teacher having a similar relationship with a student - it is much worse.
The homosexual teacher not only creates the usual problems for a youth introduced into a sexual relationship at an early age by an adult abusing a position of trust, she is also taking away a reasonable chance for the student to progress into normal male-female relationships as they mature.
In effect they are recruiting children into the homosexual world and stealing their future potential to mature into a normal, heterosexual mate and parent.
This woman should be in prison.
Good point. The left-leaning media bias shows through even in strange ways.
re: I suspect many people are “imprinted” as a result of their first sexual experiences
Absolutely, but I think there has to be something before that first experience that makes the person receptive to the experience. There’s a proclivity there that separates the student who binds with the teacher from the one who does not.
The worst offense of all.
Aside from the obvious issues with the homosexual aspect of the whole affair...
She would have gotten away with it had she been able to keep the relationship on the back burner for half a year. She wouldn’t have lost her teaching cert and she wouldn’t be on the sex offender registry.
Dumb.
and GUILTY
“Tragic”??? “Affair”???
This headline should read “**CRIMINAL** MOLESTATION!”
I, too, thought the picture looked like Clay Aiken!
It looks like the girl was 17 when this started. Teacher acted unethically, but perhaps not illegally or immorally. Assuming this is “love,” then love wants what it wants.
It was not so long ago in America where it was not unusual for a young woman to graduate from high school in the spring, then show up as a teacher’s wife the following fall.
I guess the teacher has been fired. I say now leave them be.
I just bought an Indigo Girls cd and been licking this carpet for 4 hours and still don’t feel like a lesbian.
Well, Canada has legalized homosexual marriage in all provinces. At first it was in just a few provinces by court order, but now it’s nationwide.
See, this story can have a happy ending right there in Canada. Sort of like a lesbian version of Mary Kay Letourneau and her boy toy. Only in this case, I guess you’d have to say girl toy??
“Pretty much everybody, I suspect...”
Actually if Clay Aiken was caught having an affair with a girl, it would surprise everyone.
...but that would mean firing almost every female athletics coach out there. It would spell the end of women's athletics.
You find rats will congregate around cheese too.
Clay Aiken!!!!!Rrrwow!!
It is sickening how many teachers, male and female, are molesting their students. Yet another example: Scott Howe, 33, (Fauquier County, Virginia) made at least nine videos of engaging in sexual acts with a 15 year old student, much or all of it in the school. He was caught because his landlord suspected he was growing pot and called the police who found the videos. Idiot!
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