Posted on 02/26/2004 6:26:20 AM PST by A. Pole
He was 17 and she was 14, but her father went to court to keep the sweethearts apart.
Now the young man's mother says her jailed son is being punished too harshly for simply following his heart.
Kevin Bucchio, 18, has been in the Billerica House of Correction since July for violating restraining orders obtained by the parents of his girlfriend, Colleen Lambert, 15, who has compared their plight to Romeo and Juliet.
``Kevin's never been in trouble. He's not a kid who does drugs or alcohol. He just thinks he's in love,'' said his mother, Sandra Bucchio.
Michael Lambert of Pepperell, Colleen's father, acknowledges he and his wife obtained the restraining orders primarily because they thought Bucchio was too old for their daughter and that he was trying to have sex with her, not because he harmed her.
``What would you do? I'm going to defend my daughter,'' Lambert said. ``I did exactly what the (Pepperell) police told me to and exactly what the court told me to.''
But Bucchio's lawyer, who characterized the teens' relationship as ``puppy love'' gone too far, said the maximum three-year sentence his client received is unfair.
``This is a misuse of the system,'' said attorney Matthew Pingeton, who took on Bucchio's case after the youth already was in jail. ``(Colleen) loved him. She wanted to be with him. She never wanted him kept away.''
Bucchio was 17, and Lambert was two weeks shy of her 14th birthday when they first met at the movies at the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua, N.H., in July 2002. Lambert's parents initially liked Bucchio.
``He came over to our house a couple times. Seemed like a nice kid,'' Michael Lambert said. ``I asked him his age, and he said, `15.' I figured she's almost 14. You've got to let the reins go a little bit.''
Sandra Bucchio also thought highly of Colleen Lambert.
``I always thought she was 16. They basically would go to the mall or they would go and get something to eat,'' she said.
Then the teens exchanged baby pictures, and Lambert's parents noticed Bucchio's birth year was 1985.
``The kid was lying to my face,'' Michael Lambert said. ``From there, we realized he was up to no good.''
Lambert telephoned Sandra Bucchio and said he feared her son was trying to steal his daughter's innocence. He said he did not sense the same level of concern from Sandra Bucchio.
Lambert ordered his daughter to stop seeing Bucchio, but Sandra Bucchio said the girl continued to telephone her son at odd hours of the night. The girl's parents eventually forbade her from using their phone or computer e-mail, but the pair found ways to rendezvous outside their homes.
Michael Lambert charged that Bucchio snuck around his house at night and slept in the back yard several times.
On the advice from a friend on the Pepperell police force, Lambert and his wife, Paula, went to Ayer District Court on Aug. 8, 2002, on behalf of their daughter and obtained a restraining order against Bucchio. The order was extended to a year, and the parents returned to court numerous times because Bucchio violated the order repeatedly.
At the same time, Lambert sent poems and notes to Bucchio with passages such as, ``All I could think was that I don't have nothing if I don't have Kevin! You mean everything to me hunnie (sic) and we will get through this. We have to! Romeo + Juliet!''
In July 2003, Judge Paul McGill sentenced Bucchio to 75 days in the Billerica House of Correction for failure to comply with the order. Within hours of landing in jail, Bucchio violated the order again, arranging to leave a phone message for the girl. He told her he did not blame her for his incarceration and wished her a happy 15th birthday.
As a result, McGill imposed a maximum two-year sentence that had been suspended for an earlier violation and tacked on another six months for the jailhouse transgression.
Court spokeswoman Joan Kenney said McGill could not comment on the case while it is in the process of being appealed by Bucchio and his lawyers.
Paul Martinek, editor of the Lawyers Weekly publications, said he was disturbed by the case.
``Certainly, on the surface, it strikes me an oddly harsh punishment without any evidence that (Kevin) did this girl any harm or evidence that he even threatened her in the first place,'' Martinek said, adding that judges tend to err on the side of caution and grant restraining orders.
``Judges are terrified these days of not issuing restraining orders for fear that something tragic is going to happen, and they'll find themselves on the front page of the Herald,'' he said.
Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley, whose office handled the case, defended the sentence imposed by McGill, saying, ``A judge can't have a young man keep coming in front of him and essentially saying he's not going to obey the court's order.''
Meanwhile, Bucchio's mother constantly worries about her son's ability to cope behind bars.
``He's not street-smart. He's had a very rough time in there,'' she said, noting that another inmate beat him up. ``He's not a tough kid. I dread it every time I go up to visit him. Sometimes he makes the best of it; sometimes he's upset. I try to make him feel as good as I can.''
I may need to borrow Pudge, and his weapon. My daughter is about to turn 16.
'...and my name is Pudge the Indestructible! Come near my keeper's daughter and I'll put a hole in your oily carcass Romeo!'
LOLOL! Please send me a new keyboard.
going just on odds, you are both too young and inexperienced to have even the slightest idea what you are doing.
there are exceptions, of course. exceptionally mature youths wise and competent well beyond their tender years.
the fact you had the poor judgement to come here and display the belligerent attitude and poor linguistics which are the hallmark of the overgrown child does not augur well for your being one of those exceptions.
But I do wish you both the best of luck, and pray you do not produce children until you can do so without screwing their lives up as badly as you have thus far screwed your own.
Maybe it's because she didn't break the law. There seems to be a lot of "he's only trying to get a little" bs on this thread.
Don't you understand the law? He was screwing around with a MINOR. He was violating a court order to stay away from the MINOR. She wasn't violating the law. That's one big difference.
Only a few of us seem to understand this.
Exactly dead on.
Grow up? You are arguing that sexual promiscuity is okay and you are telling someone else to grow up? Basically what you are saying is, "You are so mature. Grow up."
Until he turned 18, he wasn't breaking the law either. How typical this is becoming on this thread.
Re-read the year old story.... they were BOTH sneaking around.
I think many states have consent laws, and most are at the age of 16. What that means is although a 16 year old might get in trouble for breaking their parents rules, it is not agianst the law for an adult to have a relationship with a girl over 16 in many states.
In this case however, having a daughter myself, I side with the girls parents. If you read the story, they didn't mind the relationship except after they discovered the little sh*t was lying to them. If it had been me, I would have shown the kid my .45 ACP and explained that my daughters virtue is directly tied to the business end of the barrel. I might even let the relationship continue, with an increased amount of supervision.
I really don't like the attitude of the mother though. Sounds like she didn't care that her son was a lier and was dating a girl who was a minor and could have gotten her son put in jail for the very reason he is there. The boy is lucky there hasn't been any alegations of statutory rape. He could be tried as an adult in that case and receive a much harsher sentence than 6 months in jail.
Regardless of the will of either of the children. The boy should have been told by his mother to honor the wishes of the girls parents. Or, the boy should have had the sense not to lie in the first place. I think if he had been honest, the parents of the girl may have been uneasy about the relationship, but they probably would have allowd it. Of course that is only an assumption.
Actually, it's "textbook" activity. Control freaks, immature boys showing their "manhood", etc. are the usual culprits and yes, it does evolve into violence on occasion.
You need to work on your mind reading skills.
But apparently that didn't happen. Or at least the story seems to suggest it didn't happen. The boy broke the order on more than one occassion, and on one occassion did it while incarcerated and basically flying in the face of the judge. That would be similar to you or I telling a judge that just gave a lenient sentence to go to hell. What would you do as a judge to a disrespectful perpetrator?
In Missouri, any court may rule that the 17 year old "baby/Child" may be tried as an adult and it happens often.
So you suggest that they let their daughter continue a relationship with a disrespectful little creaton who is on the verge of commiting statutory rape? Let's all revisit the stupid part.
IT IS A LIE AND YOU KNOW IT. You posted "NEVER" not "recently".
Isn't it awful when your own words come back to bite you in the a@@?
yawn.... googol
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