Posted on 05/10/2005 8:58:48 PM PDT by SmithL
SEVIERVILLE - A former high school teacher accused of having sex with a 16-year-old boy had her request for judicial diversion turned down Monday in Sevier County Circuit Court.
Kristi Dance Oakes, 32, had appealed a decision from the District Attorney General's Office refusing her request for diversion, which would have allowed the charges against her to be dropped provided she complied with court orders for a specific period of time.
Oakes, who is free on bond, appeared in court Monday with an unidentified man and showed little emotion during the hearing, which lasted only a few minutes.
She was charged with statutory rape after a TVA police officer allegedly saw her and the boy engaged in a sex act inside a car near Douglas Dam last June.
Oakes resigned from her post as a biological sciences teacher at Seymour High School after she was charged.
Oakes' attorney, Barry Valentine, told Circuit Court Judge Richard Vance during Monday's hearing that she wasn't the boy's teacher at the time of the alleged incident and, therefore, wasn't an authority figure as prosecutors maintained. He also argued that, since the incident occurred during the summer, she hadn't abused her position of trust as a teacher.
Valentine said the alleged affair with the boy took place while they were both working summer jobs at the Nascar Speedpark in Sevierville.
He also said that Oakes' life has been devastated by the case. The married mother of two children lost her home and even lost the job she took at a grocery store after resigning from the school system because of the charges, he said.
Valentine stressed that Oakes has no prior criminal record and described her as being "very educated, very intelligent."
District Attorney General Al Schmutzer Jr., however, contended that the incident involved a 10th-grade student who had been in her biology class just before the summer break.
"She was a teacher," Schmutzer said. "She holds this (position) whether school is or is not in session."
Schmutzer also pointed out that Oakes was 31 at the time of the incident, nearly twice as old as the alleged victim.
Judge Vance noted that he had read "many, many letters in the file that were written on behalf of Mrs. Oakes" and agreed that her lack of a criminal record would normally weigh heavily in favor of granting her judicial diversion.
Nonetheless, Vance ruled, prosecutors hadn't abused their discretion by refusing to grant her pre-trial diversion.
"This (student-teacher) relationship that existed between them continued" through the summer, Vance said.
Vance then set a July 27 trial date. If convicted of statutory rape, Oakes faces up to two years in prison under state law.
She's not hot enough.
When I first saw that picture, I thought, "is that the boy she has sex with"...........then...ohhh.
What is going on with all of these female teachers lately?
America is rotting in front of our eyes.
I wondered the same thing. Then it hit me- They are probably all Democrats!
I do believe you have just nailed it dead on, sad to say!
Not hot enough. Fair trial and execution time.
Oh, you're breakin' my heart, Barry Vee. Note her life has been devastated by the case as if criminal cases were like Homer Simpson's definition of life: "A bunch of stuff that just happens." No sign of a glimmer of acceptance of any responsibility for causing any part of this case. The case just fell on this broad, like a safe out of a window in an old slapstick short.
There she was, minding her own business, and the next thing you know this teenager was banging her like a dinner gong. Oh, yeah, I believe that.
What kind of a loser is the husband, for staying with this... person?
And what kind of lousy newspaper has editors who haven't read the first page of Strunk and White? "You make a possessive by adding apostrophe S." Yes, even when the name of the possessor ends in S itself.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Men.
Valentine stressed that Oakes has no prior criminal record and described her as being "very educated, very intelligent."
Not educated and intelligent enough to figure out that she could go to jail for having sex with a student.
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