Posted on 09/20/2002 11:13:00 AM PDT by Aunt Polgara
LAS VEGAS -- Tanya Joan Hadden, the San Bernardino teacher whose relationship with a 15-year-old student began with innocent car rides and after-school French fries but strayed into romance, was given a suspended sentence Thursday and will avoid prison for now.
As Hadden sobbed and struggled to dab away her tears, with her rail-thin wrists chained to her waist, Clark County District Court Judge Joseph Bonaventure handed down a 13-year prison term--then suspended that sentence and put Hadden on probation for five years.
Technically, Hadden, 33, will spend the first six months of her probation in the Clark County Detention Center. But because she has been in jail for 140 days--ever since she and her student took off on an ill-fated road trip that landed them at a $39-a-night Vegas strip hotel--she probably will be released in coming days, once she is credited for good behavior behind bars, prosecutors said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The double standard is pretty clear and evidenced regularly with these cases.
PETA's Bruce Friedrich defends prisoner's right to vegan food on The O'Reilly Factor
Tanya Hadden, an ex-teacher charged with kidnapping a 15-year-old student (for the weekend, with his consent) and having sex with him, is vegan. Her parents have said she is unable to get vegan meals in prison and has lost as much as thirty pounds during her stay. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has taken up her cause. As a result, Bruce Friedrich, PETA's vegan campaign coordinator was invited onto Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," with John Kasich, who was sitting in for Bill O'Reilly.
When Kasich suggested that the jail should not cater to Hadden since this is not a religious issue, Friedrich responded:
"It absolutely is a religious issue. And we think everybody might want to take a good hard look at the way that animals are treated on factory farms and in slaughterhouses for meat, for dairy products, for eggs. I mean, these are animals who are created with an array of needs and desires and wants, are created with God-given desires. For example, chickens want to spread their wings, they want to dust bathe, they want to preen. They're not allowed to do any of those things.
"[I]t's a legitimate desire, a legitimate religious need not to support cruelty to animals. More and more, priests, rabbis, pastors are telling us that it is reasonable to say, 'Look, these industries treat these animals in ways that deny God.' It's a reasonable practice within Judaism, within Christianity, within traditional morals to say, 'I'm not going to support that level of cruelty.'
"She has a First Amendment protection not to support animal cruelty, not to do her health a disservice, and not to harm the environment. I, as a Roman Catholic, went vegan 15 years ago because I saw what was happening on the factory farms and in the slaughterhouses and it's a denial of God to treat these animals so indecently."
Kasich said PETA needs to choose its battles more carefully and that this time they have picked the wrong horse. Perhaps Kasich thinks that if Friedrich had just called and said "I'd like to come onto your show some time this week and talk about the cruelty of a the standard American diet," The O'Reilly Factor would have been rushing to book him.
The bias--or ignorance--of the reporter is obvious. First, the car rides were not "innocent." They were an inappropriate breach of a professional barrier between teacher/adult and student/child. Same goes for the french fries. Second, what they strayed into wasn't romance. It was the sexual exploitation of a minor.
There's plenty of bias on the thread as well. "Gay" and "homosexual" are listed as keywords, but there doesn't seem to be any homosexual activity in the story.
Most likely the "judge" has a low view of women and sees the kid as having some fun before his time. If it were reversed and this woman was a man molesting a girl then all hell would break out. It's hard to say. Whatever reasoning this judge used was twisted and should be gotten rid of.
My bad. :-)
I was intending on posting the story from this morning's LATimes about the male teacher who molested some boys, but in my haste, I posted this article instead, without realizing that I had the wrong article. That's what I get for posting before I've had enough caffeine. :-)
As soon as the article went up, I realized my mistake, but there doesn't seem to be any way to remove the two keywords.
You are right. I was confused. I didn't see an article about a female teacher and student, but here is the article I meant to post about the male teacher abusing the boys:
Since then, I have seeked large-breasted women who speak spanish.
I can live with it.
Thanks for the chuckle!
Welcome to FR, Warnock. Things getting a little boring over at DU?
I have learned that Parody is a dangerous game: you run the risk of being taken seriously.
And the concept of parody is germane to this discussion, how? Perhaps sarcasm is the more appropriate word, huh?
par·o·dy Pronunciation Key (pr-d) n. pl. par·o·dies
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sar·casm Pronunciation Key (särkzm) n.
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I have the picture that you need to put in the FReeper Photo section to identify yourself:
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