Posted on 12/04/2001 4:20:54 PM PST by PJ-Comix
The middle school student who police say had an 18-month affair with his teacher testified at her trial Monday that he lived a teenage fantasy.
The teen said Beth Friedman, 43, seduced him by plying him with lavish gifts -- trips, money, clothes, jewelry, a car and drugs -- and even did his homework for him.
The affair was a fantasy, Friedman's lawyer countered, but one that existed purely in the teen's imagination.
Friedman is charged with indecent assault, unlawful sexual activity with a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She faces 76 years in prison if convicted.
``She was the teacher everybody wanted because she let you do whatever you wanted in her class,'' the teen, now 19 and working as a roofer, testified in the first day of Friedman's trial. ``I could do stuff other people would get in trouble for, and she would just look the other way and pretend she didn't notice. So I started to sit at her desk just to see what would happen, and she just let me sit there all the time.''
The teen, who was 14 when he met Friedman, testified that he used drugs, his grades in school were ``horrible,'' and he was often in trouble for fighting. He said his friendship with Friedman grew as she began giving him rides home from school, and eventually became friends with his mother, the teen testified.
He would eat lunch with Friedman and another teacher in their room because he was new to Silver Lakes Middle School and couldn't get along with other kids in the cafeteria.
``They ordered pizza and Chinese food,'' the teen testified. ``I'd come back bragging to the other kids `I had Chinese food for lunch, what did you have?' ''
She started doing his school work, and getting permission from other teachers to let him sit in her room all day.
``She'd take my work from me and do it. Sometimes I didn't even know it was done. I'd just get a grade back,'' he said.
Friedman started taking him and his younger brother to a video arcade, then to movies and out to dinner.
``I'd page her and say: `Me and my friends are hungry,' and she'd come take us out to eat,'' he said. ``But then it got too expensive so she'd just take me and one friend out.''
Eventually, the teen's brother, mother and mother's boyfriend moved into Friedman's Hollywood condo. She took the boy on trips to Busch Gardens, Universal Studios and the Keys, with her and the teen sleeping in one bed and a friend of his or his brother sleeping in another, he said.
On one of those trips, he said, e Friedman performed a sex act on him while his brother slept. On the way home in the car, he said ]she performed another.
When he was 15, he wanted a car.
``She said: `If you have sex with me I'll buy you a car,' '' said the teen, who chewed gum and played with a rubber band on the witness stand. ``So I did, and she did.''
The teen said Friedman gave him money to buy drugs, introduced him to cocaine and would challenge him to contests to see who could take the most Xanax without falling asleep. She also bought him lavish gifts and let him drive her car and her father's Rolls-Royce, he said.
``Whatever I wanted, she got it for me,'' he said.
But Friedman's lawyer, David Bogenschutz, peppered the boy with questions about his story, particularly the teen's assertion that the affair ended after Friedman offered him $25,000 to impregnate her.
The teen said he asked his mother, who had been unaware of the affair, for advice. She went to the police, and he got angry because he didn't want the affair to end. He moved out of the house and in with a stripper, but sent Friedman notes asking for money.
Broward Circuit Judge Stanton Kaplan occasionally had to intervene when the teen gave defiant answers to Bogenschutz's questions.
``Why would a law school-educated teacher, who lives in a nice place, who drives a newer Jeep Cherokee, whose father drives a Rolls-Royce, pay $25,000 to be impregnated by a 16-year-old dropout with a drug habit?'' Bogenschutz asked the boy, who shrugged his shoulders in response.
Prosecutor Stacey Honowitz told jurors that no matter how consensual or bizarre the relationship seemed, it is still against the law for an adult to have sex with a minor.
``She did it for love, she did it because she craved him,'' Honowitz said. ``The theory that she's a wonderful, beautiful teacher can't protect her when she crossed that line.''
The trial continues today.
Well I certainly didn't mean to infer that it was "okay" but I don't think she belongs in jail either. I'd rather keep the jail cells reserved for violent criminals who are a danger to society and need to be removed from the streets. This woman is evidently nothing but a cheap whore and she doesn't have any right teaching children. Certainly she should be fired from her teaching job and never hired again in that role.
My wife feels the same way as you. Obviously there is a major gender gap on this issue. You need to understand that boys are raised differently from girls. From the time I reached puberty, sex was pretty much all my peers wanted to talk about and there was immense pressure to "score." That's not to say that all boys do. But here is something that girls will never understand. A boy cannot admit to his peers that he is a "virgin" or he will be laughed at and ridiculed. It is the total opposite for girls. So boys will often exaggerate their sexual prowess and/or experience to his peers. When he gets a "real" opportunity to have sex with a willing female, chances are he will take it even if he was raised properly with good parents. Never underestimate the power of peer pressure.
Fortunately I never got mixed up with a whore when I was a teenager so I remained virgin and thus stayed out of trouble. By the time I got older, around 18 or 19, I realized that whores like the woman discussed here were T-R-O-U-B-L-E and so learned to stay away from them and found myself a decent girl to make my wife!
I don't think that having sex with an older woman would have been any different than the sex I was having with the girls in my own age group. Well, actually, the sex with the older woman would probably have been better - the experience factor, you understand...
And women are sluts?
As the mother of four sons, I don't believe all men are pigs...
You will, I hope, forgive me for wondering which is your real opinion, and why you posted the other one.
This really is non-standard behaviour. If there is truth in it, the kid can't quite dial 1-800 VICTIM but, on the other hand, this woman is indeed a predator.
Would that be your opinion if a homo teacher seduced and sodomized a 14 year-old boy?
Of course, and the matter is exacerbated because she was his teacher. But that does not negate the comments made on this thread about the boy. Facts are facts.
As to the civil suit bit, what would be the damages? Just asking.
That's nice to know.
Give your wife my regards.
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