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.
Um....Did you ever consider that she might be INNOCENT??? This kid sounds like he is making up the whole story.
We are trying to explain what went through the mind of this boy based on what we were like when we were 14 year old boys.
We were not as psychologically mature as we were physically mature. This does not mean that we had no self-control. It does mean, however, that we did not understand all of the consequences of sex, nor what love and responsibility truly were, nor how sex can be used as a form of manipulation.
This boy may have truly believed that he was in love, and that this woman loved him. This does not excuse his actions. There is no defence for him, or for her. It does show, however, how naive he was.
Funny, I don't feel tardy...
Self control? If you are a kid and your high school teacher is Petra Verkaik and she invites you to her home and tries to seduce you.....I'm sorry but self control is just not in the equation in this situation.
What would Sea and I do?
That to me is a perfect example of how we've lost the cultural war.
There's no way that anyone could do the types of things described in the article, and yet have no other arrests, convictions, or other complaints filed against them.
Sea's on vacation, and Rika's off tomorrow... so you have table dance duty ;-)
We'll be waiting for you.
No, I haven't ever been a fourteen year old boy, but I haven't been a lot of things. That doesn't mean I can't have an opinion on them. I have never denied that teenage boys have raging hormones. I've only stated that they can be controlled because I know many who have done so. I also know many men who would be disgusted at the view many on this thread are taking of men and young boys. My husband is one of them; he is sitting in the room with me and having the same reaction to those messages that I am.
Well, I'll sit back and wait for people to tell me my husband is gay :-).
I'm ducking out of this thread for today. It's bed time on the east coast.
This has been an interesting discussion....Thanks, all!
Very interesting...
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