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.
Exactly, and that is why it is a problem. Minors are partly the responsibility of parents and the state, hence no one should be allowed to mess with what they are not responsible for, let alone not even own.
She used drugs to entice the kid, what does that tell you? That there was no abuse? You live in a fantasy world alright.
It's already bad enough when we have gay right bin ladenites teaching hatred of the opposit sex in our schools under pretext of love, we do not need to privatise further this process of indoctrination between individual teachers and a student with actual acts against the person.
Touching in a rude, insolent or angry manner is assault anyway, and what that teacher did was pretty insolent to me. The party of the child despite the child's feelings or your feelings has to be defended. This is not fun play, it's abuse.
"She" also looks like a transexual.
Even if the nuns didn't jumpstart your hormones, the girls would have. I have never understood why the Catholics put their schoolgirls in such doggone sexy uniforms. There's not much difference between the classic pleated plaid skirt and the skirts that cheerleaders wear -- even before they hike them up.
Thank God that where I live, the bus stops no longer have seats with backrests. After school was over, the girls at one particular school used to sit on the backrests and put their feet on the seats (only one if they...[whew]...crossed their legs), putting their knees and thighs (and whatever else could be seen) at eye level. When I was a young(er) man, there were times when I would drive by, slam on the brakes for a peek, and nearly start a chain-reaction accident.
That happened to me, too.
Let's compare notes.
If this little missive has not been extricated from the site I would have you uptight, sexless protectors of our male teenagers virginity, perform some pre-teen math. The young man began his innocent trek toward debauchery when he was 14 years. Was that 14 years and 10 months? Did this medusa lure him in at the very beginning, or did it take a few months of sexual baiting? If my math is correct, he would be 15 and a half. Let us do the same math on the 43 year old pariah, in reverse of course.
So, we have a young male, who has already been held back at least one year of school, is active in the drug culture, has a family life lacking in parental guidance, to say the least, is moving from one town to the next, and God knows what else. In all your tortured wisdom, you believe him!
This is a twisted mess, the teacher is twisted, he is stupid and twisted, and his parents, who knows? A 15 year old boy would sell his left n**, arm to have sex with damn near anything on earth, let alone a rich accommodating mature woman of the same species.
IOW, the perfect example of the NEA in peace (piece) and war.
Absolutely!!! Are they sure this TEACHER hasn't has some "work" done?
HUH? Nothing I said even implied that. So, take your logic to someone who will buy it. I don't.
No, we just don't want to let supposedly grown men who say that teenage boys should screw with their teachers go unchallenged.
Why does that make you so hostile?
Presuming that this unlikely story is true, I'll tell you what "hell on earth" would be for that kid -- impregnating that witch, and later coming to the realization that he whored himself out for momentary thrills and produced a child for a woman who should be sterilized.
To the many people who commented on the woman's looks, read # 333.
Maybe people like you and sneakypete are willing to drop trou for anything with a vagina, even if you have to put a bag over its head. Believe it or not, some perfectly normal men -- even teenage boys -- aren't like that. Sorry that we are all living testimony that there instead may be something wrong with guys who are.
You don't think that an enraged person feels good when he is taking out his anger on whomever he hates? My point is that "doing what comes naturally" is not always right. It's natural to last out and punch someone who angers you. And as someone else said, it's natural for some men to rape women. People on this thread are saying that there's nothing wrong with what this kid did because it's perfectly natural for a kid his age to do it. I don't buy it.
BTW, You don't make a very good psychologist.
I've come to the decision that you don't know how to read. Is your mommy helping you type your messages? I'm not going to make my point again about this statement I made.
Sounds to me like pete is speaking from experience and suffering from "The Grass is Greener" syndrome.
Ummm, maybe we should let the jury decide if she is even GUILTY. Then pass judgement. Personally, I would seriously question the credibility of a boastful, hormone driven drug abuser. And the MOM factor? Sounds like someone is looking for a quick buck here to me!!
;0)
It's threads like this that remind me of exactly why I made my decision to become a Lesbian... ;0)
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