I promised y’all that I would be watching this case to see how it progresses. I’ve done a little bit of research for more info. The city this took place in, Destrehan, Louisiana, is a small town with less than 12,000 people in it. So this is the kind of place where everybody knows everybody. A recent court document accidentally released the name and personal information of the underage victim in this case, but I assume everyone who knows him already knows about his involvement. Especially since this all started because he was bragging to other students about it.
Both Dufresne and Respess were former students at Destrehan High School before eventually becoming teachers there (Dufresne has taught for the past 10 years, while Respess for the past two). The Daily Mail has a wealth of information on the case, here’s the highlights along with my commentary:
The teenage boy at the center of the Louisiana school threesome scandal is devastated that his bragging has ruined the promising careers of two teachers.‘He is really down about it right now,’ the high school junior’s grandfather told MailOnline in an exclusive interview. ‘All boys that age want to brag about what they are doing. He didn’t expect it would come to this.’‘He feels really bad,’ said the boy’s grandfather. ‘These women have families and he knows how terrible it is for them. He knows they will never be able to teach again and could very well go to prison.”
He “didn’t expect it would come to this”? What the bloody heck did he think would happen, and why didn’t he just keep his mouth shut?!?
According to police. Dufresne enticed the boy to drive with her to Respess’s home after the game — when Destrehan High nearly blew out a team nicknamed ‘The Cougars.’ Police say the ‘unlawful sexual acts’ started on the night of September 12 ‘carrying over into the early morning of Saturday September 13.’ Cops also believe the threesome was Dufresne’s idea and she ‘propositioned’ her younger colleague with her plan. Respess told police she was aware that Dufresne was bringing the boy to her apartment for three-way sex. A police report says that while Respess was having intercourse with the boy, Dufresne ‘began intimately kissing (Respess) in an attempt to arouse all parties involved, all who were complete(ly) disrobed.’
Oh my. This sounds like the plot details of a porn film…
..uh, but I digress. Moving along…
Dufresne, who has two sons and a daughter all aged under 8, was originally arrested by the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Department on September 29 and charged with having sex with the boy in Montz. Dufresne is due in court in St. Charles Parish, where her father Emile St. Pierre is senior judge, on October 23.
That’s right, not only is this woman married with three young children, her father is a Judge. He’s the Senior Judge for the court in the very Parish she’s charged in! And this is one of those places where Judges are elected, not appointed. He’s actually up for re-election next month. He’s currently unopposed, but I’m sure this is the last thing he wants on voters minds right now. I don’t know if it’s too late for another candidate to enter the race against him but if not that could be it for his judicial career. But because of this the only two other Judges in this local court have had to recuse themselves from this case, since they work closely with Dufresne’s father, and an outside judge was assigned. What a mess.
And the article says that, as of now, she and her husband, Wes Dufresne, appear to still be together. So he’s standing by his wife (for now), but I can only imagine what he’s going through. Not only the pain of learning of his wife’s adultery, but the public shame. How can he face his friends and coworkers again? This goes back to the double-standard I wrote about before of how we look at cases like this. If the genders were reversed and a male teacher was arrested for having sex with a teenage girl, people would look at the wife as another innocent victim. But when it’s a man whose wife has sex with a teenage boy, you know folks are probably laughing at him behind his back.
Then she and Respess were slapped with additional charges of ‘having carnal knowledge of a juvenile’ — official language for underage sex — indecent behavior with a juvenile and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile. All those charges are in relation to the partying at Respess’s apartment in Kenner which is in neighboring Jefferson Parish.
So that’s important to remember, there are actually two separate criminal cases here. Dufresne is charged for having sex with the boy by herself in one city, and then both women are charged for having sex with the boy together in Destrehan.
The two teachers are due in court in Jefferson Parish for the case involving the alleged threesome on November 17 for a status hearing. If convicted they face a jail sentence of up to 17½ years in prison.
17½ years. Dang, that seems awfully long, even for statutory rape. As I said before, if the genders were reversed I would’ve bet that it would be an open and shut case, and they’d get the maximum. But that may not necessarily be true. I checked and found out that Dufresne and Respess are not the first teachers in that city, or even at that same High School, to get arrested for sex with a student.
This is Byron Toups, the former Band director at Destrehan High School. In March 2008 he was arrested for having sex with a 16 year female student at his home and for trying to kiss a 17 year old female student at the school. Both girls filed Civil Suits against him which were eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. As for the Criminal Case, he plead guilty to malfeasance, intimidation of a witness and simple battery. For that he was sentenced to one year in jail, followed 6 months of home incarceration, and five years probation.
Now that seems like a light sentence, especially because of the fact that his incident with the 17 year old was clearly non-consensual. I should also point out that since she’s been there 10 years, this means that Shelley Dufresne was teaching at the school when this incident occurred. That just makes it even more inexplicable to me that even after seeing a teacher get busted for underage sex that she would make that very same mistake 6 years later.
Anyway there’s clearly a higher profile on Dufresne and Respess, so they’ll probably get something a little harsher than what Toups got but, at this point, I think I’d be willing to be that they end up making plea bargains too, perhaps for 3-5 years in jail, and that these cases never go to trial.
Stay tuned…
