commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Over the past many months, All Things Crime Blog has covered numerous incidents in which teachers have been arrested and charged for illicit sexual conduct with their students. Although the students are sometimes younger, in many instances they are 16 or thereabouts when the encounters take place, an age at which in earlier decades, the conduct would likely have been legal in many states. In response to these incidents, I have not seen one single reader defend the conduct as “not really that bad”. My sense is that readers are not necessarily as upset over the age of the victims (at least when they’re at least 16), at they are over the fact authority figures are preying on their young wards.
I recall that when I taught community college from 1990 until 1993, standards were changing dramatically on college campuses and professors and instructors were increasingly being strictly forbidden to have sexual contact with their students, even though the students would have been at least 18 years of age and in many cases much older.
Does this mean that we as a nation are becoming more and more puritanical? Perhaps so. In any event, it is clear that at the national level there is zero tolerance for instructors who rendezvous with their students, typically even if the students are of age.
A new case out of Destrehan High School in Kenner, Louisiana, hammers this point home.
Vanessa Bolano and Tanya Sinkovits of WGNO ABC report that Shelley S. Dufresne, 32, and Rachel Respess, 24, not only allegedly had a threesome with a 16-year-old male student after a football game (don’t forget, high school and college football rule in Louisiana), but somewhat surprisingly, were students themselves at Destrehan High prior to moving on to LSU where they got their college educations.
In fact, Shelley Dufresne, who has been teaching at Destrehan High for ten years and is married with three young children, is the daughter of St. Charles Parish Judge Emile St. Pierre, which of course only adds to the atmosphere of scandal permeating and surrounding this situation.
According to Bolano and Sinkovits, the basic facts of the case are as follows, as presented by Kenner Police Chief Michael Glaser at a press conference on Wednesday.
- The alleged incident happened at Rachel Respess’s home in Kenner after a football game.
- The victim is reportedly a junior at Destrehan High School and law enforcement is looking into the possibility that he videotaped or took pictures of the encounter. (Whatever happened to the days when sexual encounters were virtually never filmed unless they were ersatz encounters filmed in Hollywood?)
- The police inform that Respess taught the victim last year and that until a few days ago when she was removed from her position, Dufresne was his current English teacher. The two young women are thought to have been friends. It is unclear if Respess was also an English teacher.
- Both women grew up in St. Charles Parish which, I believe, is not far from Kenner which is a suburb of New Orleans, but is apparently located in Jefferson Parish.
Shelley Dufresne was arrested Tuesday in St. Charles Parish. Reports indicate that the investigation was initiated last Friday when the sheriff’s office was contacted by St. Charles Public Schools who had discovered that one of the students had been heard bragging about having a sexual relationship with two teachers.
Both teachers are facing felony charges of carnal knowledge of a juvenile, contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile and indecent behavior with a juvenile.
At the press conference, Kenner Police Chief Michael Glaser addressed the double standards surrounding the situation involving a male student and female teachers versus a male teacher and a female student. Either way he said the crime is sickening.
“No matter what sex the of the victim is everyone should be outraged,” Glaser said. “You have an educator, I guess, the responsibility is the safety and education of the children and when it goes outside those lines I believe the community should be outraged.”
Michael Wright, a resident of Norco, a small nearby community stated:
“Anytime anyone is put into a position of authority, it’s a responsibility as a human being not to abuse that authority, and so i think it’s pretty sad. I don’t know the circumstances. I don’t know if there’s some kind of mental illness there. I know if it was my child I would pursue charges in a heartbeat.”
Dufresne and Respess are not only facing the legal wrath of the legal system; they also appear to be facing overwhelming community censure, as a statement by Destrehan High parent Antonio Morales strongly suggests.
“Unfortunately as a parent of a son that attends Destrehan High School, it’s a little overwhelming at times, and my son is taking it difficult as well, but I think the whole school is taking it (with) difficultly. When anything happens here at Destrehan, all of Destrehan suffers.”
After her arrest on Tuesday, Shelley Dufresne was released on a $200,000 bond set by Judge Lauren Lemmon. The conditions of her release include the following:
- She has been placed on house arrest.
![hot3]()
She is not allowed to leave her residence except for continued intensive mental health treatment, doctors’ appointments, and church and she must provide the court with proof of continued treatment. (Does this mean that Ms. Dufresne was already in some sort of therapy? If so, this could indicate a history of psychological problems, but we would need to know more.)
- If Ms. Dufresne fails to comply with her conditions, she will be required to report back to jail.
I believe that the reason Ms. Dufresne’s bond is so low could have something to do with the fact her father is a local judge.
* * * * *
What is interesting to me is the fact the two woman, whatever their psychological state, have exercised such bad judgment. They are both rather attractive and surely must have known that the victim was going to tell the world about what he may well view as a dynamic sexual conquest. I can say without reservation that at least some high school boys would consider themselves lucky to have been selected by the two ladies and would experience a strong temptation to brag about it.
I’m uncertain what degree of lasting psychological damage the victim will experience; this is a question best answered by psychologists who have experience with this sort of thing.
More and more we see our authority figures, whether they be teachers or law enforcement personnel or politiians, falling from grace, whether through sexual indiscretions (and in some cases very serious sex crimes including forcible rape) or inappropriate violence. And, of course, we’ve long been plagued by crooked, self-serving politicians. More than most, perhaps, I’m extremely suspicious of politicians of every ilk and might consider banning them if I could. SMH. I don’t know what this seeming breakdown in morality portends for our society as a whole but it certainly is grounds for doubting the strength of the foundation upon which our society rests.