A sex crime by any other name
Experts refute idea that age-of-consent sex crimes against boys are ‘victimless’
by Ronnie Cohen
Pacific Sun Staff
The defense attorney for a former kindergarten teacher charged with sexually molesting two 15-year-old boys describes the one-night incident in Corte Madera as a victimless crime.
“I don’t know who’s the victim here,” attorney Michael Semansky said of the case against 41-year-old Amy Lee Kelly. “How do you molest a boy who’s 15 years old, who’s filled with testosterone and alcohol and begging for sex? I think it’s a victimless crime.”
But therapists who work with sex offenders and victims of sex crimes paint a different picture. They say sexual relations between 15-year-old boys and a 40-year-old woman can overwhelm boys, traumatizing and scarring them for life.
“Boys, though they can’t acknowledge their vulnerability, have a potential vulnerability that’s equal to females,” said psychologist Michael Grogan, director of San Rafael’s Jeannette Prandi Children’s Center, where sexually abused children are sensitively interviewed. “Boys are subject to the same kind of psychological implications as girls. There has to be an awareness that when you get involved with a person sexually, and you are an adult, there can be ramifications to that child that are lifelong. And I don’t think it matters if it’s a boy or a girl.”
The law treats male and female perpetrators of sex crimes equally. So Kelly, who taught at Bacich Elementary School in Kentfield for 11 years until June 2006, faces the same charges and the same punishment a man would face. In July, the district attorney charged the divorced mother of two with sexually molesting the Redwood High School boys and having unlawful sexual intercourse with one of them.
Kelly, who lives in the East Bay, was released from jail after posting $100,000 bail. Although she has pleaded not guilty, her lawyer said she feels remorseful about her role in the events that unfolded on a Friday night last October in her friend’s Corte Madera home. Semansky blamed alcohol for the alleged sex crimes and said Kelly completed a 90-day alcohol-rehabilitation program after the incident and now volunteers in the recovery community. She faces up to four years in state prison for the sexual intercourse charge. If convicted, she would have to register as a sex offender.
Despite the lack of distinction based upon gender, gender does color community perception about whether a case like the one against Kelly should be prosecuted and even whether it should have been brought to law enforcement’s attention in the first place.
Kathryn Mitchell, chief deputy district attorney, said numerous adults had knowledge about the drunken incident, which took place while Kelly was visiting her friend last October. “A lot of people apparently knew all about this and didn’t come forward in the fashion they should have,” Mitchell said.
According to court documents, Kelly told her friend–in whose home the incident occurred–about the sexual activity the following morning. Instead of summoning authorities, the hostess found the alleged victims–friends of the hostess’ 15-year-old daughter–at a Redwood High School football game, and the three of them vowed to keep the incident secret.
“That’s a pretty big secret for a 15-year-old to have to maintain,” said a therapist who works with Marin County sex offenders and requested anonymity. “Can’t tell your friends. Can’t tell your family. They’re afraid they’ll get the adult in trouble. The secrecy is a burden for a young person.”
After meeting with the alleged victims and promising secrecy, according to court documents, Kelly’s friend returned to her Corte Madera home, photographed everything she thought might be relevant, donned gloves and retrieved two used condoms, one from beneath a balcony and one from her daughter’s bedroom. The party hostess put the photographs and the condoms in a paper bag and gave it to another friend who lives in Mill Valley.
About four months passed before law-enforcement officials heard about the incident. In February, a Kent Middle School counselor, a so-called mandatory reporter, informed authorities that a parent told her Kelly may have had sex with multiple boys while she and the boys were intoxicated. A few months after the counselor’s call, a Twin Cities police detective began his investigation.
Detective Toby Miller said the incident remains under investigation, and authorities have not yet determined whether they will press charges against Kelly’s friend in whose home teen-agers were drinking alcohol that night. [The 'Pacific Sun' is withholding the hostess' identity in the interests of protecting the identity of her teenage daughter.]
The hostess appears to have cooperated with authorities. She had her friend in Mill Valley bring to the Twin Cities Police Department a sealed paper bag with the used condoms. And she turned over to police three recorded voice-mail messages Kelly left for her. In one of the messages, court documents say, the former teacher asked if anyone knew about the “Mary Kay Letourneau incident.”
The most infamous of teachers in sex scandals, Letourneau was 34 and the mother of four in 1996 when she began having sex with a sixth grader in her suburban Seattle school district.
On Friday afternoon, Oct. 20, court documents say Kelly brought her two young children to her friend’s house and began to drink red wine and beer. Later in the evening, Kelly’s friend determined she was too drunk to drive home, the documents say. So before the hostess went to bed, she hid Kelly’s car keys.
While the hostess and Kelly’s two children slept, the hostess’s 15-year-old daughter entertained friends. Court documents detail sordid images of teenagers unchaperoned except for the alleged too-drunk-to-drive and flirtatious former teacher. At one point, the documents say, the hostess’s daughter walked into her own bedroom to find one of her 15-year-old male friends naked with her mother’s 40-year-old girlfriend. Stunned, the girl shot photographs.
More details could come out during a preliminary hearing to determine if sufficient evidence exists to force Kelly to stand trial. The hearing is scheduled for Oct. 31.
Earlier this month, Kelly appeared in Marin County Superior Court briefly with Semansky, her attorney, to set the preliminary hearing date. Wearing her long black hair loose and a stylish black pantsuit with high heels, the trim, 5-foot-7-inch Kelly appeared inwardly agitated when Judge Faye D’Opal granted the ‘Marin Independent Journal’’s request to photograph her.
After the hearing, Kelly rushed out of the courtroom with a pony-tailed man Semansky called her boyfriend and two women the attorney identified as Kelly’s mother and sister. Kelly refused to comment. But, outside the courtroom, Semansky said he was surprised the District Attorney filed the charges and described the alleged victims as “sexually aggressive.”
Steven Duditch, a San Rafael attorney who explained his role as working behind the scenes to protect the rights of one of the boys, said he cannot discuss the facts but called Semansky’s claim that the boys were aggressive “ridiculous.”
“All the parties were drinking,” Semansky said. “They were probably nice young boys, nice boys who should have been home. She was in what I think was a blackout. She’s completely remorseful about what’s happened. She’s in therapy. After her divorce, she had problems.
“I just wonder where all the parents were. Would they want to bring their kids to court?”
Prosecutor Mitchell said she expected testifying would be difficult for the victims and their families.
“Going through the court process could be as shame-provoking and anxiety-producing as the offense,” said the therapist who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“Nobody wants to bring their sexual-assault experiences into a courtroom,” psychologist Grogan said. “There’s an immediate judgment about the victim. It can be a devastating experience to have this happen and then have it explored in a public forum.”
Both therapists said boys generally are more reluctant than girls to come forward as victims of sex crimes because the culture expects males to handle their own problems and because they are supposed to always want to engage in sex.
“There is a stereotype that boys are very interested in having sex with adult women. It can be overwhelming and traumatizing to a young teenage boy. Boys would feel: I gotta do this, when in fact, they may have very mixed feelings, especially if they aspire to be macho guys. Boys are expected to be more sexually experienced than girls, that the definition of their masculinity comes from their sexual prowess. A real man would never turn down this opportunity. That’s not reality. That’s a fantasy. It really hides the potential vulnerability of young men,” Grogan said.
Of the 430 sexual-abuse interviews he has conducted at the Prandi Center, he said no more than five have involved female perpetrators. But both therapists said they have treated adult men who as children were devastated and overwhelmed after sex with adult women.
“It’s a very complicated dynamic to explain,” Grogan said. “It so flies in the face of public perception.”
Ronnie Cohen can be reached at ronniecohen@comcast.net.
