Rachel Respess

Okay, this news is a couple of weeks late, but I’ve been covering this scandalous story since the beginning, so I need to report on its conclusion (if this is, indeed, the conclusion). Let me provide a recap for the newcomers.

Back in the fall of 2014, Shelley Dufresne, a then-32 year old married woman with three pre-teen children, began to have an affair with a 16 year old boy, who was one of her students at Destrehan High School in Louisiana where she was a teacher. They had sex on multiple occasions on her home. One day in September, after a High School football game (the boy was on the team), Shelley took the boy with her to the apartment of Rachelle Respess, then age 24, who was also a teacher at that same school, where they had a threesome.

Like many teenage boys, this boy could not keep his mouth shut and proceeded to brag to other students about his experiences with the two teenagers, and someone snitched informed the proper authorities who questioned the boy and purportedly found some type of photographic and/or video evidence on the boys phone. Both women were subsequently arrested and fired from their jobs.

Since Shelley Dufresne’s home is a different county than Rachel Respess’ apartment, Dufresne was charged separately in each county. She was charged for having sex with the boy in her home, and then charged along with Respess for the threesome in Respess’ apartment. On April 10, 2015, Dufresne made a plea-bargain in her home county, for the crime of “obscenity”, where she admitted to having sex with the boy, but avoided any jail time or having to register as a sex offender. Many observers felt that she got off lightly, and this wasn’t helped when Dufresne was seen celebrating the news.

In December 2015, Shelley Dufresne and Rachel Respess were both formally charged in Destrehan County for the incident at Respess’ home. Interestingly, while Dufresne was once again charged for having sex with the boy, Respess was only charged for “failing to report the commission of a felony.” Meaning the prosecutors now only believed Rachel Respess knew that Shelley Dufresne and the boy were coming to her apartment to have sex, and that she allowed it to happen, but they couldn’t prove that she in fact joined with them, despite all previous claims.

Originally planned to go on trial together, Respess’ attorneys filed a motion to separate the cases. On April 25 2017, Shelley Dufresne’s trial began. I’ll note that this was not a jury trial, but rather before a Judge, Danyelle Taylor. After one day of mostly Prosecutor’s presenting their case, the trial concluded the next day, and Shelley Dufresne was found NOT GUILTY.

At that point, Rachel Respess’ trial was still scheduled for the following month, but it was pretty much guaranteed that it would be dropped. You can’t convict her of crime that hadn’t been proved to have occurred. And, sure enough, on June 17th last month, the charges were dropped and the case dismissed.

So that’s it. Well, both women still face a civil suit filed by the boys family, which I’ve reported on before, and admit that I think that’s bogus. And I doubt that will ever go to trial either. Most likely this will end with some kind of settlement. I have speculated before that I wonder which, if either, of these women will come forward for interviews to talk about this case, possibly to cash-in on it, with a book or movie deal?

Personally, I still think this was a miscarriage of justice, and speaks to the different way we see men and women when it comes to sexuality. The main reason people don’t take adult female/underage male sex as seriously as we do when the genders were is because of the idea that the male “enjoyed it”, so therefor it’s no crime. But when the genders are reversed, the young female is automatically seen as a victim. People don’t even consider the fact that she may have enjoyed it. As I also said early on, imagine if they were all the same gender? Two lesbian teachers having sex with a teenage girl, or two adult male teachers having sex with a teenage boy? Then it would it would a national outrage, playing into the stereotype of predatory homosexuals on the hunt to molest children. But this gets treated just like any good ol’ sexual fantasy. Not cool…