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The lenient sentence handed down to a female teacher who sexually abused five male students is proof of a double standard in America's legal system, says prominent pro-family attorney Pat Trueman.Allena Ward, 24, of Laurens, South Carolina, was sentenced this week to six years in prison after she admitted to having sex with five of her teenage students. "I wish healing for each person affected by my carelessness. And I offer my deepest and most sincere apologies to these young men," Ward apologizes. But Pat Trueman, special counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, says Ward's crimes were not the result of "carelessness" but the conscious choices of a sexual predator. Her victims were children, he says, not "young men." And, he adds, things would have been different if Ward had been male and her victims had been girls. "You'd get a ... 30- or 40-year sentence [if that were the case]," he maintains. "But women who are predators are not viewed as predators by the legal system in many states." Ward was actually sentenced to 63 of a possible 105 years in prison on six separate charges, but the judge reduced those punishments to six years total. "In the federal system, that wouldn’t happen," continues Trueman. "The sentences are the same whether it's a male or female predator. But in the states, judges can do what they want, oftentimes. And the norm is that women sexual predators get off easy." (See video report on the recent arrest of another female teacher) Trueman hopes lawmakers will change that. "I think every state legislature ought to review its laws to eliminate prejudice and treat all sexual predators ... the same and give stiff sentences, even for the first offense," he suggests. As the attorney explains, "the effect on children from a female predator is no different than the effect on the child of a male predator. The child is affected for life and it harms them-it harms their psyche; and the justice system is supposed to mete out justice." Ward is expected to serve no more than five years in prison.http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=67977
As in the days of Noah...
