What’s good for the gander isn’t good for the goose.
That was the judicial message from New Jersey Superior Court Judge Bruce Gaeta last Thursday.
Gaeta sentenced former teacher Pamela Diehl-Moore to five years probation for having sex in 1999 with a 13-year-old male student in her seventh-grade class at a Clinton middle school.
He waived an expected three-year prison sentence because “(the activity was) just something between two people that clicked beyond the teacher-student relationship. I really don’t see the harm that was done.”
Diehl-Moore, age 43, was arrested last year, lost her teaching license and pleaded guilty to sexual assault last January. She is a divorcee with two children.
Her case breaks the pattern of female educator-pedophiles receiving sentencing equity with male abusers (i.e. sex-education teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, now serving seven years in prison for the repeated 1996 rapes of a 12-year-old male student in her Seattle, Wash. sixth-grade class). (26 MAY 2002)
