The molestations cases you didn't hear about.

I would bet you have not heard of Diane West. So here are some details on who she is and what she did.

She was a teacher when in 1980 they found her making out with a 13-year-old boy and groping him at a school dance. The school principal said he was convinced she had been having a sexual relationship with the boy. He said she has “a thing for young boys.”

She was made a guidance counsellor in the school system after that at the Bayonne High School. Nothing else was done about her actions.

One of her students was Steven West, no the name is no coincidence. When he was in under her supervision in high school they had an affair and she got pregnant. They married though they waited until he graduated high school.

The child, Steven Jr grew up. He had a 15-year-old friend Christopher Castlegrande. For one reason or another this friend ended up living with the Wests. And Diane seduced this boy as well. She even used her school position to rearrange his schedule to make their trysts more convenient.

Relatives of this boy filed a complaint. Only then did she resign her position at the school. The school gave her early retirement thus rewarding her. In spite of the incident with the 13-year-old and the pregnancy from another student, they said she had a perfect record working for them.

West pleaded guilty to the charges of sexual assault and her fellow employees from the school wrote glowing appraisals of her character to the judge. She was sentenced to probation only and told she didn’t have to register as a sex offender.

Age of consent in New Jersey, where all this took place is 16. But when it comes to students over whom you have supervision it is 18 years of age instead. So in all three cases West violated the law.

Compare the lackadaisical response to West to the hysteria over Foley. Foley did not have sex with anyone under age. The only sexual encounter we know about so far was with someone 21 years old. West not only had sex with underage boys but she was their teacher or guidance counsellor. She did it three times that we know about. No doubts here.

Foley merely talked about sex and all the boys who received the instant messages from him were above the age of consent where all the boys in the West case were below the age of consent. Foley is being racked over the coals with more promised while West got a hefty increase in her pension because they gave her early retirement.

So what is the difference? The boys were younger in the West case. Unlike the Foley case there was actual sex. The age differences were similar. So why did one barely create a ripple while the other is a tidal wave of reporting.

Obviously attacking West won’t impact on any election. A huge amount of the Foley uproar is engineered by people wanting the Democrats to win big time. I personally want the Democrats to win big time I’m just not willing to do anything to get it.

And just as importantly West is a woman thus making the affairs she had with these boys, younger than the teens who got e-mails from Foley, completely heterosexual. If you don’t think antigay attitudes are not fuelling the scandal, as well as the attempt to score political points, then you are just blind to the facts.


While anyone who reads a newspaper can't miss the Foley story very few have seen the story about West. I just looked at list of something like 48 females employed by school districts who have been caught having sex with underaged boys. I can tell you that I didn't read about a single one of them and I read lots of media outlets per day. And all these were recent cases. The case of school teacher Dawn Reiser, didn't get one percent the publicity that the e-mails from Foley received. She seduced a 13-year-old boy "kept in contact with the boy in the spring of 2004 by calling him on the telephone, emailing him and meeting him without his mother's knowledge." The boy described one time together, according to a newspaper account, "Reiser tied his arms to a bedpost with black silk ties and spread warming lotion on him. For the next three hours they had sex 'nine or 12 times,' and Reiser performed a sex act on him, according to the affidavits."

As I’ve said: the Right can’t admit when they are gay. The Left can’t admit they when hate gays. One closeted Republican was outed in this scandal. But the number of closeted bigots who have been outed on the Left is astounding.