The young man who was the victim of the statutory rape conviction asked the judge not to take Lavoie away from him.
Lisa LavoieSPRINGFIELD — Lisa M. Lavoie – the former Holyoke middle school teacher on probation for having sex with a 15-year-old student in 2009 – was sent to jail for 18 months Wednesday.
Hampden Superior Court Judge Cornelius J. Moriarty sentenced Lavoie because she violated a condition of probation that forbid her to have contact with the now 18-year-old man.
The young man, whose name is not being used here because he is the victim of a sexual crime, gave an impassioned appeal to Moriarty to spare Lavoie jail time.
One of the conditions of Lavoie’s probation when she pleaded guilty in early 2011 to statutory rape from the 2009 allegation was to have no contact with the boy or his family.
The young man on Wednesday told Moriarty both he and Lavoie have had difficult lives and found a deep friendship with each other.
He asked Moriarty “please don’t take her away from me.”
When Lavoie was led from the courtroom in handcuffs to begin her sentence at the Western Massachusetts Regional Women's Correctional Center in Chicopee, the young man began crying and said, “It’s not right.”
On March 9, a routine but unannounced home visit to Lavoie’s Ludlow apartment by Probation Officer Kevin Horne and Ludlow police found the young man in Lavoie’s closet, Horne testified Wednesday.
In his appeal to the judge, the young man said he went to her apartment because he had been kicked out of his home and had no place to go.
Horne said Lavoie told him that night the young man was crying and although she told him she could have no contact with him, he stepped into the apartment anyway, so she was going to let him use her telephone.
Horne also testified that after Lavoie had been arrested that night for the probation violation, and been released on $25,000 bail, he saw her April 17 in a car with the young man.
He said a prosecutor reported to him seeing Lavoie, 27, and a person he believed was the young man at a local mall.
When Moriarty sentenced her to five years probation in 2011 he said he didn’t believe Lavoie was “a sexual predator likely to reoffend.”
At the 2011 sentencing on the statutory rape, Assistant District Attorney Patrick S. Sabbs asked Moriarty to sentence her to three to five years in state prison.
Horne asked Moriarty on Wednesday to now impose the three- to five-year sentence Sabbs had asked for originally.
Sabbs told Moriarty Wednesday his office would defer to the Probation Department’s recommendation, but also said his office would recommend an 18-month jail sentence.
Defense lawyer David P. Hoose asked Moriarty not to send Lavoie to jail, but to keep her on probation, removing the condition she cannot see the young man.
Moriarty said his 2011 decision was based on his assessment of Lavoie as someone who was not evil and was amenable to rehabilitation.
He said Lavoie’s actions, particularly the testimony she had been seen with the young man twice after he was found in her closet, convinced him Lavoie “has no intent of abiding by court orders.”
The judge said Lavoie in his eyes is no longer a candidate for probation, so he was sending her to jail.
Hoose began Wednesday’s session on the case by saying Moriarty should dismiss the violation of probation because when the victim became 18 years old, it violated Lavoie’s constitutional rights to restrict her from seeing him.
Moriarty denied Hoose’s motion to dismiss the violation.
Hoose said Lavoie has suffered greatly since charges were brought against her.
“She has the red A all over her,” he said. She is afraid when she goes out in public people are looking at her and she can’t find a job because she is a registered sex offender, he said.