Crossing the line

Matt Lauer • Profile

Matt Lauer, NBC News: What’s the reaction you get in the street from people who recognize you?

Debra Lafave: Snickers and stares.  Mothers would hold their children tightly when they saw me.

Lauer: Obviously?  Do it in front of you?

Lafave: Obviously.

Lauer: Did they say bad things to you?

Lafave: [They'd say] “That’s Debra Lafave!”

She’s a top contender for the title of “America’s most notorious schoolteacher.”  In 2004, Debra Beasley Lafave was arrested at the home of a middle school student, accused of having sex with him at her apartment, in her car, in her classroom.  She was 23.  He was 14.

She wasn’t the first teacher—or the last—to be busted for a liaison with an underage student, but her case created an international sensation.

Lafave: It was just the intensity of it.  My goodness.  There was a teacher arrested two days after me, and I saw her on TV once.

Lauer: So why do you think you got all the attention?

Lafave: I don’t know.

Lauer: I’ll say it: Do you think it’s because you’re pretty?

Lafave: I think so.  And sex sells.

In her first-ever television interview, Debra Lafave will take us step by step through the whole affair.  But she also says there’s much more to the story.  Behind the pretty face and the hourglass figure, Behind the lurid details of the case, she says there was a deeply troubled young woman with a lifetime of problems that finally led to a terrible crack-up— and a crime tailor-made for the tabloids.

Lauer: 14-year-old boy, very attractive 23-year-old teacher.  He’s had sex with you.  Weren’t you scared to death he would tell someone?

Lafave: Obviously not ‘cause I did it again.

Lauer: And again.

Lafave: And again.

She says to fully understand her, you have to go back years to her childhood in a small town near Tampa, Fla. Her dad worked for the power company.  Her mom was a cosmetologist.  Debra adored her older sister, Angie.

Lafave: I loved my big sister.  I couldn’t go anywhere without her. I loved playing Barbies.  I would play school with all my dolls and teach ‘em how to read.

But it soon became apparent that Debbie was a very complicated little girl.

Her mother would later write a long account of Debra's childhood—a litany of phobias, panic attacks and obsessions.

And, Debra says, there’s a trauma buried in her past.

Lauer: When you were 13 years old, 8^th grade, you were raped by someone you knew.  Tell me about that.

Lafave: The first time that it happened was in school.  He forced me into a bathroom and—began to rape me.  And a teacher walked in.  And she let us off the hook.

Lauer: Well you say, “She let us off the hook.”  I mean what did you do wrong?  Why did she have to let you off the hook?

Lafave: Well, she had no clue that I was being raped.  I’m assuming she just thought we were messing around.

Lauer: Why didn’t you say, “This boy’s raping me”?

Lafave: It just doesn’t happen like that.  I had a lot of fear.  You know when somebody has that kind of control over you, especially at 13. I didn’t tell anybody.

Lauer: Who was this young man in your life?  I mean was he someone you were close with?

Lafave: Yeah, he was actually one of my boyfriends.

Debra says that early, abusive relationship with an older boy forever shaped her view of sex. 

Lafave: I kind of developed this idea that it was my role.  In order to make a man, guy, boy happy—I had to do my part, which was pleasing him in that way.

Lauer: But you felt it was your duty.  You didn’t really feel as if you had a choice.

Lafave: Exactly.

By age 15 she was drinking heavily.  She developed an eating disorder.

Lauer: So I mean as an outsider looking in, life was a bit of a mess.

Lafave: At that point, I had already tried to commit suicide twice, too.

Lauer: How did you try to commit suicide?

Lafave: One time was taking a lot of pills. The second time was slitting my wrists.

But as troubled as she was, most people noticed something else: Debra was a knockout.

Lauer: Were you one of these girls that people would walked up on to the street and say, “You should model.  You’re—you’re very pretty.  You should model.”  Things like that?

Lafave: Yeah. I thought it would be a great way to make extra cash.

Her first big job at age 18 was for a magazine called “Makes and Models.”

Lauer: Which you smile at now.  Which was basically, they would have beautiful women and cars—

Lafave: Right.

Lauer: —and motorcycles and things like that.  How did you feel about it when you were doing it?

Lafave: So ridiculous.

Lauer: Did you ever think, “These pictures could come back and haunt me in some way”?

Lafave: No.

Lauer: Never gave it a thought?

Lafave: Never.

She wouldn’t be a model for long. Debra majored in English at the university of South Florida, with the goal of becoming a teacher.  She stopped her heavy drinking, got into a stable relationship, maintained a high B average.  But she still found herself crying sometimes for no apparent reason.  A friend finally told her she needed to see a psychiatrist. 

Lafave: They thought that it was just depression and they put me on Zoloft at that time.

Lauer: How did that work for you?

Lafave: At first I can remember saying, “I’m not crying any more.  You know?  I’m actually  happy.”  And after that it kind of just like my body became immune to it and it didn’t work any more.

Lauer: So the depression came back.

Lafave:     Um-hm (affirms).

MESSAGE BOARDS   What they're saying... 'Watching this is really frustrating. If the tables were turned, and it was a male teacher and  a female student... the pervert would be behind bars.' —Llamy77 'It is reprehensible for a teacher to have sex with a student.  However, as someone diagnosed with bi-polar disease, I recognize all the symptoms in Ms. LaFave.' —carolynj6 'She was definitely wrong!  But, don't believe for a second that the student was taken without his permission.' —JWD   Join the conversation

Then, perhaps the hardest blow of all.  In 2001, Debra’s beloved older sister, Angie, was killed by a drunk driver. Debra was devastated.  And today she wonders... could her sister have saved her from herself?

Lafave: I think about if she was here, would I have done what I did?

Lauer: Why would it have been different?

Lafave: Because she just knew me well.  And she always could tell if I was doing something that I shouldn’t be doing.

In 2002, despite all her troubles, Debra graduated from college and took job as an eighth grade reading teacher at Greco Middle School in temple terrace, a suburb of Tampa. By all accounts, her first year went well.

Lafave: I always wanted to be a teacher. Like I said I used to play school with my dolls.  And after I got raped , I wanted to be able to educate kids on issues like rape and all the things that I never learned about.  And—

Lauer: You have to know it sounds ironic when you say, “I wanted to educate children on issues like rape.”

Lafave: Oh yeah.  But—

Lauer: And how things turned out.

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