Fondling Teacher Gets Year in Jail

(Patterson, New Jersey) In this enduring case, dating back to at least 2003, 35-year-old 7th-grade teacher Jodi Marie Thorp, has finally been sentenced for having sex with a male student. Thorp, a married mother of three, received a year in jail for fondling a 14-year-old student.

There has been considerable legal wrangling on the case over the past 3 1/2 years and, last August, Thorp agreed to plead guilty to a significantly reduced charge of endangering the welfare of a child in accordance with a deal. In return, serious charges of sexual assault and witness tampering were dropped. The plea deal given Thorp is the lightest sentence ever extended by the Morris County prosecutor.

Judge Salem V. Ahto also sentenced Thorp to three years probation and ordered her to register as a sex offender under Megan's Law and to surrender her teaching license. Additionally, Thorp will be subjected to lifetime community supervision.

My prediction that Thorp would receive no jail and just probation was obviously wrong. However, the "lightest sentence ever" indicates that my thinking was correct. The prosecution dropped much more serious charges for her guilty plea.

Women just seem to deserve an extra measure of leniency when sentenced for sex crimes. I'm fairly certain that a man committing the exact same crimes would have been rewarded with at least a ten-year prison sentence.