Teacher Holt Gets 10 Years for Rape

(Wilmington, Delaware) In April 2006, science teacher at Claymont Elementary School, Rachel L. Holt, was charged with 21 counts of rape for allegedly engaging in sex with a 13-year-old boy on 28 occasions in a seven-day period. Do the math. She was indicted in August.

In January 2007, 35-year-old Holt pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree rape. All other charges had been dismissed after case review.

Today, Superior Court Judge Calvin L. Scott sentenced Holt to the minimum mandatory prison term -- ten years -- followed by six months of home confinement and approximately two years probation. Holt was also given a no contact order regarding her victim and his family and she must register as a sex offender.

To no avail, Prosecutor Jim Kriner and the victim's family had sought the maximum for Holt, 25 years.

In court today Kriner said Holt blamed her young victim but that she was the one who pursued him, calling him more than 200 times over the two months before her arrest. "This was a premeditated and calculated affair," he said, adding that she had showed no remorse when interviewed by pre-sentence officials.

It's astonishing. Holt blamed the boy. Also in her defense:

Holt's attorney John Malik, said his client was not a sexual predator, but a victim of years of abuse by her ex-husband who suffered from low self-esteem and made poor choices that week at a moment of weakness.

The expected and customary excuse-making for female sex offenders led me to earlier predict that she wouldn't be given a reasonable sentence. I was mistaken. A ten-year prison term will enable her to work on her self-esteem problem, the putative underlying cause of her criminal behavior. Maybe, during her stretch, she'll also develop a sexual attraction for adult individuals instead of pubescent boys.