“How much did all these hacks get paid to do this? What a waste of money. Are they bothering somebody? Leave them alone. They obviously want to be together, and who are we to say that they shouldn’t? How much did this judge and all the hacks get paid to issue this decision? Somewhere, somehow this waste has to stop.”

—“Brad,” a commenter on NECN.com’s story about Lisa Lavole, a former teacher who was out of jail on parole after three years for the offense of having sex with her 15-year old student and running away with him. She was taken back into custody when the same student, now 18, was discovered hiding in her closet. One of the conditions of her parole was that she had to stay away from her former victim.

Lisa Lavole, doing her Norman Bates imitation

While perusing the comments to news stories often gives me more insight into the state of our culture’s ethics than reading the stories themselves, there is always the downside that many comments make me want to chuck ethics as a futile and pointless career choice and begin honest work as a bookie or a pimp. “Brad’s” comment is a case in point.

It would be difficult to pack more flawed ethical reasoning and rationalizations into a mere 60 words. The woman was hired to teach, and instead used her authority, age and power to entice a child into a sexual relationship, and then take him away from his parents and his home. By the most charitable interpretation she is a sexual predator and a rapist, as well as the betrayer of the community’s trust. Of course part of her punishment involves keeping her away from her victim, whose mind and emotions she had damaged and warped. To Brad, however, it is a “waste of money” to enforce legitimate laws, protect children from predatory adults, and make certain that at very least adults who prey on the children in their charge don’t benefit from it. She turned a child into a sex object and lover, and Brad thinks it’s a waste of time and money for society to make certain that she can’t keep reaping the benefits of her crime after her prison sentence.

“Are they bothering anybody?” This is the perpetual mindless argument of the “victimless crime” advocates, made especially offensive in a setting where the victim has already been “bothered.” Should society be bothered by teachers being allowed to continue to exploit their victims after their sentences have been served? Should it be bothered by the fact that such a system minimizes a monstrous breach or trust, decency and responsibility? Will future students be bothered when their emotional development and education is disrupted by predator teachers who get the message that the rest of us think, if it can be called that, like Brad?

Brad want us to “leave them alone,” which means “don’t enforce the conditions of the parole,” and allow a sexual predator do whatever she wants to. The boy is damaged; he needs to heal; he needs to find a healthy sexual and romantic relationship that wasn’t created by an abuse of power and manipulation. The teacher isn’t allowing him to do that. It would be irresponsible and cruel not to stop her. But to Brad and the horrifyingly large group of Americans like him, this is just an issue of personal freedom.

“Who are we to say that they shouldn’t?,” says Brad, adopting the excuse of  shameless miscreants throughout the history of civilization. “We” are the people who have to live with Lisa Lavole in our society, and have both the responsibility and the right to decide on standards of conduct that dictate what we will and will not tolerate. For anyone of normal reasoning ability, not tolerating teachers who rape their students should seem like much of an imposition. To Brad, it’s a waste of effort.

The Lisa Lavoles of the world exist because of people like Brad, individuals whose ability to distinguish right from wrong is so minimal and primitive that it can be boiled down to “if it doesn’t affect me. why should I care?”

You know, being a bookie might be fun…