A teacher who assaulted a teenage boy for years has been surprisingly sentenced to spend just 60 days in prison. The sentence has also been delayed for some time because the child abuser had recently given birth.
Though she was also registered as a sex offender and given 10-year probation, the sentence still seems unacceptable for someone who molested a child continuously for 3 good years. In this case, the teenage boy is not believed to have gotten the justice he deserves as his abuser will only be a prisoner for 2 months, which is incomparable to his suffering.
The boy whose identity was not revealed because of his status as a sexual assault victim and a minor, is a student at Tomball Intermediate School in Tomball, Texas. The 32-year-old child abuser, Marka Bodine, was a teaching staff at this school, where she taught the English language.
Texas teacher's sex abuse sentence delayed after she gives birth (not his) https://t.co/KaFmLrBK3s she admitted to having sex w 13-yr-old boy in her classroom for 3 yrs:
— Suzie S (@suziesuchi) August 4, 2022
Marka Bodine, 32, will be jailed for just 60 days for sexually abusing the boy…
Tomball Intermediate School
The boy had told the Court that Bodine had asked for his contact so they could play the famous video game Fortnite together. Since then, it has become a ritual for them to call and text for hours daily. He became reliant on his abuser and confided in her about his family life and his parent’s separation.
The boy disclosed that he couldn’t help but get attached because he did not have anyone else to discuss his feelings with, and it was the first time he had seen someone willing to listen to him. He testified that he was slowly starting to fall in love with her and anticipated their routines.
Bodine began to assault the student soon after he turned 13. To be close to her victim, she even went as far as moving to the housing complex where he lived with his family after she divorced her husband. When the boy’s family moved to another side of town, the distance was still not a barrier for this abuser as she would drive down there almost every week to meet with her victim.
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The sexual assault went on for three good years from 2018 and only ended in March 2021. Before he turned 16, his abuser had cut off contact with him, and their daily routine had come to an abrupt end. Only after a while did he realize that their relationship was very inappropriate, and she had taken advantage of him.
Bodine revealed this relationship herself, as she had reported that one of her former students threatened her with manipulated photos of her saying he was going to “report their relationship.”
However, when Bodine learned that her victim had gone to the police, she intimidated him again, saying she would commit suicide and make sure he went to jail for it.
Despite this revelation, the abuser still got such a light sentence, and the only plausible explanation people can think of regarding this case is gender related.
Defense attorney Christopher Downey had commented that he thinks “no small part of an explanation for this sentence may lie in any psych info they provided to the court. By all accounts, this is an unusual outcome. I am sure that the gender of the person on trial, the fact that this was a woman accused of having sex with a young boy, that’s gonna factor into it as well.“
https://twitter.com/aaronhudsonuk/status/1555208295337672704?s=21&t=shs4_ejVQ-e9acyZwKBoog
Many believe that if the gender were reversed, the abuser would have never gotten off so easily, which is unfair to boy victims worldwide. It’s high time the judiciary saw that male victims also deserve to get justice, just like their female counterparts.