A case of lewd and lascivious behavior between a 23-year-old female teacher and a middle school boy nine years her junior makes one wonder if Lady Justice is as blind as she should be. Or whether a double standard is emerging regarding how we treat male sexual predators and their female counterparts, attractive molesters and unattractive ones, professional offenders and blue-collar or unemployed individuals.

Debra Lafave, now 25, a blond, blue-eyed middle school teacher from Florida, had all the pluses going for her last week when she escaped incarceration for engaging in sex with a 14-year-old male virgin in her classroom, in her townhouse, and again in the back seat of her car as the boy’s cousin drove the couple around. Rather than prison time, Lafave was sentenced to three years of house arrest, banned from having any contact with children and required to register as a sex offender – small potatoes when she had faced 15 years in prison on each of the two sexual battery counts before a plea bargain agreement.

Lafave’s attorney argued against prison time, insisting that incarceration would be too dangerous for someone as attractive as his client. It’s easy to imagine that Lafave would have received some prison time if she had been a roundish, middle-aged man rather than a “hot teacher” fulfilling a boy’s sexual fantasy.

The victim’s family readily embraced the plea bargain because the publicity surrounding this crime has already taken a toll. At best, the victim will emerge from this experience healthy and happy. At worst, he may be prone to promiscuity and sexual crimes himself.

The court missed a chance to send a message that sexual misconduct committed by women is a serious offense, too. Justice must be gender blind in dealing with sexual predators to prevent inequality of sentences for men and women from undermining the crime.

Increasingly, sexual crimes committed by women are receiving notice. Three weeks before Lafave’s guilty plea, married female basketball coach Jaymee Lane Wallace of Tampa, Fla., was charged with lewd and lascivious conduct for an 18-month affair with a girl 11 years younger. Last week, the Associated Press reported that Julie Ann Welborn, 38, of Camano Island, Wash., was accused of traveling to Ohio to have sex with a 14-year-old boy she’d met through an online role-playing game.

Time will tell if Wallace and Welborn will receive the benefit of the doubt from a judge at sentencing if they’re found guilty. But there’s no question that they’ve damaged their young victims in an attempt to satisfy themselves.

Youngsters may be more mature today than ever. But few are ready for a sexual romp with a predatory adult. The consequences could play out in unrealistic expectations in future relationships with individuals their own age. The victims are susceptible to emotional manipulation, as was the situation in the infamous case of Mary Kay Letourneau, a former Seattle-area teacher who married her prey after spending more than seven years in prison. Letourneau and Lafave prove women can be predatory, too.

Lafave’s actions degraded her profession’s place of respect and trust in the community. For that added factor alone, she should have been sent to prison.