Bad Love

Two stories today about school employees caught having sex with teenage girls they were coaching. Both men seem to have acknowledged their crimes, and have pleaded guilty.

Craig DeBaise, 43, was the girls' basketball coach at Bishop Machebeuf High School in Denver.

In 1999, he had sex with a 16 year-old girl on the team, and for three months in 2000 had a number of encounters with a 17 year-old. About the 17 year-old, he said they had built a bond and that he was "falling in love with her." We can only hope the girl doesn't harbor any tender feelings for this sleazy looking creep. He pleaded guilty to only one count of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust, a very apt legal category for Bad Love. He will be sentenced in December, and could get as little as two years.

Leonard Tyrone Alexander, 27, was a dance teacher and detention monitor at a charter school in Minneapolis.

He pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct with two girls, ages 12 and 14, who he taught in a hip-hop dance class. He admitted that he brought girls back to his apartment for extra dance practice, but really to have sex with them, on a few different occasions. The 14 year-old thought she was going back to his apartment to braid his hair. Leonard got nine years in prison. The charter school actually closed earlier this year. So much for idealistic notions of independently-managed public schools.