Thursday, Aug. 8, 2002 | 11:07 a.m.
A California teacher accused of having a three-day tryst with a 15-year-old student in Las Vegas entered a plea agreement this morning.
Tanya Hadden, 33, pleaded guilty to one count each of second-degree kidnapping, sexual conduct between teacher and student and statutory sexual seduction.
By pleading guilty, Hadden avoids a potential life sentence on a first-degree kidnapping charge and an additional 84 years on the other charges. Under the terms of the plea agreement, Hadden could get probation or face between two and 26 years in prison.
District Judge Joseph Bonaventure will sentence Hadden on Sept. 19.
Hadden still faces charges in San Bernardino County including kidnapping, statutory sexual seduction and sexual conduct of a teacher with a student.
Deputy Public Defender Jordan Savage said Hadden was essentially forced to take the deal.
"It's a ridiculously coercive process," Savage said. "It would have been more responsible of the district attorney's office to charge Ms. Hadden with something other than first-degree kidnapping to acknowledge that (what she did) was completely different than the violent stranger abductions we've been hearing about lately."
Hadden faced the same kidnapping charge that Alejandro Avila, 27, now faces in the Samantha Runnion case in California, Savage noted.
Samantha was snatched in front of her Orange County home on July 15 by a stranger who used the ruse of searching for a lost puppy. Her body was found the next day off a rural highway near Lake Elsinore, some 50 miles away in neighboring Riverside County.
Hadden was accused of beginning an affair with the boy last spring and driving to Las Vegas with him the first week of May once authorities began to investigate rumors she had supplied teenagers with alcohol at a party.
Although Hadden had denied having sex with the boy, the boy told police they had sexual intercourse eight times over three days in three Las Vegas motels.
Among the evidence police found linking the two romantically was a greeting card allegedly given to the boy by Hadden. It was signed, "I love you. I love you. I love you ... even in Canada," leading authorities to believe the two may have planned to flee the country together.
Deputy District Attorney Lisa Luzaich said she believes the plea agreement is a fair resolution of the case.
"All of the defendants that come into the system are offered negotiations and she's pleaded guilty to what she did," Luzaich said.
Another of Hadden's attorneys, Deputy Public Defender Steve Immerman, has been criticized by prosecutors and child victim advocates for his handling of the case.
Immerman told a reporter with the Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., that the victim was "ready, willing and able."
"Bully for the kid for putting a notch in his belt by learning the language of love from an older woman," he was quoted as saying.
In a later Press-Enterprise article, Immerman was quoted as saying, "Some folks say I don't appreciate the psychological trauma to a 15-year-old boy. Well, he got to have a lot of fun; psychological trauma my ass. This teacher lost her job. He gets to go pop a beer and say 'I banged a teacher.' "
Immerman said that while he believes sex between students and teachers is inappropriate, he too believes the Clark County District Attorney's Office over-charged Hadden to force her to enter a plea agreement.
"I think the relationship, if it happened, is inappropriate, and I think that if an abuse of trust took place, that was inappropriate too," Immerman told the Sun in May. "But, in the grand scheme of things, it would be different if we were talking about a 5- or 6-year-old victim."
archive
