More Revelations about Dufault

Jasmo said:
She does have a brain shunt inserted in her to relieve an encephalitic type of condition. There is medical literature that suggests such a shunt could be associated with impulsive behavior including sexual. I agree that it may and should not be effective as a legal defense because she clearly engaged in carefully planned knowing and intentional behavior. However, I don't think the information is entirely irrelevant either, and suspect it did have an effect on her judgement and functioning; and perhaps should be considered in her sentencing (within sentencing guidelines) and in treatment planning.

Agreed...there may be a real condition, but there was also real planned behavior, as well asa lack of planning to avoid the temptations of low impulse control.

She may be in the situation of an alcoholic who continued to work as a bartender, or a person with a seizure disorder who continued to work as a commercial pilot or bus-driver.

Whatever the other outcomes in this case, I certainly hope she ends up with restraints from ever working with youth again. And yeah, I'd love to see her lawyer suffer for using loaded terms like "wolf pack".

I am not defending the behavior that went on, but brain injuries can cause huge emotional problems and very poor judgement. I think it is possible that the woman had to work for a living. I doubt that she could foresee the problem. It breaks my heart when these things happen. It is destructive to the kids. And her life has been destroyed too.

I know someone who's grown daughter suffers from traumatic brain injury. In her case she will never be independent. It is painful enough for the parents to lose their daughter as a bright, functioning human being. Now they have to nurse an invalid for the rest of their lives with no real respite.

I think in a case with someone who can work, it gets even trickier....it doesn't appear so tragic because she seemed able to work. But, unless she has very close family who can see the poor judgment, and understand the insidious ways it affects her life, she probably lives a very lonely, isolated life.

Again, I understand the magnitude of the offense, but I think we don't realize how devastating, bankrupting and insidious brain problems/mental illness is to the individual. Living with a grown daughter with serious mental illness has been a real shock.

gerryl said:
I am not defending the behavior that went on, but brain injuries can cause huge emotional problems and very poor judgement. I think it is possible that the woman had to work for a living. I doubt that she could foresee the problem. It breaks my heart when these things happen. It is destructive to the kids. And her life has been destroyed too.
I know someone who's grown daughter suffers from traumatic brain injury. In her case she will never be independent. It is painful enough for the parents to lose their daughter as a bright, functioning human being. Now they have to nurse an invalid for the rest of their lives with no real respite.
I think in a case with someone who can work, it gets even trickier....it doesn't appear so tragic because she seemed able to work. But, unless she has very close family who can see the poor judgment, and understand the insidious ways it affects her life, she probably lives a very lonely, isolated life.
Again, I understand the magnitude of the offense, but I think we don't realize how devastating, bankrupting and insidious brain problems/mental illness is to the individual. Living with a grown daughter with serious mental illness has been a real shock.

+1

gerryl said:
I am not defending the behavior that went on, but brain injuries can cause huge emotional problems and very poor judgement. I think it is possible that the woman had to work for a living. I doubt that she could foresee the problem. It breaks my heart when these things happen. It is destructive to the kids. And her life has been destroyed too.
I know someone who's grown daughter suffers from traumatic brain injury. In her case she will never be independent. It is painful enough for the parents to lose their daughter as a bright, functioning human being. Now they have to nurse an invalid for the rest of their lives with no real respite.
I think in a case with someone who can work, it gets even trickier....it doesn't appear so tragic because she seemed able to work. But, unless she has very close family who can see the poor judgment, and understand the insidious ways it affects her life, she probably lives a very lonely, isolated life.
Again, I understand the magnitude of the offense, but I think we don't realize how devastating, bankrupting and insidious brain problems/mental illness is to the individual. Living with a grown daughter with serious mental illness has been a real shock.

I agree with this. I don't feel a strong need to punish Dufault other than revoking her license to teach and making sure that she doesn't work with young people. With or without prison, she will have a serious felony charge on her record. Mostly, I want her out of the district and out of the news as we enough to worry about without this sort of destruction. I am not convinced that strong punishment and continued publicity is helpful to her victims, either.

I can't imagine trying to put my life back together after doing what Dufault did with or without going to prison. Imagine, for the rest of you life, somebody does a search on your name and your crimes come up.

I'd be interested in knowing when she had the shunt placed . She was in my experience (son had her her first year teaching) making poor choices about student teacher boundaries and showed a lack of character by gaming at least one observation by teaching a Fake lesson which she pretaught and included an assignment she had no intention of giving

There are two sides to everything. Let a jury decide based on a fair presentation of the facts from both sides.

Frontal lobe disorder? Maybe medical people can chime in. The shunts they implant for hydrocephalus are not in the frontal lobe, I don't think. Interesting that shunts are used to treat encephalitis. It's going to be dueling medical expert witnesses, I think.

The brain injury defense gives some plausible rational for outrageously risky and immoral behavior by the mother of two young children. It's not like the Twinkie defense where someone claimed to have eaten too much sugar. In this case doctors can provide actual science testimony.

New articles...

http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2015/08/attorneys_spar_over_evidence_in_maplewood_teacher.html#incart_river_mobile