Today's game: can you identify the subtext of this front-page NYT metro story, headlined "A History of Sex with Students, Unchallenged Over the Years"? Emphasis has been added; irrelevant (but juicy) details have been removed.
BAYONNE, N.J. — Many in this gray, insular city are at a loss to explain why Diane Cherchio West was allowed to continue working in the public school system for two decades after she was caught in 1980 kissing and groping a 13-year-old student at an eighth-grade dance. Why, after her promotion to guidance counselor at Bayonne High School, no one alerted social services, school officials or the police when she became pregnant by an 11th grader she supervised, Steven West.... Or why, when that baby, Steven Jr., grew to be a teenager, no one balked as his 15-year-old friend moved in with Ms. West, who then seduced the friend ... and used her school authority to rearrange his classes around their secret trysts. [snip](For legal and health reasons, RothBrothers would like to specify that this website and its authors take no position with regard to the fairness or accuracy of any insinuations the reader may find in the New York Times article quoted above.)
Some blame small-town politics; Ms. West’s father is a prominent businessman here. [snip]
Ms. West, now 52, was raised in one of the city’s more comfortable Italian sections, the daughter of John Cherchio, a regular on who’s who lists here, who ran a successful construction and waste-carting business. [snip]
By 23, Diane Cherchio had graduated from college and was a special education teacher at Dr. Walter F. Robinson elementary school. Supervisors and colleagues ... told investigators decades later that they had been stunned to see her pawing at a 13-year-old student named Jorge at an eighth-grade dance.
The school principal at the time, Daniel Doyle, swore in a statement to prosecutors ... that he wrote to the superintendent asking that Ms. Cherchio be fired, but was startled to learn, upon returning to school in the fall, that she had instead become a guidance counselor at the high school.
“I accepted it as a political maneuver,” said Mr. Doyle, now retired, who grew up near the Cherchio family. He added that he suspected her father’s business and political connections allowed her to escape punishment.
