Wednesday, October 5, 2011
U.S. District Judge Richard Haik has no doubt seen a cavalcade of human depravity during his decades on the bench. So can anyone question the severe sentence Haik handed down last week against former Acadiana High teacher Stephen Hurst? The 38-year-old will spend 27 years in prison for letting students use his Lafayette apartment to have sex, which he sometimes filmed, between 2005 and 2010. Hurst faced a mandatory minimum of 10 years behind bars.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
U.S. District Judge Richard Haik has no doubt seen a cavalcade of human depravity during his decades on the bench. So can anyone question the severe sentence Haik handed down last week against former Acadiana High teacher Stephen Hurst? The 38-year-old will spend 27 years in prison for letting students use his Lafayette apartment to have sex, which he sometimes filmed, between 2005 and 2010. Hurst faced a mandatory minimum of 10 years behind bars.
The sentencing follows two widely publicized cases in the last year over which Haik presided involving authority figures at high schools and the students who were placed in their care: former Ascension Episcopal School counselor Allison Hargrave, whom Haik sentenced to 30 years after Hargrave admitted to having sex with a troubled, 14-year-old female student who sought Hargrave's counsel; and Larry Caillier II, a former Opelousas High teacher sentenced to 14 years for his illicit "sexting" relationship with a 15-year-old girl.
Haik is sending a clarion message. Beware the next sexual predator who faces justice in his courtroom.