Silke Jasso
Dean Bethea, a teacher at the prestigious Manhattan Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering, allegedly provided a 16-year-old student with alcohol and then attempted to seduce her with Shakespeare quotes while on a private trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was also revealed in court that the 56-year-old had a longtime live-in girlfriend and had also already dated the teenage student’s older sister.
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Reportedly, Bethea invited the girl on the afternoon trip, and the pair headed to the museum’s bar, where he ordered them both a beer after roaming around some of the exhibits. According to the teen, he told her that he had brought her there because she was “very smart, beautiful.”
“He told me that when he was with my sister, he wished that our ages were reversed, so I was old enough for him to date,” she said. “He said he felt this way since I was a freshman in his class, so that would have been when I was 14.”
When asked if she found his advances flattering, she told the prosecutor that at first she “was in shock,” but later found the ordeal “really creepy.”
“He began to quote Shakespeare: ‘A marriage of two minds isn’t limited by age,'” the prosecutor said.
After enjoying a few beers, Bethea tried to pressure the student into having dinner with him, but she refused, saying she needed to go home. He then walked her to a subway station where he asked to kiss her. She denied him and reported the incident to police.
Bethea’s lawyer argued that the student had a crush on him and was “raging with jealousy” because he had dated her sister. He insisted that the girl invited him to the museum, confessed her feelings for him and was rejected.
“This girl is a woman scorned,” he told jurors. “I suggest to you that it is Dr. Bethea, who is the victim.”
Bethea has since been removed from the school and was charged with endangering the welfare of a child. This is not his first run-in with the law, as he lost his job as a college English professor in 2002 for allegedly attacking the ex-boyfriend of a student he was dating at the time.
