MIAMI — A 23-year-old woman called her former high school teacher a “monster,” cursed at him and then clapped as he was handcuffed and led from a Miami-Dade courtroom.
Retired teacher Tom Privett, 72, pleaded guilty to sexually battering the woman when she was a teen. His sentence also includes two years of house arrest and 20 years probation.
The woman couldn’t contain her rage Wednesday as she described how he took advantage of her.
“You psychologically manipulated me and brainwashed me. You made me worship the ground you walked on. You insulted me when I failed to do the things you asked of me. You started touching me when I was 14 years old,” she said, according to the Associated Press. “I was the puppet and you were the strings controlling my every move.”
The former teacher spent almost three decades teaching government, coaching the champion cross-country team and being part of the creation of the school's Mock Trial Team at South Dale High School, AP reports.
Privett eventually transferred over to the TERRA Environmental Research Institute magnet school where he met the now 23-year-old woman in 2012.
His sentencing came a year after Miami-Dade schools police arrested Privett.
Another former student told prosecutors she was also manipulated into "months of sexual encounters" inside his parked van in the late 1980s when she was a summer school student, the Miami Herald reports. She was watching the hearing on Zoom.
“As a woman and a mother, I was sickened and horrified when I learned of your latest victim,” she told the court in a letter, according to the Herald. “I felt immense guilt over not doing something to stop you over the last 30-something years. You are finally getting some of what you deserve.”
Privett sat stone-faced behind his mask but was later required to apologize as a condition of his guilty plea.
“I apologize for my actions and for engaging in an inappropriate relationship with you while you were in high school. It was my responsibility as an adult to maintain our relationship of one that was appropriate between student and teacher. I failed,” Privett said, according to AP. “I hope the pain I have caused you can heal. I am sorry.”
