(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) A Texas teacher who sexually abused a child for three years beginning at age 12 was sentenced with a wrist-slap 60-days prison and 10-year probation, ABC 13 reported.
Harris County Judge George Glass handed down the soft sentence to Marka Bodine, formerly a teacher in the Tomball Independent School District, earlier this week following Bodine’s April of 2021 arrest.
Bodine will not have to register as a sex offender.
The District Attorney’s office had suggested 20 to 40 years in prison due to the nature of the case.
The student was in Bodine’s sixth grade class at the time. They allegedly began communicating extensively via the video game Fortnite, and continued communication via text messages.
Soon thereafter Bodine divorced her husband and moved into the same apartment complex as the young boy. Bodine also admitted to sending 25-40 explicit pictures of herself to between 2018 and 2021, during which time they had sexual relations on numerous occasions.
According to Christopher Downey, a criminal defense attorney with knowledge of the case, the judge may have been swayed by the testimony of Bodine’s psychologist.
“I think no small part of an explanation for this sentence may lie in any psych info they provided to the court,” he said.
But according to Whitney Crowson, a clinical psychologist who works with victims of abuse, said victims rarely come to believe that any sentence was harsh enough.
“Many people believe that once they hear the sentence, they’re going to be relieved or feel justified,” she said. “Most often, they are let down because they just don’t feel that enough was done.”
Texans seemed to agree with the assessment that the sentence was far too soft, especially as the Left pushes for earlier and earlier sexualization and grooming of children.
One Texan called it “a slap on the wrist for a sick individual,” while another said that “probation shouldn’t be an option for child molesters.”
Others noted that, if the teacher had been a man, he would have “gotten 25+ [years].”
