Against court orders, teen is accused of sending victim 20,000 text messages
By David E. Frank
The Daily Record Newswire
BOSTON — By all appearances, the latest sex-scandal trial to hit the tabloids — involving a lesbian high school senior in Florida accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a younger teammate on the basketball squad — had absolutely nothing to do with Massachusetts.
Then Boston’s William Korman joined the defense team.
The Rudolph Friedmann attorney, who made headlines earlier this month when he filed an appearance on behalf of a 17-year-old Somerville high school soccer player accused of raping a freshman teammate, is now representing Kaitlyn Hunt in Vero Beach, Fla.
Hunt, now 19, is currently behind bars awaiting trial on lewd and lascivious battery charges. The former cheerleader, who was voted by classmates as having “Most School Spirit,” was arrested in February for allegedly having sex with a 14-year-old student. As part of her pre-trial conditions, the court ordered that she have no contact with the alleged victim.
But late last month, when it appeared the parties had reached a plea agreement that would have spared Hunt jail time and not required her to register as a sex offender, the prosecution suddenly rejected the offer after learning she allegedly had contacted the complaining witness repeatedly.
“This contact was in the form of electronic messages, actual personal contact and contact through third parties,” according to documents filed in the case. “The contact was at times intended to obstruct the judicial process and was harmful to the child victim.”
As part of those purported communications, Hunt reportedly sent nearly 20,000 text messages, some of which were sexually explicit.
Korman, who’s handling the case with local counsel Julia Graves, says he became involved after a family friend contacted him.
He says the Hunt matter is a perfect example of why prosecutors can’t apply rigid rules to all sexual offenses.
“It doesn’t matter whether you are in Massachusetts, Florida or Iowa: The fact remains that you can’t prosecute all sex crimes the same way because they’re not all the same,” Korman says.
He claims the state’s attorney got caught up in the publicity surrounding the case and lost sight of the fact that Hunt and the alleged victim are teens who went to school together, played sports with one another and had the same group of friends.
“For all intents and purposes, they were peers,” he says. “The law regarding these types of statutory rape offenses was designed to prevent a 35-year-old man or woman from dating a high school freshman — not two children who are in the same school.”
Fact patterns like the one in Hunt’s case can be found in schools across the country, according to Korman.
“High school starts this month, and if you took a survey a month and a half from now, I guarantee you could find a Kaitlyn Hunt or a Kevin Hunt that you could prosecute in every single school in this nation,” he says. “It’s just the nature of adolescence, and for any high school kid to be facing felony charges that could potentially require them to have to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives for having a consensual relationship with a peer simply makes no sense.”
The prosecutor’s office did not return a call for comment.
