Saturday’s CDT story “Teacher charged in sex crime” screamed out, as I think editors had hoped.

It must be the sexual aspect of this story that makes this a bold-print, top-of-the-page headline because this 55-year-old woman’s love-blinded behavior with a male trustee at the Houtzdale State Prison doesn’t appear to be a threat to our community.

Is it necessary to publicly prosecute this woman in print? The CDT should be ashamed for using a quarter page to trumpet such nonsense. Drug and weapon smuggling into Rockview is a significantly more serious offense, but six lines of print usually cover the story.

Who’s the victim? The prison? The male inmate? The real victim may be the woman, and this newspaper has now labeled her a sex criminal. Isn’t that what we now call Sandusky?

She seems to have done nothing more than fall in love with an apparently intelligent man who happened to be an inmate only weeks from release. Regardless, the woman will be tried for felony sexual assault and the former inmate she pleasured walks free.

I’m not acquainted with the woman and I’m not suggesting her behavior was appropriate. The CDT participated in the unjust treatment of this woman; it also appears to have taken advantage of this community’s heightened sensitivity to sex crimes to lure its readers into reading what amounts to little more than a titillating soap opera story.

John Walls

Boalsburg