A Florida teenager is facing felony charges for her lesbian relationship with an underage girl, but her parents say that she is being persecuted not because of her relationship with a minor, but because the relationship is homosexual in nature. The public has rallied to the girl’s side, but authorities insist that charges won’t be dropped.
Kaitlyn Hunt is a high school senior at Sebastian River High School in Sebastian, FL, and has been carrying on a romantic relationship with another, younger girl at the school. When the two began dating, Hunt was 17 and the unidentified girl was 14. Hunt is now 18, and the girl is 15. Shortly after Hunt turned 18, the parents of the unidentified girl pressed charges on Hunt, and petitioned the local school board to have her expelled from Sebastian River.
Hunt was arrested at her home on February 16 by Sebastian Police and taken away in handcuffs. She was charged this week with two counts of lewd and lascivious battery of a child 12 to 16 years of age. While Hunt’s sexual relationship with the unidentified girl is indeed criminal, Hunt maintains that it was consensual and that both her own and the other girl’s parents were aware and approved of the coupling.
Hunt’s mother, Kelly Hunt Smith, created a Facebook page in which she relates her own version of the events, which include her daughter’s removal from the high school’s varsity basketball team for being gay, and says that the unidentified girl’s parents were out to get Kaitlin. “The parents then conspired with police to entrap Kaitlyn and press charges. The law is designed to protect our children, but the law does not serve its purpose when it is applied to consensual behavior between peers.” Steven Hunt, Kaitlyn’s father, claims that the parents are pressing charges because they blame Kaitlyn for their own daughter’s homosexuality.
Though two judges ruled that Hunt would not be expelled from Sebastian River High, Smith says that the unidentified girl’s parents put pressure on the County School Board, and Hunt has since been expelled and placed at an alternative school within the district.
Hunt’s story has gone viral across the internet, and several petitions have been started to request that her charges be dropped. One petition has drawn 30,000 signatures, and internet activist group Anonymous has taken up her cause.
Despite the outrage, a Florida state attorney told CBS that the charges will not be dropped.
At a press conference, River County Sheriff Deryl Loar said, “If this was an 18 year-old male and that was a 14 year-old girl, it would have been prosecuted the same way.”
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