Standing in court between the girl he molested and the judge poised to sentence him for it, Christopher Withers volunteered a "partial explanation."
"I'm sure many people are wondering, how did I get to this point?" he said Monday.
Thus began a 10-minute mea culpa, in which the former Duncan Middle School math teacher said his heartbreak over the end of a longterm relationship — with a woman, he added — drove him to prey on a 14-year-old girl. Of all his students, he said, she was "among the few who could see that I was struggling with things outside of teaching, and she befriended me."
Circuit Judge James Nutt listened with an eyebrow cocked. Later, after Withers returned to his seat with hopes of a prison sentence no longer than three years,
the judge offered a word of advice.
"To say 'I was in an emotional state because of a breakup?' You should be able to handle breakups without turning towards children," Nutt said.
He sentenced Withers, 33, to 10 years in prison, more than three times what Withers wanted but still short of the 15 years prosecutors said he deserved. The judge pointed in part to the teacher's otherwise clean criminal record, the enduring support of his family and the testimony of "a victim who wants mercy."
'What we had wasn't love': Student addresses sex-offending teacher
The student in question, now 18, wept in the courtroom gallery. She was in eighth grade when Withers offered to serve as her mentor — motivated, the math teacher said, by the recent death of her father and his own burgeoning loneliness.
He hugged her in his classroom and connected with her on Snapchat, despite district-wide rules forbidding it. When the girl began high school in 2021, Withers invited the teen and her mother to lunch and proposed that she return to Duncan Middle as a volunteer softball coach.
The teen obliged. Prosecutors say Withers assaulted her in his classroom during those after-school visits, and again in the parking lot of a Jupiter Farms park, and again at his apartment in Palm Beach Gardens.
They had sex regularly from 2021 to 2022, she said, when she was 14 and 15. He used a condom once, then never again. He bought her gifts and alcohol and, on one occasion, emergency contraceptives. He picked her up from friends' sleepovers in the middle of the night and once filmed her abuse on Snapchat.
"What we had wasn't love," the girl said Monday, more than a year after she confided in her mother and police about the abuse.
"You compared the grief of losing my father to the pain of your breakup and used it as an excuse for what you did to me," she continued. "I was trying to survive one of the most devastating moments of my life, and instead of protecting my vulnerability, you used it to justify your actions."
Defense says teacher was lonely, not sexually deviant
What Withers described earlier in the hearing as a "boyfriend-girlfriend" relationship, his former student called grooming. It robbed her of her teenage years, she said, isolated her from her peers and saddled her with depression, anxiety and guilt from which she's only begun to heal.
Still, she added, she didn't think he deserved the 15-year sentence prosecutors pushed for. Withers' attorney Marc Shiner didn't think so, either. He called the girl a "tough young woman," then urged Nutt to sentence her abuser to three years in prison.
The attorney pointed to the testimony of two forensic psychologists who said Withers was amenable to sex-offender treatment and was unlikely to offend again. One, Dr. Sheila Rapa, rejected the notion that Withers is sexually deviant. She described him instead as "a man going through a lot of loss or loneliness" without the skills to process it.
Assistant State Attorney Marissa Chiarolanzio disagreed. She urged the judge to set aside Shiner's pleadings and follow the law, which sets the mandatory minimum sentence at 15 years.
"The defendant, a grown man having sex with a student, a child, while he's a teacher, is not a mistake," the prosecutor said. "It's a choice. It's a crime, and he should be punished accordingly."
Months before the hearing, Chiarolanzio offered Withers a 15-year plea deal. Withers rejected that deal, then was offered a 35-year deal instead. He rejected that, too, and pleaded guilty anyway, leaving Nutt to decide his fate.
The judge adjourned Monday's hourslong hearing briefly to deliberate. When he returned, he called it "the hardest part of my job" and announced a sentence neither attorney asked for.
Upon his release from prison, Withers must serve five years of probation and register as a sex offender, a scarlet letter Shiner said will follow him "for the rest of his life."
"I wish everybody luck," Nutt told the two families packed into the gallery. "Terrible situation."
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Math teacher's explanation for sexually abusing a student falls flat
