Mother Takes Sex Education Too Far

A Rhode Island mother said she regularly had sex in front of her 9-year-old daughter, though she said she and her boyfriend never forced the young girl to watch. The couple claimed that they had nothing to hide. The judge may have bought the argument—the pair received three years probation. By Mark Hoerrner

It’s not the first time a parent has decided to teach her child about the birds and the bees, but it’s likely that in past cases, most of the discussion has been purely hypothetical. In the case of Rebecca Arnold, she wanted to take her daughter’s sexual learning to a practical level—by repeatedly having sex with her boyfriend in front of her 9-year-old daughter.

Arnold and her boyfriend, David Prata, appeared in a Rhode Island court recently to accept Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah’s sentence of just three years probation and three year’s suspended sentence after pleading nolo contender to a charge of felony child neglect, though the pair could have received up to three years in jail and up to $1,000 in fines for the lewd behavior. The judge said he accepted the "nolo" plea because he did not want to force the girl to testify in court.

Special Assistant Attorney General Michael J. McCarthy told the judge that he objected to the judge’s ruling and that if a trial was allowed, he would "have been prepared to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that on diverse dates in 2004, the defendants before you, Rebecca Arnold and David Prata, did habitually neglect [the daughter] by having intercourse as well as oral sex in front of her in violation of the Rhode Island General Laws."

The judge, however, felt he was acting in the best interests of the child.

"I was outraged as to what they did," Jeremiah said during a court hearing. "I could not believe that any person would do what they did in front of a child.

"In order for the state to prove the case," the judge told the Providence Journal, "the child would have to come in and testify and we’d have to put the child through a rigorous cross-examination, and I assume she would have to describe what acts they committed, what they did and how they did it and how it affected her. And it would bother me to put the child through that type of examination."

The girl, now 11, spends most of the year with her biological father in Massachusetts and often spends summers with her mother in Woonsocket, R.I.. It was after the girl came home from spending a summer with her mother that a teacher found out about the girl’s parental sexcapades. The teacher called the Child Abuse Hotline and reported the behavior, according to a Fox News report.

In an interview with a state investigator, Prata told authorities that he and Arnold felt they "did not have anything to hide" from the pre-teen and that she often was on the bed when the couple was engaging in sex acts, though they did not force her to watch or remain present.

Arnold also told investigators that neither she nor Prata ever touched the young girl, now 11, during intercourse.

As the hearing drew to a close, the judge asked Arnold if she had anything to say to the court.

"I want to thank you," she replied.