NJ Teacher Gets Jail for Student Affair

A teacher who had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old former student must serve three years in prison. Pamela Diehl-Moore, 43, of Lyndhurst, also must register under Megan's Law as a sex offender after she is released.

She was sentenced Friday by Superior Court Judge William Meehan in a case that drew nationwide attention over a previous judge's leniency.

Diehl-Moore pleaded guilty in January to sexual assault charges as part of a plea bargain with Bergen County authorities, and was expected to receive a three-year prison term. But she was sentenced in May to five years' probation by Superior Court Judge Bruce A. Gaeta, who said he failed to see the harm in the sexual encounters.

"It's just something between two people that clicked beyond the teacher-student relationship," Gaeta said. The sentence and his comments triggered widespread outrage that led to Gaeta's reassignment to civil court and a review of his handling of the case by a state panel on judicial conduct.

Diehl-Moore was resentenced after a state appeals court panel agreed with prosecutors that Gaeta's sentencing was inappropriate.

In the appeals court ruling, Judge Edwin H. Stern wrote there were no unique or extraordinary circumstances that should have prevented Diehl-Moore from receiving prison time, which is required under law for a crime of such severity.

According to state law, a 13-year-old cannot legally give consent to sexual activity.

Diehl-Moore, a divorcee with two daughters, was suspended from her teaching position following her February 2001 arrest and has since lost her teaching license.

The relationship between the former teacher and the student began during the summer of 1999 and lasted about six months. The boy, who is now a 10th-grader, had been a student in Diehl-Moore's seventh-grade class at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Clifton.

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Author: 6-ABC