ROCKVILLE, Md. -- A former Montgomery County public school teacher who admitted having sex with a 12-year-old boy was sentenced to two concurrent five-year terms on Thursday.
"Your behavior was devious, immature and irresponsible," said Circuit Judge DeLawrence Beard, who also scolded Catherine Peay for reflecting poorly on the noble profession of teaching.
Peay, 38, admitted in November to having at least four sexual encounters with a student who was enrolled in her sixth grade summer school class at Sligo Middle School in Silver Spring.
The encounters ended after a police officer discovered Peay and the student in her car around 3 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 11.
"I'm not a monster, I am not a terrible person, I did a bad thing," said Peay.
"There were multiple times and multiple acts over a 3 1/2-week period," argued Montgomery County prosecutor Kathy Knight, asking the judge to sentence Peay to 10 years.
Peay taught her own sons, ages 13, 11 and 9 about "good touch, bad touch," behavior to help them avoid abuse - and wound up exploiting one of her own students in the basement of her home even as the children slept upstairs, Knight said.
Peay's sons have been living with her estranged husband in New York since her arrest. Although she has not seen the boys, she reportedly talks to them by telephone once or twice each month.
The victim, whose identity is being withheld because of his age and the nature of the abuse, has been undergoing weekly therapy sessions.
"How is this boy going to go back to holding hands in the mall with some girl," asked Knight rhetorically before answering, "He's not!"
According to Knight, the boy has been subjected to the taunts of children, and expressed incessant anger and pangs of guilt since Peay's arrest. He has also changed schools twice.
Peay's lawyers and a psychiatrist hired to examine her blamed the break up of her marriage, mounting financial problems, and a personality disorder for the incident.
"There were tremendous pressures with which this woman could not cope," said Robert A. Greenberg, one of two court appointed lawyers representing Peay.
"She is very needy and way overly responsive to a male," testified Dr. Ellen McDaniel, who spent about five hours evaluating Peay in September and November.
McDaniel testified that Peay was attracted to the boy for the same reasons that led to her first ever sexual involvement with an older man during college, and to her marriage to a man who is 10 years her senior.
"He flattered me and I needed his attention," Peay said of the boy during one of their sessions.
Beard has also directed Peay to have no unsupervised contact with anyone under 16 years of age, and upon her release from prison she must register as a sex offender. She is also forbidden to contact the victim or his family.
Under Maryland law Peay could be eligible for parole after completing 50 percent of her sentence.
