People all over Russia are flooding the Internet in support of a Florida teacher who has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for having a bunch of sex with three different male teenagers.
The teacher is Jennifer Christine Fichter, now 30 years old. She was an English teacher at Central Florida Aerospace Academy in Lakeland, Fla. when she was arrested for the trysts back in 2014.
Fichter’s affair with one 17-year-old male student caused her to become pregnant. She terminated the pregnancy with an abortion. (RELATED: English Teacher’s Ardent Pickup Truck Romance With 17-Year-Old Boy Features ABORTION)
The English teacher also had sex with an eighth grader back as far back as 2008, notes the New York Daily News.
Fichter’s throng of Russian (and Ukrainian and Belarusian) defenders took to cyberspace after a Polk County, Fla. judge handed down Fichter’s stiff 22-year sentence on 37 counts of child sex charges earlier this month.
The teacher’s Russian enthusiasts come from different backgrounds, reports The Moscow Times, an English language daily out of Russia’s capital. The contingent includes supporters of traditional social values as well as advocates of liberal social standards.
She did nothing wrong, they say.
“Comrades! Sign the petition! Any woman could have ended up in a situation like this,” a petition at Whitehouse.gov implores, according to the Times. “If we let this go, students would be able to frame any loving women, and they are so important to our society.”
The single petition concerning Fichter available at the White House’s “We The People” website reads differently. About 97,000 people have signed it.
There’s also a Change.org petition signed by some 41,000 people, according to the Moscow daily.
“Twenty-two years for a woman who helped three mature male students start their adult lives,” it reads. “Twenty-two years for a woman who wanted to be happy and loved, even if it was by someone younger than herself. Twenty-two years for the fact that these students wanted to be with her, longed for her tenderness and attention.”
The Russian news outlet does not link to the petition itself. (But here is a similar one.)
“A teacher must be a teacher in every sense of the word, and she was,” famous Moscow artist Andrei Bilzho wrote on his blog, according to the Times.
“What has she done?” a writer with the nom de plume Feministki wrote. “Has she beaten those kids and sold them cocaine? She’s basically been given a life sentence, as she won’t be able to advance her career by the time she’s released.”
According to Sputnik, another English-language Russian site, social media users in Eastern Europe have observed that Anders Breivik, the self-proclaimed anti-Muslim militant who slaughtered 69 children in Norway in 2011, received a prison sentence one year shorter than Fichter’s. (RELATED: Obama Believes ‘Mass Violence’ ‘Does Not Happen In Other Advanced Countries’)
Some — but not all — of Russia’s strident defenders of Fichter have made their comments with tongues firmly in cheek, Sputnik also notes. (Humor is exceedingly dry in the region.)
In the spring of 2014, when Fichter was arrested, she told the mother of one her unidentified high school paramours that she was love with him.
Police said Ficther said she did not regret the relationship when the teen’s mad mother confronted her.
Fichter pleaded guilty to the 37 counts against her, notes Tampa ABC affiliate WFTS-TV.
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