Some blame small-town politics; Ms. West’s father is a prominent businessman here. Others see a double standard in which people are reluctant to view teenage boys as victims. Mayor Joseph Doria attributes the silence to shock, shame and misplaced civic pride from people afraid the case would tarnish the reputation of Bayonne schools.
“No one bothered to do the math,” said Mr. Doria, who, like many people in town, knew that Ms. West had married a former student, but did not seem to realize that the relationship had started — and that their child had been born — when her husband was still in school. “And the people who suspected didn’t want to make it a big issue.”
A History of Sex With Students, Unchallenged Over the Years
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
BAYONNE, N.J. — Many in this gray, insular city are at a loss to explain why Diane Cherchio West was allowed to continue working in the public school system for two decades after she was caught in 1980 kissing and groping a 13-year-old student at an eighth-grade dance.
Why, after her promotion to guidance counselor at Bayonne High School, no one alerted social services, school officials or the police when she became pregnant by an 11th grader she supervised, Steven West, and married him upon his graduation in 1985.
Or why, when that baby, Steven Jr., grew to be a teenager, no one balked as his 15-year-old friend moved in with Ms. West, who then seduced the friend with Scooby-Doo boxer shorts and evening jaunts to sports bars and used her school authority to rearrange his classes around their secret trysts.
It was not until 2001, when relatives of the boy, Christopher Castlegrande, filed a complaint with the police of statutory rape against Ms. West, that she left her $74,000-a-year job and lost her unfettered access to Bayonne High School’s students.
After Ms. West was arrested, school officials insisted for more than a year that the allegation was the only accusation of misconduct in a sterling 24-year career. They allowed her to take an early retirement package that fattened her pension, and gave her a farewell party with cake and ice cream. When Ms. West pleaded guilty in 2005 to sexual assault charges, glowing references from co-workers, supervisors and friends helped persuade a judge to sentence her only to probation. She was also spared the ordeal of having to register as a sex offender.
Now, with Mr. Castlegrande suing the school district for failing to protect students from a woman with a sexual appetite for under-age boys, this city of 62,000 has been forced to examine how little was done to stop her earlier. Even as the news media were saturated with coverage of teachers like Pamela Smart and Mary Kay Letourneau who slept with their students, Bayonne averted its eyes for years.
