When a plea deal was proposed Sept. 27 for married Huntington Beach teachers who had sex with a 17-year-old male student, Deputy District Attorney Nicole Varner
objected because Daniel Alma Shepard and Gail Davidson-Shepard would get no prison time nor have to register as sex offenders for life. Varner won a continuance from Orange County Superior Court Judge John S. Adams in Westminster that day–but she ultimately lost the war.
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See also:
Plea-Deal Objection Delays Sentencing of Horndog HB Teachers The Shepards
Gail Davidson-Shepard and Daniel Alma Shepard, Husband and Wife Teachers Who Sexed Up Student, Likely Escape Prison Time
Gay Davidson-Shepard, Retired Surf City Teacher and Former Union Chief Accused of Underage Sex, Held for Contacting Victim
Over Varner's reiterated objections, Adams today allowed Davidson-Shepard, 60, to three felony counts each of
unlawful sexual intercourse, sodomy with a person under 18 years old,
oral copulation of a minor, and one misdemeanor count each of
contributing to the delinquency of a minor and violation of a protective
order. In exchanges she was sentenced to three years of formal probation and, technically, four
years in jail, although the jail time was stayed.
Likewise, Dan Shepard, 63, pleaded guilty to two felony
counts of oral copulation of a minor, one felony count of sodomy with a
person under 18 years old, and one misdemeanor count of contributing to
the delinquency of a minor, winning three years of formal
probation and two years in jail stayed.
Both must also complete counseling and 60 days of community service.
She was a teacher at Mesa
View Middle School in Huntington Beach and he
was a science teacher at Westminster High School when they “groomed” the teen in March 2009 by inviting
him to their Huntington Beach home for food, alcohol, movies and board
games. The couple sexually assaulted the boy for the first time the following month
at their home, with the sex games continuing weekly. Generally, the teen was first plied with
alcohol before the mutual masturbating, oral copulating, fucking and
anal began. Daniel Shepard sexually
assaulted the boy through September 2009, while his wife kept at it
through December of that year, when the lad turned 18, the age of consent.
In March 2011, the teen told his mother what had happened, she contacted
the Westminster Police Department, and the couple was arrested the
following month. Former Huntington Beach teacher union
president Gay Davidson-Shepard later contacted the teen via incessant texts in violation of a protective
order.
The couple may have got off easy, but the teen's family was left devastated and destroyed, his mother told the court while delivering her victim impact statement today.
As for the rest of us, here's hoping the twisted Shepards are shamed enough to spend their lavish teacher pensions in some other jurisdiction.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.