WOMAN TRIED FOR SEX WITH JUVENILE

JACKSON -- A 25-year-old Cape Girardeau woman is on trial for an alleged sexual relationship with a then 16-year-old boy who she was supervising in a state Division of Youth Services detention home.

Chea V. Hale sat in court Tuesday and listened as the boy, now 17, told how their relationship had progressed from tutoring and supervising on swimming trips to sexual encounters in December 1998. She has been charged with statutory rape and sodomy.

Albert Lowes, Hale's attorney, characterized the boy's description of events as "claims from a boy who knows how to manipulate the system."

The boy, who had been admitted to the juvenile facility at 609 N. Middle St. in June 1998, was sent because of a probation violation involving previous crimes of arson, burglary, and felony stealing.

Hale had worked as a cook at the juvenile facility since May 1998. After five months she became a social service aid, or "tracker," said Lori Blattner, who is a supervisor at the facility. A "tracker" helps with teen-agers who had nearly completed the program. The juveniles are allowed to leave the facility under a "tracker's" supervision, Blattner said.

The boy told jurors that he had first met Hale when she taught a class at the facility. She counseled him concerning difficulties he had during a trip home at Thanksgiving, and tutored him in history.

Sometime after Thanksgiving, the boy said he and Hale had oral sex in a storage room in the basement of the facility.

The boy said shortly before Christmas, he and Hale engaged in consensual sex in a van.

All of the intimate activity between the boy and Hale was consensual, he told the court.

He said they exchanged Christmas cards and letters.

Lowes pointed out that the boy had written 12 letters to Hale, while she had written two to him.

Blattner told the court that she had heard suggestions about a relationship between Hale and the boy, which were substantiated in a conversation she had with Hale in early February.

She said Hale told her that she loved the boy but was afraid of messing up her life.

Lowes asked Blattner if she had defined what kind of love Hale had meant. "Did you ask her if it was Christian love, brotherly love?" Lowes asked.

Blattner had assumed that Hale was referring to a sexual relationship. Hale told her that she had kissed the boy and "relieved" him in the basement of the facility, Blattner said.

Lowes wondered why Blattner had only gone to the basement with investigators on Monday before the trial to see the scene.

The attorney suggested that the boy had made the allegations of a sexual relationship to be released from the juvenile home early.