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‘PERV TEACH’ DEFENSE: If I wanted to seduce student, I’d have ordered different beer
Sud excuse! 'Both beers were for me'
It’s the “two-fisted drinker” defense.
A city teacher accused of plying a 16-year-old student with beer and trying to seduce her at the Metropolitan Museum of Art admitted at his child-endangerment trial Wednesday that at one point, he ordered two brews at the same time — but insisted both were for him.
Taking the stand in his own defense, Dean Bethea, 56, told jurors the Met’s Balcony Bar was packed and servers were so busy that he ordered two bottles of Lagunitas Pilsner, explaining, “I drink beer fast.”
But the former English teacher at the Columbia Secondary School said he had no intention of offering the girl a sip. Bethea said his companion drank only water while he had five beers in all on their December 2015 outing.
The defense argued that the type of Pilsner beers Bethea ordered would not appeal to a teenage girl, so he had clearly gotten them for himself.
“How does that beer taste?” asked his lawyer, Matthew Myers, in Manhattan Criminal Court.
“It’s probably the most bitter beer you can drink,” Bethea replied.
According to a review on the Beer Advocate Web site, Lagunitas Czech Pilsner is “light and crisp enough for a Coors Light fan.”
They spent a good 20 minutes discussing beer, with Bethea saying he throws back four to six brews on a typical weeknight — but only after he hits the gym. “Sixteen-ounce German beers,” he specified.
“How do you feel after six beers?” Myers asked. “Relaxed,” Bethea answered. Bethea said it was the girl, whose older sister he dated for two years, who had hatched a plot to lure him to the museum. After he rejected her, he said, she was embarrassed and claimed he had tried to seduce her.
Prosecutor Pierre Griffith grilled Bethea for two hours, homing in on his love life. But first, Griffith just had to ask, “You drink both the beers at the same time or do you pick one?”
“I pick one,” Bethea answered.
In New York, he picked up his accuser’s older sister at a parent-teacher conference. While dating the 23-year-old, he forged a bond with the teen, with whom he often ate lunch.
“You’d agree that a 54-yearold teacher making romantic advances on a 16-year-old student would be a damaging event?” Griffith asked.
“It would be creepy, disgusting and damaging,” Bethea agreed, denying the allegations.
Bethea was removed from the school after his arrest and reassigned pending the outcome of the case.
It’s probably the most bitter beer you can drink.. — Dean Bethea,h claiming a teen wouldn’t want one of the beers he bought