Michael Smerconish | DOES THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE LOOK?

NOT UNTIL I saw Rachel Holt did I appreciate the depravity of Debra LaFave.

You remember LaFave. She's the Florida teacher who at 23 bedded a 14-year-old student.

In 2004, the blond bombshell was arrested at the home of a middle-school student, accused of having sex with him at her apartment, in her car and in her classroom.

"The lucky SOB," many like me said at the time.

Her prosecution became an international sensation fueled by a pin-up photo of her "riding" a motorcycle and then her spilling the sordid details to Matt Lauer on "The Today Show."

I had never thought of LaFave as a hardened criminal. Instead, I was part of the barstool jury that wondered where, exactly, was LaFave back in my heyday - which would have been Holicong Junior High School, circa 1977.

C'mon. Any honest eighth- or ninth-grader (not to mention sophomoric middle-aged man) would have to confess to wishing that LaFave (or Mary Kay Letourneau) was his homeroom teacher.

But there was no similar fantasy in Delaware last week, even though the basic facts were the same.

There, too, a teenage student (13 years old) had sex with a teacher. In this case, it was a sixth-grade science teacher who prosecutors said bedded the boy 28 times, generating 28 counts of first-degree rape.

Among the more interesting details: She let him drive her car and called him 278 times in the two months before her arrest.

Rachel Holt had years of experience as a teacher, a master's degree in education and no criminal record, but was still given a stiff sentence. She faced up to 25 years, but got 10 for sleeping with a student.

But don't look for her anytime soon on the "Today Show," or on a poster suitable for a teenager's bedroom. And that's because . . . she's no hottie.

To see her mug shot is to recognize that she's just a middle-aged woman fallen on awfully hard times. Her lawyer says she's not a sexual predator but rather a victim of low self-esteem and depression who was herself abused by an ex.

The lawyer also said that in 40 similar cases around the country, the average sentence was 18 months to two years.

I wonder if the way she looks had some effect on her punishment - which is like some very ordinary person, not like the stunning LaFave, who got just three years on house arrest and seven years' probation.

It's the same thing we see with missing women.

Natalie Holloway is front-page stuff because she's pretty, white, blond and affluent.

But a minority woman in similar circumstances would never get that attention. Ditto for Anna Nicole Smith. She was blond - and there were two other reasons that she dominated the news, period.

Maybe I'll be able to test my theory when Carrie McCandless gets her day in court.

She's the 29-year-old Colorado social-studies teacher who was also married to the principal and was charged last year with sleeping with a 17-year-old during a school camping trip. She's facing up to 20 years. Like LaFave, she's easy on the eyes.

That probably means probation.

At Holt's sentencing in Delaware, the victim's uncle said of the boy that "he had his innocence taken away through betrayal."

That is the sort of comment that would have made me snicker about LaFave. (Take my innocence, please.) But no more.

One look at Holt's mug shot was a wake-up to exactly what these cases are about. Exploitation. Whether she's a hottie or a heifer. *

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5:30-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.