Wisconsin woman banished for sexual relationship with 17 year old

AMERY (AP) - A former teacher's aide who had sex with her daughter's high school classmate has been banished from her western Wisconsin hometown. A judge ordered Brenda K. Baillargeon, 40, out of Amery for the next 15 years after she repeatedly violated court orders to stay away from the now 17-year-old boy.

Polk County District Attorney Daniel Steffen said the sentence was appropriate given that Baillargeon had contacted the teen at his home, work and elsewhere in the city of about 2,800.
"It's not common," he said. "But where there's a clear victim and a threat, it is done."

Baillargeon also was sentenced Thursday to one year in jail.

Judge Molly GaleWyrick told the mother of four that if she had any contact with the boy during her banishment, she would spend at least five years in a state prison.

"He relied on you to say, 'Stop, this is wrong,' " GaleWyrick told Baillargeon. "He is blameless. You are not. You were 39 and he 16. It is not too much to ask what you were thinking."

Judges have discretion in sentencing and terms of probation, and Baillargeon's punishment could have been worse, a Hamline University School of Law professor said.

"She has found it difficult to discipline herself, so this is just another way of accomplishing that," said Robin Magee, who teaches criminal law and procedure at the St. Paul school. Baillargeon must register as a sex offender after entering no-contest pleas to sexual assault and child enticement.

She did not look at the victim's mother or family, even when she addressed them during the sentencing hearing.

"I do realize what I did," she said, "and I am very sorry for the hurt it has caused. I do apologize to you in public. I think that shows I am trying to be remorseful. I am not a sexual predator who seeks out young boys."

The teenager's mother got a restraining order after becoming suspicious about the relationship last fall. Over the course of seven months, Baillargeon had sex with the teen at his home, at his grandfather's cabin, on a bench at a nearby park and at her cabin near Amery, Steffen said. She also took the boy on trips and sneaked into his home in the early morning hours for sex, court records said.

After Baillargeon got a divorce, she and the boy planned to marry and move to NC where the teen wanted to become a Nascar mechanic.

There have been other cases of banishment. A child molester was banished from his Minnesota neighborhood in 1992. In 2003, a small Alaskan village gave a troublemaker with a history of drunken violence a one-way ticket to Anchorage and told him not to come back.