A 39-year-old Louisville woman who had two children with an underage boy was sentenced this morning to 20 years probation and ordered to not have any contact with her children until she successfully completes sex offender treatment.
Irene Gomez, whose children were conceived with the boy when he was 13 and 16, had pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor and attempted child sex assault as part of a plea bargain with prosecutors.
Gomez has three children in addition to the two she had with the young man.
The victim, who is no longer a minor, spoke out in court and asked District Judge James Klein to not send Gomez to jail because the decision to have sex was mutual. He also said that she has been a good mother to their children.
But prosecutor Amy Okubo said the victim, whose name is not being released by the Camera because he was a minor at the time of the crime, was not mature enough to make a rational decision when he had sex with Gomez.
She asked Klein to include two years of work-release in Gomez' sentence. The judge declined.
Okubo said Gomez was the beneficiary of gender bias, garnering a far less severe punishment than would a man in the same situation.
"I don't think there's any question that (if the gender roles were reversed) we'd be talking about a prison sentence here," Okubo said.