A former Berkeley, Calif., schoolteacher and prostitute fighting to keep her daytime occupation has pleaded no contest to disturbing the peace and was put on probation.
Shannon Williams, 37, a former biology teacher who became a field-trip coordinator last year, was arrested in August in her Oakland apartment. Police say she agreed to have sex with an undercover cop for $250 an hour.
Williams has defended her moonlighting career as a prostitute, comparing herself to Martin Luther King Jr. in her fight to decriminalize the vocation.
“As a feminist, I believe in every woman’s right to self-determination, and that includes sexually and economically,” she told the San Jose Mercury News in August.
The paper said a prostitution charge against her was dropped Thursday as part of a plea agreement.
Now her lawyer is arguing she should be able to return to teaching because disturbing the peace is not a crime of “moral turpitude.”
Williams said she got into prostitution eight years ago when she began studying education at San Francisco State University and entered into a chance conversation with two prostitutes at a bar.
“I realized that doing this I could work one or two nights a week and really focus on my studies,” she told the Mercury News.
Williams said that prior to her arrest, she carried out her work in a rented condo, earning enough to buy a vacation home in the mountains near Yosemite National Park.
“It pays well, and I like the work,” she told the San Jose paper. “I consider it to be a healing profession, in line with therapy and bodywork, kind of a combination of the two.”
In August, Williams said she understood how a homosexual teacher must have felt 20 years ago after being “outed,” and believes, like sodomy laws, prostitution laws inevitably will be repealed.
The national attention her case drew prevents her from returning to the prostitution trade, she said. She’s decided to take a year off from teaching, but hopes to return to the classroom.
Lou Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition in Anaheim, Calif., told he Mercury News that’s a very bad idea.
“The last thing in the world schoolchildren need is to have a prostitute as a role model,” he said. “It is inappropriate to work with children by day and to sell sexual relationships by night.”
However, the head of the California PTA for Alameda County, which includes Berkeley, said she personally might be open to Williams coming back.
“As long as she’s not bringing it into the classroom, maybe it’s not a problem,” said Carol-Ann Kock-Weser, according to the Mercury News.
She emphasized, though, she was not speaking for the PTA.
Williams, who grew up in San Francisco and Los Angeles and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in biology and religious studies, said she is not sure what she will do now that she is out of prostitution.
“I liked my clients; I liked the work I did keeping them healthy and happy,” she told the San Jose daily. “I feel bad about having that taken away.”
Previous story:
