FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — He was 15 years old, failing at school and counted music, clothes and smoking marijuana among his interests.

She was a 38-year-old law school graduate who taught Spanish at a middle school in North Lauderdale.

They met in her study hall around Memorial Day in 1997. By Christmas, a prosecutor says, the schoolboy and the teacher were boyfriend and girlfriend.

The case of the State of Florida v. Beth Friedman, a statutory rape trial in its second week, is a classic "he said, she said." His word against hers.

Donald "Donny" Vaden, now a 19-year-old roofer, says Friedman used cash, jewelry, drugs and trips to keep him in a relationship which he says ultimately consumed his life.

Friedman, now 42, denies most of what Vaden claims. It was Vaden, Friedman claimed in a letter jurors have yet to hear about, who pulled all the strings. She told Vaden's mother in a handwritten letter that she never had sex with Vaden but feared that he would make up a story to get her in trouble if she did not continue to shower him with gifts.

Donald Vaden says he had strong feelings for Beth Friedman.

Testimony may not conclude until Friday or next week, but prosecutor Stacey Honowitz and defense lawyer David Bogenschutz have already foreshadowed their closing arguments.

The Prosecution's Case

Honowitz, an animated prosecutor who paces a lot and uses her hands as extensions of her speech, has the burden of proving that a sexual relationship did occur if she is to win convictions on felony counts that carry up to 76 years in prison.

The diminutive, brunette prosecutor pointed out to jurors in her opening statement Dec. 3 that she did not under the law have to make them understand the relationship or prove that the sex was forced, only to prove that Friedman had sexual relations with a minor. Jurors did not have to like Vaden or dislike Friedman to return guilty verdicts, Honowitz also noted during her 40-minute opening.

Honowitz could have pointed out, but did not, that unlike some "Perry Mason" episodes jurors might have seen, not all trials have the proverbial smoking gun. In statutory rape cases, there often is no physical evidence.

Honowitz instead has been trying to corroborate Vaden's testimony about engaging in intercourse and oral sex with Friedman with circumstantial evidence. Vaden's mother and a neighbor, for example, have testified that they observed conduct and comments that raised eyebrows, although his mother did not report her suspicions until the summer of 1999.

There appears to be ample circumstantial evidence that Friedman and Vaden had a relationship that was quite different from a normal teacher-student relationship.

Vaden and his family, for example, lived with Friedman from August 1998 to April 1999. That is not in dispute. It is also not disputed that Friedman bought Vaden a used car around Vaden's 16th birthday in 1998, although the defense seems to be taking the position that Friedman only gave Vaden the $1,500 Chevrolet Caprice to keep him from stealing cars.

Although Honowitz cannot produce a videotape, photographs, DNA or other hard evidence of a sexual relationship, she has already called two of more than a half dozen prosecution witnesses who will report what they observed about the interaction between the student and teacher.

Dorry Press, a former neighbor of Friedman's, testified Dec. 7, for example, that she saw Friedman and Vaden locked in a bear-hug embrace in a swimming pool at 3 a.m. during the winter of 1999. The prosecution has promised that a police officer will testify to having seen Friedman and Vaden out together in the wee hours of the morning on several occasions before her August 1999 arrest.

The Defense's Case

Bogenschutz, as the defense lawyer, does not have the burden of proving anything; he simply has to poke holes in the prosecution's case and create reasonable doubt in the minds of the six jurors and two alternates.

Nonetheless, the tall, silver-pated attorney has an uphill fight facing him. For one thing, Vaden did not equivocate about the sexual relationship and said that he was testifying reluctantly because he had "feelings of love" for Friedman and generally enjoyed their 18-month affair.

Bogenschutz seems to be asking jurors to apply a reasonableness test to Vaden's testimony. Is it reasonable to believe, he seems to be asking, that a mature woman who owned a home and had a successful teaching career would risk it all to have sex with a teenaged drug abuser who stole cars and skipped school to play video games? Most absurd, Bogenschutz said at one point while cross-examining Vaden, was Vaden's testimony that Friedman abandoned her plan to adopt a child in favor of offering a crude-talking, uneducated adolescent $25,000 to get her pregnant when they were supposedly having unprotected sex for months.

As he had to do, Bogenschutz aggressively attacked Vaden's testimony by highlighting lies, half-truths, omissions and contradictions between his trial testimony and what he swore to under oath during a pretrial deposition. Bogenschutz did the same when Grisel Vaden testified about what her son had told her about the relationship. He employed the same tactic Friday when neighbor Dorry Press was on the stand.

Bogenschutz has been trying to show that Vaden and his mother enjoyed the financial rewards their friendship with Friedman brought, suggesting possible motives for their testimony. Witnesses like Press, however, are more of a challenge.

When Press testified for the first time to witnessing an embrace between Friedman and Donald Vaden, all Bogenschutz could do was point out for the jury that Press never mentioned it in any police statement or her deposition. Also working against the defense is the fact that Press and Friedman were friendly and that Press did not go to the police about her observations and things she heard until after the story broke in the local newspapers.

It is too early to know whether Friedman may testify; Bogenschutz likely will not decide that until Honowitz rests later this week. If she does testify, Friedman almost certainly will claim that she is the victim of a manipulative, troubled teenager whom she made the mistake of befriending and trying to help.

The trial is being broadcast by Court TV. Monday's testimony is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.