Should Zachary Anderson's life be ruined?
Because when he was 19 he had sex with a girl he met online who claimed she was 17 – and turned out to be 14?
Even the girl’s parents don’t think so – they asked for the charges to be dropped. But the quotes from the judge (in the NYTimes link below) show that he appears to be making this young man the scapegoat for his personal disapproval of modern internet culture.
If you agree, please sign the petition at Change.org
Time is of the essence. His next court date is this week!
https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-zachery-anderson?recruiter=15364172&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
When my son Zach met a girl through an online dating app, she said she was 17 years old and lived about twenty minutes away. The two decided to meet up and had consensual sex. Zach was a typical 19-year-old studying computer science at Community College -- until he found out that the girl had lied about her age and was really 14.
Though the girl admitted to lying about her age and even her parents agreed the encounter was completely consensual and that Zach didn't do anything wrong, Zach found himself convicted of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct charges. He'll now have to be on a sex offender registry for the next 25 years.
He just finished serving 90 days in jail. Now he's on probation for the next 5 years and he's lost all of his work toward his computer science degree -- part of his sentence is that he can't use a computer or smartphone or live in a house with internet access. He can't even talk to anyone under 17.
This has effectively ruined Zach's life. And it's clear to anyone who hears his story that he is not a sexual predator who needs to be on a sex offender list for 25 years. He's a teenager who met another teen like so many others do, online.
In court, the girls parents didn't just ask the judge to show Zach leniency, they called for the case against him to be dropped altogether.
Zach plead guilty but only because we were told he would be a candidate for Holmes Youthful Trainee Act status. The HYTA allows first-time offenders older than 17 but not yet 21 to avoid harsher penalties like the state-mandated 25-year listing on the sex offender registry.
But the judge refused to listen to us, Zach, or the parents of the girl.
SNIP
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/us/teenagers-jailing-brings-a-call-to-fix-sex-offender-registries.html?_r=0
During a sentencing hearing in April, Judge Wiley criticized online dating in general and berated Mr. Anderson for using the Internet to meet women.
“You went online, to use a fisherman’s expression, trolling for women, to meet and have sex with,” he said. “That seems to be part of our culture now. Meet, hook up, have sex, sayonara. Totally inappropriate behavior. There is no excuse for this whatsoever.”
The prosecutor, Jerry Vigansky, did not oppose a Holmes Act sentence, but noted that it had not been applied to two similar cases in recent months.
For some reason, Mr. Vigansky told the judge in court, this generation seems to think it is “O.K. to go online to find somebody and then to quickly hook up for sexual gratification.”
“That’s not a good message to send into the community,” he said.
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