Berrien County District Judge Dennis Wiley has vacated the sentence of a young man from Elkhart who had sex in December with a Niles 14-year-old who lied about her age.
Zachery Anderson -- whose case has drawn outrage and publicity from around the country amid calls for sex offender registry reforms in Michigan -- first heard the news Monday morning during a phone call from one of the two probation departments that has monitored him since he was released from jail in July. [...]
The girl and her mother both pleaded with the judge and the prosecutor to not deal with Zach harshly, but in late April, Wiley sentenced Zach to 90 days in jail, five years on probation and 25 years on Michigan's sex offender registry. The list of his restrictions includes computer use, being around those with computers or any young people, an 8 p.m. curfew and no venturing out of Elkhart County without permission. The young man was forced to give up his computer science major at Ivy Tech.
The Andersons bought a house for Zach to live in alone that would meet sex offender registry restrictions because he could not live in their home, and their son works for their Elkhart business.[...]
While I don't agree with sex outside of marriage the original sentence was way to harsh. I hope this young man (and young lady) has learned a valuable lesson.
ReplyDeleteHe's not out of the woods. His sentence was vacated, but he will be re-sentenced by another judge. There's no guarantee that the second judge will be more lenient than the first.
ReplyDeleteSeparately, regarding the harshness of the sentence, the judge noted that his sentence was based on his observation of the girl, who, he claimed, was very evidently young and immature, so that he felt it was impossible that the boy could not have known she was underage. This was not the typical case of a boyfriend who comes of age while his girlfriend is still a minor, and they have both been intimate while minors. His birthday arrives and he is suddenly a child molester. There have been such rulings and they are cruel nonsense. But in this case he picked up a girl for sex on the internet, a stranger. The onus is on him to make sure she is of age. If there was even the slightest doubt, he should have refrained. I still don't believe he is necessarily a child molester, but he's no innocent.
Perhaps you are correct. I have not seen the entire transcript of the trial only what was reported on CNN. I truly we should try and instill in our children the need to wait for marriage to be intimate it makes "sex" so much more emotionally satisfying and a loving action. May G-D help all of us.
ReplyDeleteAgreed with regard to keeping sex within marriage, which is in any case the religious obligation of an orthodox Jew such as I. My comment pertained to those who follow the secular values that prevail nowadays, and in that world, sexual relations between young teens is not unheard of.
ReplyDelete.from a strictly halachic perspective, two noachides can have premarital relations provided the woman is not married under local law (or its not an 'ervah', which is much more limited than under jewish law.)
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, society can make its own laws about this.