'They Make Me Out To Be A Monster': 19-Year-Old Will Spend The Next 25 Years On Sex Offender Registry

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Mackenzie Fleming - Opposing Views


http://i.imgur.com/w5uzk1z.jpg

After serving 90 days behind bars, a Michigan teen will now spend the next five years of his life without a smartphone or the Internet.

As part of a sentence for a crime he wasn’t even aware he had committed, 19-year-old Zach Anderson is banned from owning a smartphone, using the Web or talking to people under the age of 17. Additionally, Anderson will be on the on the sex offender registry for the next 25 years.

“They make me out to be a monster,” Anderson said. “I can’t even look at life regularly.”

Last month, Anderson was released from a county jail in St. Joseph, Michigan, as a convicted sex offender after being arrested last winter for having sex with a girl who claimed to be 17. The girl later admitted to police she was only 14.

The two met through the dating app, Hot or Not, on which the 14-year-old girl falsely registered as an adult, according to ABC. Anderson, who graduated high school last year, told ABC if he had known her true age, he never would have met with her.

“I wouldn’t even have gone to her house, like I literally wouldn’t have gone to her house at all,” he explained.

“I had asked her when we were messaging. I said, ‘How old are you?’ And then she had told me 17… I just got out of high school. So it’s two years' difference. I didn’t think that was a big deal or anything.”

On the night they met face-to-face, Anderson picked the girl up, and the two went to a playground where they had sex, ABC reported. Thinking her daughter was missing, the girl’s mother called police.

Reports say two months later, Anderson was approached at work by detectives and was arrested. He pleaded guilty to fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct.

The girl, now 15, and her mother testified on Anderson’s behalf.

“I don’t want him to be a sex offender because he really is not,” the girl’s mother told the judge, according to court documents.

Judge Dennis Wiley disagreed, deeming the behavior “totally inappropriate.”

“There is no excuse for this, whatsoever,” Wiley said, reports Daily Mail.

Since his conviction, Anderson’s parents have been publicly fighting to have their son’s "cruel" punishment overturned in court, according to Daily Mail.

“He’s only been on earth 19 years, and his punishment is longer than he’s been alive,” Les Anderson, the young man's father, said.

Anderson’s defense lawyers are working on an appeal and the family is scheduled to return to court next week, according to Daily Mail.

[redred]

wow does seem messed up

[Pony]

Like I've said before, the whole system is broken. This poor kid is going to be treated like a rapist or pedo for the rest of his life.

[Goofy]

Can be difficult to tell age at times tbh, girls mature faster than boys for starters, add-in a heap of makeup and it gets tricky! About ten years ago i met a girl in a bar in Perth, went home together etc, at the time she told me she was 18 and i had no reason to doubt her......... found out a few days later she was actually 16! She was drinking alcohol in a bar, i had no reason to disbelieve her plus she genuinely looked and acted older.......... could easily have been worse, at least it was legal (16 being the legal age of consent here).

[PorkChopSandwiches]

On top f that she was illegally using a dating app, so he would have no reason to believe she was underage, what a crock of shit

[deebakes]

she's the guilty one, not him :x

[HyperV12]

The law may have been served here but justice certainly hasn't!

[Teh One Who Knocks]

FOX News and The Associated Press


A Michigan judge told a 19-year-old from Indiana that he would reconsider a request for a new trial, months after ordering the teen to register as a sex offender in both states and refrain from using a computer or smartphone because he had consensual sex with a 14-year-old girl he met online who claimed she was 17.

Zach Anderson, who spent 75 days in jail after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor, went before Berrien County District Judge Dennis Wiley on Wednesday in Niles. Wiley didn’t give a date when he would rule.

Anderson said he was “kind of disappointed” that there wasn’t an immediate decision from the judge, though his father said Wiley told the parties he wanted to review parts of the case.

"We wanted to move on to the next step," Les Anderson said. "He didn't deny the motion, but he didn't make a ruling. We're hopeful it's going to be granted."

Anderson and his attorney, Scott Grabel, want a new judge for the resentencing. Wiley imposed the strict requirements in Anderson’s original sentence for misdemeanor criminal sexual conduct, despite the girl’s mother asking then that the case be dropped and arguing for leniency.

Anderson has to keep at least 1,000 feet from schools and cannot live in a place with Internet access. The computer science classes he wants to take at community college are also out of reach. But he said removing his name from sex offender registries is “the most important part.”

"If I don't get it off, it's going to completely ruin my life," he said Tuesday.

Wiley had admonished Anderson at his original sentencing for how he met the girl on a dating app and what transpired.

"That seems to be part of our culture now," Wiley said, according to a transcript of that hearing. "Meet, have sex, hook up, sayonara. Totally inappropriate behavior. There is no excuse for this whatsoever."

Grabel said on Tuesday that if the motion isn’t granted, he would file an appeal quickly with the Michigan Court of Appeals.

"He has no criminal history," Grabel said. "The victim doesn't claim to be a victim and neither does the mother. My goal is to make sure we change this position and get him off the sex offender lists."

Authorities were involved in the case after the girl’s mother called police in December, the night when the teen met Anderson, after she couldn’t find her daughter. The Detroit News reports the girl’s mother blames her daughter, citing the girl’s mental and physical development as playing a role in the encounter.

The age of consent law in Michigan is 16.

Various organizations, including a justice reform group, have said the punishment for Anderson's indiscretion is too strict.

In the meantime, Anderson must be mindful to not violate the terms of his 5-year probation. He has to keep at least 1,000 feet from schools. All computer and Internet use is forbidden, and he can't even hold a smartphone. He faces 25 years on Michigan's sex-offender registry and also would have to register as a sex offender in Indiana once his sentence is completed.

Anderson's attorney wants a new sentence to include provisions under Michigan's Holmes Youthful Training Act, known as HYTA. It applies to first-time offenders, ages 17 to 21, and would keep Anderson's record clean if he stayed out of trouble.

Grabel has said Anderson may withdraw his earlier guilty plea because a county prosecutor violated the deal by opposing use of HYTA as part of the original sentence. Grabel said the prosecutor was supposed to take no position on the matter, and he'd "never seen a more deserving candidate" for HYTA.

"We're attacking the plea agreement that was not adhered to," Grabel said.

[RBP]

"If I don't get it off, it's going to completely ruin my life,"

That's what she said to convince him to meet her.


:dance:

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By CHRIS JAMES and LAUREN EFFRON - ABC News


Zach Anderson, an Indiana teen who was ordered to spend the next 25 years on the state sex offender registry, had his criminal sexual conduct sentence vacated today.

Judge Dennis Wiley, the same judge who sentenced Anderson after he pleaded guilty, granted the motion brought by Anderson’s legal team for a re-sentencing, the Berrian County Court told ABC News’ “Nightline” today. In granting the motion, Wiley recused himself from the case. A bond hearing is scheduled for this Friday, his father Lester Anderson told “Nightline” today.

Another judge will be selected for the re-sentencing of the case. Anderson’s probation officer told him this morning that he is not currently on probation since the sentence was vacated.

Anderson is still on the sex offender registry in both Michigan and Indiana, but his parents "are confident that this is a step in the right direction of Zach being taken off the sex offender registry entirely."

"This is definitely a step in the right direction," Lester Anderson told "Nightline."

“Nightline” profiled the 19-year-old’s case and his family’s fight to clear his name in July before his appeal hearing. His story went viral, with thousands of comments pouring in on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit. Watch the original "Nightline" report HERE.

As a convicted sex offender, Anderson faces notably strict probation. For the next five years, he is forbidden from owning a smartphone or using the Internet. He is not allowed to talk to anyone younger than 17, other than immediate family. He is banned from going to any establishment that serves alcohol and he has to be home before 8 p.m. every night.

Because he is not allowed to use a computer, his budding career in computer science is now shuttered. He will be listed on the sex offender registry until 2040.

Anderson’s story began last winter when he drove from his home in Elkhart, Indiana, to Niles, Michigan, a town 20 miles away, to meet up with a girl he had met on the dating app “Hot or Not.”

The girl later admitted to police and testified in court at Anderson’s sentencing hearing that she had lied about her age and told Anderson she was 17. She was really 14. The age of consent in Michigan is 16. The girl had also registered on the “adults” section of the dating app.

“[She] was actually the first person I had met up with or anything from that,” Anderson told "Nightline" in a previous interview. “I had asked her when we were messaging. I said, ‘How old are you?’ And then she had told me 17 … I just got out of high school. So it's two years difference. I didn't think that was a big deal or anything.”

After they connected, Anderson, saying he thought he was talking to a 17-year-old, said they flirted through text messages and arranged to meet. Anderson picked her up and the two drove to a playground in Niles, where they had sex.

Unbeknown to them, the girl’s mother had called police that night because she thought her daughter was missing. Two months later, detectives showed up at Anderson’s job at a mechanic shop.

Anderson eventually pleaded guilty to fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct. Despite the then-14-year-old girl and her mother testifying on his behalf, saying the sex was consensual and the girl had lied about her age, the judge in the first trial sentenced Anderson to 90 days in jail and ordered him to register as a sex offender.

Making matters worse, Michigan, where the crime occurred, is a state that does not provide an automatic defense if the victim lies about her age.

Convicted sex offenders are forbidden from visiting any public areas where there might be children, so Anderson also wasn’t allowed to live in his parents’ house because it was 800 feet of a public boat ramp, just shy of the 1,000-foot distance minimum.

His parents were forced to dip into their savings for legal fees and to buy him a fixer-upper home on the other side of town that met the distance requirement.

In their efforts to clear their son's name, the Anderson family hopes their fight will help others in similar situations.

“We hope that they stop putting people on the sex offender registry like they're passing out traffic tickets,” Zach Anderson's mother, Amanda Anderson, told "Nightline" in an earlier interview. “There are hundreds and hundreds of people that don't deserve to be on that list, and it's supposed to be a safeguard for the community. And instead, they're just publicly shaming these people and our son for life.”

[Goofy]

Poor guy!

[PorkChopSandwiches]

At least a different judge will get involved

[Pony]

Judge resentences man whose dating app hookup landed him on sex offender registry

INDIANA — An Indiana man, who was looking at spending more than two decades on the sexual offender registry for a dating app hookup, got some good news.

A judge has resentenced Zach Anderson to two years probation.

Anderson was 19 when he had sex with a girl from a nearby Michigan town who had told him she was 17 when in reality she was only 14. Even if the sex was consensual and even if the girl did lie about her age, it is not a defense under current sex offender laws.

Now 20-years-old, Anderson pleaded guilty this year to misdemeanor criminal sexual conduct.

Because of his age, Anderson’s original sentence was thrown out last month and he was resentenced Monday under Michigan’s Holmes Youthful Trainee Act. The law provides leniency for first-time offenders between the ages of 17-20.

Judge Angela Pasula was “very professional and very kind,” Zach’s father Les Anderson said Monday. “It was a fair sentence.”

The younger Anderson was originally given five years probation after a 90-day jail sentence and was required to stay on the Michigan and Indiana state sex offender registries for 25 years.

Now 20, Anderson will no longer be on the Michigan registry — the state where he had sex with the girl.

“It’s a really good feeling,” said Anderson. “A lot better than the first time.”

In his home state of Indiana, he may have to stay on the registry during the term of his probation. If Indiana adds him to the sex offenders list, his legal team plans to appeal, his father said.

Earlier this year, Anderson said he went to an online dating site called Hot or Not and met a girl who said she was 17, who lived in a town about 20 miles away across the state line in southern Michigan from his home in Elkhart, Indiana.

The girl admitted she was only 14 after the fact — but by law, he had committed a sex crime.

Even with the resentencing, Anderson still faces restrictions on his freedom.

Previously forbidden from using a computer, he can now use one for school projects. The judge said Anderson could spend time alone with his younger brother who is 15. The family wasn’t immediately sure if Anderson could move back home where his brother lives, something prohibited under the original sentence.

Still, Anderson was grateful for the reduction in his sentence, especially given the consequences of a long-term stay on the sex offenders list.

“Twenty-five years on the sex offender registry meant that I wouldn’t be able to go to the skate park until I was 45 and by then, I probably wouldn’t even want to go,” he said. “If I had kids, I wouldn’t have been able to go to their school functions.”

[HyperV12]

Took long enough but at last the scale is set right.

[Hal-9000]

even the accusation is too much, ruined his life...two years probation? Still ties in with guilt...


we need to put chips into people's foreheads, make a phone app that scans and viola! No more of this BS and no need for paper ID cards...

[HyperV12]

even the accusation is too much, ruined his life...two years probation? Still ties in with guilt...


we need to put chips into people's foreheads, make a phone app that scans and viola! No more of this BS and no need for paper ID cards...

I've seen that movie, it was Bladerunner right? :-k

[Hal-9000]

I've seen that movie, it was Bladerunner right? :-k

no, maybe I Robot? :-k