5 - life for the seminary sleazeball

[EuropeanFootballMale]

I'm not sure I think 5 is enough. Life is too much. My guess is he'll be in for a decade.

KSL story

[UtahDan]

I think it should be closer to a year than five. He definitely should be a felon, and definitely should serve some time. But where you have a sixteen year old involved who consents, I wouldn't as a judge put it higher than that.

I do find it a little disingenuous that the girl with her family's help was revised history so that he is evil personified rather than the man she in her girlish fantasy was ready to run away with forever. He did something very bad that he is rightly being punished for, but lets not act like the 16 year old is an innocent victim. She is a victim, but she is not innocent in the sense that someone who is forced is innocent. I'm sure that take will offend some people, but 16 year olds are not little kids. That doesn't lessen his culpability of course. He need to rot for a while.

[creekster]

I think it should be closer to a year than five. He definitely should be a felon, and definitely should serve some time. But where you have a sixteen year old involved who consents, I wouldn't as a judge put it higher than that.

I do find it a little disingenuous that the girl with her family's help was revised history so that he is evil personified rather than the man she in her girlish fantasy was ready to run away with forever. He did something very bad that he is rightly being punished for, but lets not act like the 16 year old is an innocent victim. She is a victim, but she is not innocent in the sense that someone who is forced is innocent. I'm sure that take will offend some people, but 16 year olds are not little kids. That doesn't lessen his culpability of course. He need to rot for a while.

A criminal defense lawyer for sure.

[RobinFinderson]

I knew an Elder Michael Pratt on my mission. He would be about 38 right now. Does anyone know where this guy served his mission?

[Pheidippides]

I think it should be closer to a year than five. He definitely should be a felon, and definitely should serve some time. But where you have a sixteen year old involved who consents, I wouldn't as a judge put it higher than that.

I do find it a little disingenuous that the girl with her family's help was revised history so that he is evil personified rather than the man she in her girlish fantasy was ready to run away with forever. He did something very bad that he is rightly being punished for, but lets not act like the 16 year old is an innocent victim. She is a victim, but she is not innocent in the sense that someone who is forced is innocent. I'm sure that take will offend some people, but 16 year olds are not little kids. That doesn't lessen his culpability of course. He need to rot for a while.

If you want to look at it from the viewpoint of damage to the victim, this girl probably has more emotional damage than a boy who boinks his teacher but less than a girl who is forcibly and violently raped. Which is to say that I agree with you in all but the time to be served. I have no basis for an opinion on that.

[EuropeanFootballMale]

I think it should be closer to a year than five. He definitely should be a felon, and definitely should serve some time. But where you have a sixteen year old involved who consents, I wouldn't as a judge put it higher than that.

I do find it a little disingenuous that the girl with her family's help was revised history so that he is evil personified rather than the man she in her girlish fantasy was ready to run away with forever. He did something very bad that he is rightly being punished for, but lets not act like the 16 year old is an innocent victim. She is a victim, but she is not innocent in the sense that someone who is forced is innocent. I'm sure that take will offend some people, but 16 year olds are not little kids. That doesn't lessen his culpability of course. He need to rot for a while.

I'm more inclined to think that the 16 year old is an innocent victim by definition. She's 16. And what he did was evil. What is wrong with her coming to that realization or with her family helping her do so? I'm sticking with a decade.

[statman]

I think it should be closer to a year than five. He definitely should be a felon, and definitely should serve some time. But where you have a sixteen year old involved who consents, I wouldn't as a judge put it higher than that.

I do find it a little disingenuous that the girl with her family's help was revised history so that he is evil personified rather than the man she in her girlish fantasy was ready to run away with forever. He did something very bad that he is rightly being punished for, but lets not act like the 16 year old is an innocent victim. She is a victim, but she is not innocent in the sense that someone who is forced is innocent. I'm sure that take will offend some people, but 16 year olds are not little kids. That doesn't lessen his culpability of course. He need to rot for a while.

I'm on the fence w/r/t your opinion here. I see the point, but 16-year-olds are in a precarious position. Physically, they're essentially adults, but mentally, emotionally, socially, societally, etc - they fancy themselves as already being adults, but most are far, far from it. A lot of room for adults, especially empathetic adults, to play on that mismatch between the 16-yo's conception of reality and actual reality. The 35-yo adult male can REALLY manipulate the 16-yo girl. And she'll come away from it thinking she's head-over-heels in love with him...

My biggest issue with simply agreeing or disagreeing on your post is that maturity/awareness level differs TREMENDOUSLY among teenagers. My wife and I got married YOUNG - I was 21, just off a mission & she was 18. But she was an OLD 18. Her dad died on her 13th birthday, and her mom was a basket case for a few years. My wife essentially become the adult of the family at that point, and had to make the bulk of the decisions: everything from how to set up the survival benefits portion of her dad's pension, to how to invest his insurance money, to paying all the bills every month, to having to drive her mom everywhere (at 14) (COMPLETELY illegal - but she never got caught), to where they were going on vacation, to what color to paint the walls of the apartment.

Although she was only 18, she'd been a real adult for about 5 years at that point we got married. Way more of an adult than I was at the time. But compare her at 18 to your average newly graduated HS senior? There's no comparison.

So if you're talking a mature 16-yo, I can see your point. A mature 16-yo really is close to being an adult, with adult-like decision making processes. But an immature 16-yo has decision making capabilities about the same as a can of diet caffeine-free Dr. Pepper. And the wisdom of the actions taken by this girl sound a lot closer to the can of Dr. Pepper than to those of a responsible adult...

[UtahDan]

First, to be clear, I'm not at all minimizing his guilt. And when I say closer to a year than five, I mean active sentence. He can't get less than five years, but the judge is going to suspend part of it.

As a thought exercise, does it make a difference to anyone that with her parent's permission they could have been married?

[creekster]

First, to be clear, I'm not at all minimizing his guilt. And when I say closer to a year than five, I mean active sentence. He can't get less than five years, but the judge is going to suspend part of it.

As a thought exercise, does it make a difference to anyone that with her parent's permission they could have been married?

your quick edit prevented my joke. foiled again.

[SteelBlue]

I knew an Elder Michael Pratt on my mission. He would be about 38 right now. Does anyone know where this guy served his mission?

Don't know, but here's a picture of him from a different story today:




http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7...ael-Pratt.html

[UtahDan]

I'm on the fence w/r/t your opinion here. I see the point, but 16-year-olds are in a precarious position. Physically, they're essentially adults, but mentally, emotionally, socially, societally, etc - they fancy themselves as already being adults, but most are far, far from it. A lot of room for adults, especially empathetic adults, to play on that mismatch between the 16-yo's conception of reality and actual reality. The 35-yo adult male can REALLY manipulate the 16-yo girl. And she'll come away from it thinking she's head-over-heels in love with him...

My biggest issue with simply agreeing or disagreeing on your post is that maturity/awareness level differs TREMENDOUSLY among teenagers. My wife and I got married YOUNG - I was 21, just off a mission & she was 18. But she was an OLD 18. Her dad died on her 13th birthday, and her mom was a basket case for a few years. My wife essentially become the adult of the family at that point, and had to make the bulk of the decisions: everything from how to set up the survival benefits portion of her dad's pension, to how to invest his insurance money, to paying all the bills every month, to having to drive her mom everywhere (at 14) (COMPLETELY illegal - but she never got caught), to where they were going on vacation, to what color to paint the walls of the apartment.

Although she was only 18, she'd been a real adult for about 5 years at that point we got married. Way more of an adult than I was at the time. But compare her at 18 to your average newly graduated HS senior? There's no comparison.

So if you're talking a mature 16-yo, I can see your point. A mature 16-yo really is close to being an adult, with adult-like decision making processes. But an immature 16-yo has decision making capabilities about the same as a can of diet caffeine-free Dr. Pepper. And the wisdom of the actions taken by this girl sound a lot closer to the can of Dr. Pepper than to those of a responsible adult...

By the way, you are absolutely right that how mature emotionally this girl was would affect my thinking. Having seen a number of such cases, it is rare that you don't have a pretty aggressive 16 year old. The demure little laurel in your ward doesn't get persuaded to do this sort of thing under any circumstances.

[UtahDan]

your quick edit prevented my joke. foiled again.

That was a pretty funny typo.

[creekster]

By the way, you are absolutely right that how mature emotionally this girl was would affect my thinking. Having seen a number of such cases, it is rare that you don't have a pretty aggressive 16 year old. The demure little laurel in your ward doesn't get persuaded to do this sort of thing under any circumstances.

Probably true, but look at the charges he pled to. Not a simple love afair, it seems. Plus, even if the 16 yo is agreesive, that doesnt necesarily shed light on her maturity.

[Non Sequitur]

The guy used bad judgment, but he didn't rape her and he didn't molest her and he didn't scar her for life. She was a sexually active, sixteen year old girl that had a crush on an older man. She is by no means innocent in all this. There are people who get convicted of manslaughter who don't serve 10 years.

[beefytee]

I'm thinking 5 years is about right for this.

It is a horrible crime and 5 years in prison would be a horrible punishment for him.