A 20-year-old man will spend six-months in prison after asking a 13-year-old girl multiple times online to meet him for sex.
Stephen B. Hadlock pleaded guilty Wednesday during a plea deal and sentencing hearing for attempted online enticement of a minor, a class C felony. The charge was reduced from the original charge of enticement of a minor, which is a class B felony.
Hadlock reached out to the young victim in 2014 on nine separate occasions using Facebook Messenger, District Attorney James Scott said.
[Cyber-watchful parent prevents Facebook hookup]
“Let’s meet. Can I please have sex with you? I’ll bring a condom,” was how Scott summarized the exchange between Hadlock and the victim. The victim refused the attempts, but her mother eventually found the messages and reported them to the Juneau Police Department.
Hadlock’s sentence will also include 18 months of suspended jail time, five years of probation and 15 years as a registered sex offender. The terms of his probation also restrict him from using the internet to create social media accounts. Scott asked the judge to consider a longer sentence, closer to one year, and spoke to the ubiquitous nature of online sex offenses that victims face from faceless attackers from the comfort of their own homes.
“It takes remarkably little to complete the act of online enticement of a minor,” Scott said.
Assistant Public Defender Timothy Ayer told Judge Louis Menendez before the sentencing that he believes his client, who suffers from learning disabilities and has spent time at the Cornerstone-Emergency Shelter throughout his troubled youth, functions with limited faculties and may have felt in some way that he was closer to the victim’s age than he actually was.
In court, Hadlock showed signs of not fully understanding portions of the proceeding and at one point pleaded not guilty, although the plea deal was a prearranged agreement. He was given the opportunity to re-enter his plea and Menendez took extra time to spell out certain parts of the hearing for the defendant.
The consensus from the prosecution, defense and even Menendez was that Hadlock is not in general a malicious individual or a grave threat to society. Nevertheless, Menendez said jail time was essential to express societal expectations and to create a precedence for similar offenses, as well as to serve as a warning for other would-be offenders.
“I think the comments that you made to the 13-year-old victim were … they’re clearly sexual in nature, they’re clearly improper, they’re clearly in violation of the law. It’s clearly enticement,” Menendez said. “…It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, it means that attention has to be paid to you in terms of what you do out there, and what you did involving this young 13 year old was wrong.”
Menendez said the fact that the defendant cooperated with police immediately and admitted his actions were wrong spoke highly for his character and his ability to gain something from his period of rehabilitation. Also, the fact that Hadlock appeared in court with a fiancé, whom he lives with in Hoonah, and his mother showed that there were women who believe he has redeeming characteristics.
However, the matter of justice for a young victim who will live with the memory of being sexually solicited was also a concern for the judge.
“Things stick with us as children, we tend to remember that as we grow older and you will as well. I believe this event will stick with her for a long time and that concerns me,” Menendez said. “She doesn’t deserve that and it shouldn’t have happened.”
Hadlock left the courthouse under remand to begin serving his sentence.
