A Powell man will need to register as a Tier II sexual offender, but he will not be going to prison.
In July, Anthony Delgado, 23, of Powell, pleaded guilty to three counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, admitting that in January 2019, he repeatedly had sex with a 15 year-old girl.
In exchange for the guilty plea, the state agreed to drop three other charges of the same offense. Delgado will need to register as a Tier II sex offender, meaning he must register with the sheriff where he lives every 180 days for the next 25 years.
Visiting judge Mark S. O’Connor placed Delgado on five years of community control.
Delgado is not allowed to have any contact with the victim or members of her immediate family.
O’Connor said that if Delgado violates the terms of his community control, he would face a 54-month prison sentence.
At the sentencing hearing, Defense Attorney Bradley Koffel said his client nearly decided to go to trial, but when the state agreed to reduce the charges, he decided to accept the deal.
“This is an offense that is dangerously close to being a mandatory community control,” Koffel told the judge, noting that sentencing factors point to a non-prison sentence.
Koffel said the state has “historically” granted community control on unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.
“If I do my math correctly, we are eight months removed from being a legal consensual sexual relationship and I think we are just a few months from it being a misdemeanor,” he said.
Assistant Union County Prosecutor Andrew Bigler said the prosecutor’s position is that unlawful sexual conduct with a minor is a prison offense and he has asked for prison in the cases he has dealt with. He acknowledged that despite the prosecutor’s position, the court has imposed community control for similar offenses involving similar offenders.
Delgado met the girl while they were working at a fast food restaurant.
Koffel said the girl lied to Delgado about her age.
“He should have known better. There were other yellow flags,” Koffel said. “There were no red flags. There was no silver bullet, smoking gun in this case.”
He added that Delgado and the girl are part of “a hyper sexualized world.”
“Unfortunately, this feels like ‘Exhibit A’ on how what never happened in our era or the court’s era, seems to be more typical,” Koffel told the judge.
Delgado said he regrets some of the decisions he made, “but I’d like to move on and I’d like the victim to be able to move on and hopefully we can both move on with our life and put this behind us.”
In a victim’s impact statement, read to the judge, the girl wrote that her innocence “was pried away from me at such a young age and that is something I will never get back.”
“I will never forget how less of a person you made me feel. I will never forget what you did to me, no matter how hard I try,” the victim wrote.
She wrote that she “was groomed into thinking I was cared for, but really I was an easy target.”
In other court documents, the girl indicated the pair had sex multiple times in multiple locations, but she did not consent.
“You could tell I didn’t want it. There were times I even said no,” the girl wrote in a message to Delgado. “I’m not going to report you. I need you to know that you have broken me into 1 million pieces. I can’t forgive you. If I ever find out you rape another girl, I will report you. And I know I shouldn’t protect you, but that’s just my heart. You know what you did.”
Koffel said his client has a job, that he got for him.
“I learned Anthony is doing very well,” Koffel said.
He said Delgado is also a father. Delgado said his daughter is “the most important thing to me.”
“Being a family with my girlfriend, who I intend to marry, and raising her together is something that is my only concern as I go forward,” he said.
“They are very deeply disappointed in his decision making,” Koffel said.
The judge asked if Delgado had received any specialized counseling.
“Legally we were concerned about disclosures because in counseling, you have to say everything,” Koffel said. He said he would encourage his client to seek counseling, provided the court did not impose incarceration or house arrest.
Delgado was set to be sentenced last month but Koffel requested a continuance because the pre-sentence investigation contained “improper information.”
The attorney argued that information included in the pre-sentence investigation was part of a sealed record. Koffel wrote that information included in the sealed record, “are, as a matter of law, ‘deemed never to have occurred.’”