Last year, a 19-year-old from Indiana, Zach Anderson, had sex with a 14-year-old girl from Michigan. She told him she was 17, and the age of consent in Michigan is 16.
Anderson served 75 days in jail after pleading guilty to fourth-degree sexual contact, and he was ordered to register as a sex offender, which restricted him from talking with anyone under the age 17, except for immediate family, and barred him from using a smartphone or the Internet.
“It’s almost unconstitutional in today’s age of technology,” Zach’s mother Amanda Anderson told Here & Now back in August. “All the things that have been taken from him.”
Berrien County Judge Angela Pasula, on Monday, re-sentenced Anderson to two years probation and lifted many of the most draconian rules placed on him. The judge also removed Anderson from the Michigan sex offender list.
Some say this case revealed flaws in the rules regarding sex offender registries.
“It is very difficult because a lot of our focus has been on trying to get our son’s life back, because at the end of the day, you know, there aren’t many quote-unquote crimes, if you want to call it this, that carry the weight that something like this does,” Zach’s father Les Anderson told Here & Now in August. “And it’s hard to swallow when it’s a consensual act. We’ve had a conversation with the mother and the daughter and as a family we’ve both asked for forgiveness, because there were two wrongs done, not just one.”
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