Two teenagers branded as sex offenders for life after sitting on other boys' faces with their bare buttocks as a prank

Two teenagers branded as sex offenders for life after sitting on other boys' faces with their bare buttocks as a prank
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:32 AM on 21st July 2011


Two New Jersey teenagers face registering for life as sex offenders under Megan's Law for what their lawyers claim was horseplay.

An appeals court agreed the boys, who were 14, engaged in sexual contact when they held down two 12-year-old boys in Somerset County in 2008 and placed their bare buttocks on their faces.

The ruling means the boys would have to register under Megan's Law because the court said sexual contact applies to touching for the purpose of humiliation.

Tough decision: Judge Victor Ashrafi was one of the three New Jersey appeals court judges who ruled that two young teenagers must register as sex offenders under Megan's Law

The judges wrote they were 'keenly aware' of the ruling's ramifications for the boys and for others.

The judges sent both cases back to a lower court to consider whether one boy can withdraw his guilty plea and whether the other received effective counsel.

In a decision handed down Monday, the three-judge panel acknowledged the severity of its decision, but said it was bound to uphold the law.

'We are keenly aware that our decision may have profound lifelong ramifications for these two boys as well as others similarly situated,' Judge Jose Fuentes wrote.

Judge Victor Ashrafi was another of the three New Jersey appeals court judges who ruled that two young teenagers must register as sex offenders.

One of the boys, whose case went to trial, said he had sat on the faces of a pair of 12-year-old schoolmates with his bare buttocks in November 2008 'cause I thought it was funny and I was trying to get my friends to laugh,' he told a family court judge.

The trial judge concluded the teenager intended to humiliate or degrade his victims and found him guilty of criminal sexual contact.

The second teenager who was implicated pleaded guilty to criminal sexual contact, and received the same penalty.

Horseplay: A prank involving touching someone for the purpose of humiliation may be considered sexual contact

The convictions were appealed, and the lawyers for the teenagers argued that their behaviour amounted to horseplay, which other appellate court panels had exempted from Megan’s Law.

David Fassett, the lawyer for the boy who pleaded guilty, argued that the court should not take such a literal view of the law, nj.com reports.

He said: 'I think the Appellate Division was simply offended by the conduct here and just couldn’t get past that issue.

The appeal did not challenge the application of Megan’s Law to the 14-year-old youths since courts have already ruled the law applies to offenders as young as 13, but on the ground that the offence was not severe enough to carry a lifelong stigma.

The panel, which also included Judges Victor Ashrafi and William Nugent, noted its constraints under the law.

'Although we are not unsympathetic to the arguments criticising the application of the lifelong registration requirements in Megan’s Law to 14-year-old offenders, we are bound to uphold such application because that outcome is mandated by the Legislature,' the court said in its ruling.

Nown that the judges have sent both cases back to a lower court it could mean that for the boys, who are now 16, there is still a possibility of having their convictions overturned.

Nystyle709 wrote:This shit needs to be overturned. This is getting ridiculous now. See what happens when one tragedy occurs and you start making all these special 'Megan's Law' and 'Caylee's Law' that apply to a broad spectum of crimes? Laws are already on the books that prevent crime and punish criminals for just about everything and then people wanna get extra with the shit.Who in their right mind thinks it's justified to give a FOURTEEN yr old a sex offender title for the rest of his life for something like this?

Here's a precedent. Teens doing heinous crimes and were given life sentences have had their sentences reduced because it would have been such a long lifetime.

But, as a culture we are more anti sex than anti violence.

Nystyle709 wrote:This shit needs to be overturned. This is getting ridiculous now. See what happens when one tragedy occurs and you start making all these special 'Megan's Law' and 'Caylee's Law' that apply to a broad spectum of crimes? Laws are already on the books that prevent crime and punish criminals for just about everything and then people wanna get extra with the shit.Who in their right mind thinks it's justified to give a FOURTEEN yr old a sex offender title for the rest of his life for something like this?

Supernova wrote:I'm on the other side of this. This sounds like something my neighbor would've done, he was...I don't know if there are words to describe the mess he was. As a kid he had a rubber swimming suit supposedly so none of the boys could grab his crotch, but he did it to every other boy at the pool, especially the smaller ones, and he was always pulling stupid shit that he said was funny, but his victims were never inclined to agree.

Now there's a long running theory that between the sexes, the males make up for most of the idiots, and to read about what these boys did, they don't help the argument any that's for damn sure. For some reason I highly doubt you will ever hear about girls doing something like this.

One thing I did NOT see in the article was the two 12-year-olds who had it done to them coming forward and saying it WAS funny, that they enjoyed it. If the boys had done this to two 12-year-old girls, what would the verdict have been there, simple 'horseplay', or would THAT have qualified for sexual harrassment or whatever? So should they be sex offenders for life? No, but I wouldn't be above a judge ordering them to get 'I'm an idiot' tattooed on their foreheads, now THAT would be funny.

wants2laugh wrote:yeah kids are idiots who change and grow up. they are not going to be the same people in another 10 years, so why give them the same sentence of lifetime predator status?

Tony Marino wrote:Give it a rest, this is stuff teenage boys do to one another! Baby killers get to go free but teenagers playing around and not hurting one another are criminals. Something is not quite right here.