originally posted 6/14/2009
I’ve grown up being isolated, away from everyone, basically due to autism. People at school making fun of my weight, my mother and father, just rejecting me all through to the end of my schooling in the public system. I’ve locked myself up alone in my own room, turned to the internet for friends, for relationships, for fun. My means of communication with people who didn’t make me feel like crap. Using sites like myspace.com, I met my first relationship with a girl around 16 on these sites, but I never to this date ever had a real relationship in person, Never had a in person girl friend or friends.
I have body dimorphic disorder; I make myself throw up; I also have severe clinical depression, anxiety, and Social Phobia. I used to be suicidal, cutting myself non stop, always passing out from blood loss. I had friends on the internet, via xbox , pc, whom I would talk to, who would make me feel wanted and liked. I played hours of video games to forget about my life, to be in a new world in my head in the form of games.
I met a girl who (said she) was 14 when I was 19 years old at the time. we started talking and had similar interests music, games, art. We talked and were friends for a while. She wanted to go out and I said yes. Over this time she started discussing the “topic;” we joked around with this subject via chat and just acted like close friends. Her mother found out, and I got arrested.
They claimed I was “enticing her” to come to Washington even tho the line from her to me was “My Parents are planning to go to Washington over spring break maybe we can hang out” claiming I was the one to get her to come to DC and that it was for sexual purposes,which was wrong.
They charged and convicted me on “solicitation of a minor via internet” where in VA could be a misdemeanor on certain events, but in the state where I live, it is a Felony 3 up to 5 years prison, mandatory registration for life if you stay in the state.
I’m currently on the same basis as people who raped little kids, yet I have mental health issues and cannot even leave the house without my parents.
I have 3 years sex Offender Probation, and live in a one judge town with the prosecutors getting whatever they want.
In treatment, my provider quoted to me and my parents “He`s not clinically a sex offender in our eyes, but should have treatment for this topic and his server phobias.”
But yet, I have to be labeled and not judged for a crime which was not violent nor did it even involve physical contact. They wouldn’t take into consideration my mental health, saying that was no excuse for what I did.
The cops who questioned me yelled at me and talked me into signing over computers and pictures and confessions to say I’ve done it. They did it illegally; they did not allow me a lawyer, nor did they read me my rights the night they took me to jail.
How did I get justice? I did not. This girl could have shot me and she would get to live, but since this is a matter of a sexual nature, she’s only a minor who doesn’t know what she was doing. Even all my family, friends, and people who don’t know me say that this was a bullshit charge, that it shouldn’t have gone as far as it did. Now I need $2,500 for a lawyer just to get started on my case to try and get me off the s.o. registry list so I can have a better future!
That’s my story, a story which America should know.