Posting #57 – Veronica’s Story

By: Veronica
Date:  03/30/2009

RSOL of Virginia,
 
I read your story and thought maybe I should share mine. 

I am a 52 year old woman that now lives with a class 5 felony for sexual conduct in a penal institution and has to register for 10 years.  My charge is in another state but when I went through the legal process I had moved to Virginia.  I worked for 7 1/2 years in a correctional facility as a contract drug & alcohol program office manager.  My program manager and supervisor assigned an offender that was in our program to work with me and after getting to know him we became attracted to each other.  I know when that happened that I should have quit my job but I didn't.  We wrote letters and had phone calls.  Because we couldn't have physical contact and was trying to keep this relationship a secret we created a fake name for me and tried to create a past relationship over the phone so that anyone hearing our conversations and if they listened to the taped recordings they wouldn't know it was us.  We talked about past physical encounters we had which added the romance to our relationship that we couldn't have.  I am not saying this was right but it was all we had.  That was five years ago.  Well someone figured us out and we were investigated.  I was fired from my job and he spent six months in solitary confinement plus it took him three years to be able to go to a halfway house to start regaining his freedom.  He has more than paid his debt to society for the criminal actions that led him to prison and since been our for the past six months has put himself through a school that led him to a good job, continuing his drug & alcohol free life and doing everything right like he should.  For me I had no idea that the state was going to try to prosecute me for anything and so after three months of not finding a job I moved to Virginia. 

I had been here for almost a year and had a very good job when one morning I am leaving for work and I was surrounded by detectives and telling me there was a warrant for my arrest for sexual assault.  It turned out the fantasy physical relationship that we had had the investigators felt was a real relationship and I wound up being charged for sexual conduct in a penal institution.  I had to travel back and forth for a year trying to fight this.  I knew I never had physical conduct but my attorney said I wouldn't be able to prove it because the state had the letters and taped phone calls and realistically I guess if I would have been on a jury I probably would have thought that they were real too.  I was offered a plea bargain that I would only be prosecuted for 1 count and recommended for probation.  Since I had spent over $15,000.00 and being a single mom of a teenager I didn't have $10,000.00 more to go to trial and I took the plea knowing I would have a felony on my record.  At sentencing is when I found out I now have to register as a Sex Offender for 10 years.  My 18 month probation is up this summer.  The real kicker is this, because I live in Virginia and had to have everything transferred here.  Once I started my probation here all of my past state rules were disregarded and I had to follow Virginia.  My home state's statute said my criminal charge didn't require an evaluation.  Well Virginia made me do a very expensive evaluation just to be able to have my son live with me.  He was 17 and the person I was involved with was 45 years old and because he loves me and knows nothing happened no victim charges were filed but Virginia has made me comply with all of the laws that pertain to someone that had a charge regarding a child.  Fortunately my son was allowed to live with me but non-violent doesn't seem to mean anything and they don't seem to modify anything to fit the crime.  So when you see my name you would assume that I went out and molested a child.  Not fair.  I believe there should be definite monitoring and guidelines for those who really are sex offenders but those of us who are not and because we don't have the money to buy the best attorney in the state or country we have to pay the price. 

Hopefully the Megan Law will get a revision for those of us who don't belong on it.  Thanks for reading my story.
 
Veronica