{"id":10867,"date":"2016-03-30T12:42:28","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T16:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=10867"},"modified":"2016-03-30T12:42:28","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T16:42:28","slug":"turning-a-profit-on-teenage-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/30\/turning-a-profit-on-teenage-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning a profit on teenage sex"},"content":{"rendered":"

This New Yorker<\/em> magazine article<\/a> on the sex offender registry gives some insight into how adult Americans can profit financially when teenagers have sex (and not through the typical path of “Child Support Litigation without a Marriage”<\/a>). Here are some excerpts:<\/p>\n

[Anthony] Metts [unwisely agreeing to be interviewed without an attorney present] told [police]\u00a0that when he was eighteen he dated a girl who was three years younger. And he\u2019d also had a brief sexual relationship with a girl more than three years younger, whom he met during his junior year of high school, when she was a freshman.<\/p>\n

When the officers turned the information over to the Midland District Attorney\u2019s Office, the D.A. filed two felony indictments for sexual assault of a child, based on the age-of-consent laws in Texas at the time.<\/p>\n

He decided to take a plea deal: a suspended sentence and ten years of probation.<\/p>\n

Metts, who was twenty-one by then, read the terms of his post-plea life. For the next decade, he\u2019d be barred from alcohol and the Internet; from entering the vicinity of schools, parks, bus stops, malls, and movie theatres; and from living within a thousand feet of a \u201cchild-safety zone.\u201d A mugshot of his curly-haired, round-cheeked face would appear for life on the Texas sex-offender registry, beside the phrase \u201cSexual Assault of a Child.\u201d And he would have to start sex-offender treatment.<\/p>\n

The treatment plan was extensive. He was told to write up a detailed sexual history, and then to discuss it with a room full of adults, some of whom had repeatedly committed child assaults. …\u00a0To graduate, he would have to narrate his \u201cassaults\u201d in detail: \u201cHow many buttons on her shirt did you unbutton?\u201d<\/p>\n

The plan also included a monthly polygraph (a hundred and fifty dollars<\/strong>) and a computerized test that measured how long his eyes lingered on deviant imagery (three hundred and twenty-five dollars<\/strong>). He would also have to submit to a \u201cpenile plethysmograph,\u201d or PPG. According to documents produced by the state of Texas, the PPG\u2014known jokingly to some patients as a \u201cpeter meter\u201d\u2014is \u201ca sophisticated computerized instrument capable of measuring slight changes in the circumference of the penis.\u201d A gauge is wrapped around the shaft of the penis, with wires hooked up to a laptop, while a client is presented with \u201csexually inappropriate\u201d imagery and, often, \u201cdeviant\u201d sexual audio. Metts would be billed around two hundred dollars per test.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The PPG was invented in the nineteen-fifties by a sexologist from Czechoslovakia, and used by the Czech military to expose soldiers suspected of pretending to be gay in order to avoid service.<\/p>\n

When Metts balked at what felt to him like technological invasions\u2014not least the prospect of having a stranger measure his penis\u2014he was jailed for ten days. A new round of weekly therapy sessions (thirty dollars for group, and fifty dollars for one-on-one<\/strong>) then commenced.<\/p>\n

Eventually, he agreed to acknowledge how he\u2019d \u201cgroomed\u201d his \u201cvictims\u201d: in one case, they\u2019d gone to dinner, a movie, and\u2014for a Halloween date\u2014to a local haunted house.<\/p>\n

Metts settled into his new life in the oil fields, reluctantly accommodating an array of strictures that he regarded as pointless. Each Halloween, for instance, he reported to the county probation office with dozens of other local sex offenders, and was held from 6 to 10 P.M. and shown movies like \u201cIron Man 2,\u201d until trick-or-treating was over. \u201cIf someone\u2019s that dangerous that they need to be locked up, what about all of the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year?\u201d he asked me.<\/p>\n

In 2006, he fell in love with a deputy sheriff\u2019s daughter. One night, he took her out to his favorite Italian place in Odessa, ordered two steaks with risotto, and arranged for the waiter to bring out a dessert menu that read, among the \u00e0-la-carte selections, \u201cWill you marry me?\u201d She said yes, and a baby girl soon followed. \u201cMy daughter was a blessing and a miracle to me,\u201d Metts told me. But it also introduced him to a troubling new aspect of his life on the registry.<\/p>\n

Metts, then twenty-four, learned that he wouldn\u2019t be allowed to see his daughter. His status banned him from living with her, and thus with his wife.<\/p>\n

One night, a former classmate saw Metts buying a sandwich at Walmart and shouted a slur at him; she\u2019d seen his face on the registry for \u201cSexual Assault of a Child.\u201d Rattled, he went to Buffalo Wild Wings to down a beer, and got busted. Metts had a record of technical violations, so a judge ordered him to wear an electronic ankle bracelet, administered by a private monitoring company that charged several hundred dollars a month<\/strong>. The device would notify the authorities of any infractions\u2014stepping too close to a mall, park, bar, or church, or leaving the county without permission.<\/p>\n

In the eighth year of his ten-year probation term, Metts decided to re\u00ebnter the world.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d failed to charge his ankle bracelet properly, and the battery died at around 5 P.M. Shortly before midnight, his probation officer arrived at his door: she\u2019d be filing to revoke his probation. A few weeks later, Metts was led into a courtroom in hand-cuffs, leg cuffs, and a chain around his waist connecting them. \u201cI looked like Hannibal Lecter without the mask,\u201d he told me. The judge\u2019s name sounded familiar: she had helped prosecute his original case. …\u00a0The judge took some time to think it over. The next morning, she sentenced Metts to ten years in prison.<\/p>\n

This past July, I drove around Midland, Texas, trying to find the girls\u2014now women\u2014who were involved in Anthony Metts\u2019s case. Having no luck with doorbells, I left notes, and two days later I got a call from one of them. \u201cI never wanted Anthony to be prosecuted,\u201d she told me. \u201cIt was a consensual relationship\u2014the kind when you\u2019re young and you\u2019re stupid. My mom knew about it. We\u2019d go on dates, drive around, hang out.\u201d She was shocked to learn of Metts\u2019s fate: his nine-plus years of probation, his current decade of incarceration. \u201cI told [law enforcement] that I didn\u2019t feel like he should have to be prosecuted,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obviously life in the U.S. hasn’t work out well for Mr. Metts (nor for any of the other people profiled in the article who got onto a sex offender registry; the registry idea plus the Internet plus the fact that sex with a 15-year-old may be described in the same way as sex with a 3-year-old means that holding a job is generally impossible). But the groups of adults who profited financially from the two teenagers having sex includes at least the following: (1) police officers, (2) prosecutors, (3) defense lawyers, (3) judges, (4) court officials, (5) prison guards and managers, (6) probation officers, (7) therapists, (8) polygraph technicians, (9) penis testing technicians, (10) electronic bracelet vendors, (11) electronic bracelet monitoring technicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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