A typical serious charge in these scenarios is Rape in the Third Degree (Penal Law Section 130.25[2]). That charge makes it a Class E felony for a person over the age of twenty-one years to engage in sexual intercourse with another person less than seventeen years old. This is a strict liability crime and there is no need for the prosecutor to demonstrate any forcible compulsion on the part of the elder person. A conviction for this charge – sometimes referred to as “statutory rape” – carries serious potential jail sentences and mandatory registration as a sex offender. Similarly, Criminal Sexual Act in the Third Degree (Penal Law Section 130.40[2]) makes it a Class E felony for a person older than twenty-one to engage in oral or anal sexual contact with a person under the age of seventeen.

Rape in the Second Degree (Penal Law Section 130.30[1]) is a more serious Class D felony and applies to individuals over the age of eighteen that engage in sexual intercourse with people younger than fifteen years old, and Criminal Sexual Act in the Second Degree (Penal Law Section 130.45[1]) also makes it a Class D felony for a person older than eighteen to engage in oral or anal sexual contact with a person younger than fifteen.

On some occasions, the adult educators are accused of sending lewd or sexually explicit photos, videos, or text messages to the underage students. Those teachers are then potentially facing felony charges of Disseminating Indecent Materials in the Second or First Degree, depending on the content of the messages (Penal Law Sections 235.21 or 235.22).

Sometimes, teachers partake of controlled substances like ecstasy prior to engaging in sexual contact with their underage students, and in those cases, the teachers may face the Class D felony charge of Facilitating a Sex Offense with a Controlled Substance, in violation of Penal Law Section 130.90.

On the other hand, the victimized students can potentially pursue civil lawsuits for damages against the school districts and the teachers themselves. (Of course, the lawsuits against the school districts are more likely to be lucrative because they have insurance and public funds to pay settlements, whereas teachers often become bankrupt in these situations.) There is no need to prove that the underage victim was an “unwilling participant” in the sexual activity because a minor cannot legally consent to sexual contact with an adult. A lawsuit by a victimized student against a school district will not succeed solely because the offending teacher was employed by the district – the victim plaintiff must demonstrate that the district was negligent in the hiring of the teacher (i.e. failed to do a sufficient background check that would have revealed a propensity for such offending behavior), negligent training, negligent retention (failing to discharge the teacher after learning about misconduct prior to the basis for the lawsuit), and/or negligent supervision of the teacher. In short, if the district had reasonable no way of knowing, predicting, or preventing the behavior by the teacher, then the district cannot be held to blame for the teacher’s actions towards the student. The amount of damages can be difficult to predict but is mostly determined by the psychological or psychiatric harm that the student has suffered or can expect to suffer as a result of this victimization.

If you or a loved one have been accused of an improper relationship with a student, or been victimized by a teacher, you should strongly consider contacting the experienced litigators at the Law Office of Matthew Galluzzo. Their team of former prosecutors, including Matthew Galluzzo, a former Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor, has expertise representing people on both sides of this scenario, and can advise you how to best proceed.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm01412.htm

Unwanted sexual contact with another person on an incoming international airline flight can subject the offender to prosecution pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §2244(b). That charge makes it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison for engaging in unwanted sexual contact.

Pursuant to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, this crime is normally classified as having a base offense level of 12, meaning that a defendant without a criminal record convicted of this crime will generally be looking at a sentence of between 10 and 16 months in prison. If one accepts responsibility by pleading guilty in advance of trial, however, one can normally expect an offense level reduction of two levels, meaning in this case that the Sentencing Guidelines would suggest a level 10 base offense level, resulting in a sentence of from 6 to 12 months in jail.

In the case of regular (non-sexual) assaults on airplanes, those federal charges are typically brought pursuant to 18 USC § 113 (for assaults on other passengers)or 49 USC § 46504 (for assaults on the crew or airplane staff). There are different subsections of this charge that apply to different sorts of assaults, including fatal assaults and assaults with weapons (and of course each of these charges carries different penalties). These sorts of assaults usually involve intoxicatedpassengers fighting against airplane staff members or alleged terrorists. Conrad Hilton – Paris’ brother – was recently arrested and charged with a crime of this sort (49 USC § 46504).

These cases can be difficult to defend. There are obviously potentially a lot of witnesses on the airplane, including other passengers and crew. Unlike in many sex crimes cases, in these cases the victim and the perpetrator are typically strangers, meaning that there is generally less reason to suspect that the victim has fabricated his or her story. Finally, defendants in these cases just don’t have a very good track record of prevailing.

For example, a rabbi accused of sexually abusing a sleeping Israeli solider was convicted after trial recently in federal court in Brooklyn. Despite proclaiming his innocence on the witness stand, he was found guilty and sentenced to sixty days in jail. Other examples include a man in New Jersey federal court who was arrested after arriving at Newark Airport and was ultimately sentenced to one year in jail. Notably, however, the author of this article was able to persuade a federal judge to give his client no time in jail on a conviction for this crime, which represented a significant downward variance from the federal sentencing guidelines.

In short, these cases are very serious and need to be defended carefully and by a thorough and tough criminal attorney.

If you or a loved one have been accused of sexually abusing or assaulting another individual on an international airline flight, you should strongly consider contacting the experienced criminal defense attorneys at The Law Office of Matthew Galluzzo. Their attorneys have defended against these charges very successfully and have considerable experience defending individuals accused of sexual crimes and assaults in a variety of contexts.

Without question, far too many allegations of campus-based sexual assault never go anywhere. For one reason, universities and university police officers typically lack the necessary expertise, training or resources to handle these sorts of investigations as ably or professionally as local city/state police or prosecutors. More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that universities are in many ways incentivized to make these cases go away. After all, no university wants to develop a public reputation as a place where rapes happen, and some administrators might even fear that the university could be liable for failing to provide adequate security in some cases (God forbid that a star athlete or child of a wealthy alumnus be accused of such a crime). Accordingly, one should not be surprised to hear tales from some victims of university officials subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly discouraging the victims from pursuing their complaints against fellow students.

Recently, it was suggested by some (not us) that Columbia University bungled (or perhaps intentionally ignored) the investigation of a student-athlete that had had several complaints made against him for sexual assault or misconduct. This proposed bill appears to be in response to that media flap. But would making universities mandatory reporters really help decrease the problem of sexual assault on New York college campuses?

Students at college campuses that get sexually assaulted by other students often tend to report the assaults to school administrators rather than the police. Obviously, even college students know that rape is a crime, and that police officers investigate and make arrests for rapes. So, it seems that students that elect to go this route have done so for one of two reasons: 1) they want the school administrators to assist them in reporting the event to the police, or 2) they are deliberating avoiding police involvement for one reason or another. Certainly, some rape victims do not want to report the crimes to police because they fear repercussions from their attackers, negative publicity in the media, having their parents find out, peer backlash or condemnation, or being questioned about their sexual histories, among other things. So, it would seem that if students with these concerns know that the university will not be able to keep their reports confidential and away from the police, that they will just simply choose not to report them to the universities (and thus, to no one at all).

On the other hand, of course, police and prosecutors should be investigating these claims because they are better equipped to do so and because they are the only ones with the power to realistically and ultimately hold rapists properly responsible for their actions. Moreover, university investigations and disciplinary hearings of sexual assault allegations tend to resemble criminal procedures, but without the satisfying conclusions for the victims. After all, the most a university can do to punish an abuser (without reporting the case to the police) is to expel a student. This is a far cry from the punishment potentially facing a rapist in criminal court (incarceration, felony convictions, sex offender registration, etc.). More than a few victims have thought that their reports to the university administration would result in quiet, swift resolutions and sufficient punishment for their attackers, but then are disappointed to learn that their attackers can insist on disciplinary hearings in which their friends are oftentimes called to testify. Aside from the embarrassment and peer backlash that can often ensue, victims are often disappointed to see their attackers receive minor punishments like reprimands or temporary suspensions as a result of school disciplinary procedures. Then, after the school disciplinary procedure is complete, victims often feel like subsequent reports to the police would be pointless or hopeless, and prosecutors might be skeptical of reports that happen so long after the fact. So, it may be that notifying police of campus rape allegations (which will almost always at least trigger a police investigation) is ultimately more often than not in the best interests of the victims – though the victims may not want to go that route – in that the “criminal procedures” in criminal court and university settings are often comparably intimidating for victims but the punishments meted out in criminal court are far more likely to achieve results that help victims heal.

Ideally, university administrators would have intelligent conversations with victims that report sex crimes about their options in the legal system, and would also encourage them to report their assaults to the police without forcing them to do so. Certainly, high schools administrators are required to report instances of child abuse to the police or child services agencies, but college students are technically adults (though perhaps shouldn’t be treated as such regarding an issue so intimidating and complicated) and it would arguably be a violation of their privacy and dignity to report their cases to the police when they thought they were reporting it in confidence.

If you or a loved one have been wrongfully accused of a campus sexual assault or have been a victim of a sexual assault, you should strongly consider contacting an experienced former sex crimes prosecutor immediately.