Ohio Court Strikes Down Law Banning Cops from Having Sex with Minors

© Aaron P. Bernstein / Reuters

Ohio’s Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to hold police officers’ sexual conduct with minors to higher standards that those applied to the general population based on their profession alone.

The divided 4-3 decision passed on Thursday overturned a two year sentence of former Waite Hill police officer Matthew Mole, who was convicted by the state in 2012 for having a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old boy.

The teen, identified as J.S. in court papers, hooked up with Mole, who was 35 at the time, through a dating app. He told Mole that he was 18 and a high school senior. The fact that Mole was a peace officer was not known to J.S. until after their encounter.

Mole faced separate charges under unlawful sexual conduct law, which prohibits people aged 18 or older from having sex with a minor between 13 and 15 and under the sexual battery stature, which prohibits sex with a minor by members of certain professions, if the age difference between them is more than two years.

The first charge required that the alleged offender knew the minor’s age or acted recklessly in that regard. In Mole’s case the charge was put before a jury, which deadlocked leading to a mistrial.

The second charge on the other hand requires the state only to prove that there was sex between the alleged offender and the minor. Mole was tried by the bench, found guilty of sexual battery, and convicted to two years in prison, which he has since served.

Mole appealed the conviction, arguing that the sexual battery statute was aimed at protecting minors from being taken advantage of by adults in a position of authority over them, like legal guardians, teachers or mental health providers. His relationship with J.C. was not occupation-based, Mole argued, but the wording of the stature makes it applicable to peace officers regardless and was discriminatory.

The Eighth District Court of Appeals overturned the conviction, but the state appealed the ruling only for the Supreme Court to side with the District Court of Appeals.

“We do not agree that a person’s status as a peace officer justifies the imposition of different sexual-conduct standards for peace officers in circumstances in which the officer’s status is irrelevant,” Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor wrote.

“And the jury’s failure to convict him of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor makes clear that, but for his status as a peace officer, Mole would not be subject to criminal liability for the sexual conduct at issue in this case,” she added.

Dissenting Justice Sharon Kennedy, a former police officer, said prohibiting police officers from having sex with minors serves a legitimate state purpose.

“If a peace officer discovered after the fact that the person with whom he engaged in sexual conduct was a minor, he would have a strong incentive to do whatever is necessary to ensure that his employer never found out, even to the point of compromising his integrity. Moreover, there is the potential for blackmail, which could lead to corrupt behavior or worse,” Kennedy wrote.

Pedophile Teacher From UK, Good Enough for France

Teacher from France who was jailed in UK for sexual acts with boys allowed to return to classroom

Education minister admits 'grave malfunctions and errors' were made in the handling of the case by the French authorities

John Lichfield, The Independent, Paris 


France has been hit by allegations of historic sexual abuse of children by priests in Catholic schools Getty

A teacher from France who was jailed in Britain for sexual acts with his pupils on a school trip to Sussex was allowed to return to teaching in France because of “serious” blunders by officials.

A report published by the French education ministry admitted “grave dysfunctions” had allowed the 53-year-old maths teacher to take up a new job in a school near Paris after serving 15 months in Lewes prison for having sex with a boy.

The teacher appeared before a 35-strong disciplinary committee in France after he left jail in 2007 but his British criminal record was not properly translated into French and he was allowed to seek a new teaching post.

In February this year, the teacher, named only as R., was arrested and formally accused of “sexual assault” on a 15-year-old boy. Pupils at a middle school at Villemoisson in Essonne, south of Paris, had found a mobile telephone belonging to the teacher containing thousands of erotic images of under-age boys.

The French education minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, said that an investigation had exposed “grave malfunctions and errors” but no indication of a deliberate closing of ranks by the French teaching profession. She said she would have considered sacking the head of the school district responsible but he had already retired.

She promised that procedures would be tightened in the future.

Under a new EU policy for closer cooperation on policing between member states, approved in 2009, the blunder should not have happened. The teacher was able to disguise the seriousness of his conviction in Britain because criminal records were not systematically shared between EU countries at the time.

In 2005, the teacher travelled to Sussex to supervise a group of French pupils who were on a residential language course. He was arrested and convicted of “voyeurism” and “having sex with a child while in a position of authority”.

He wrote to the French education service from Lewes jail to explain why he could not return to his teaching job in France. Nonetheless, when released from prison, he is alleged to have presented a misleading account of his conviction to the disciplinary committee, which was composed mostly of other teachers.

Documents about his trial and conviction were presented in English with an inadequate French translation. The teacher and his lawyer argued that the conviction had been based on a misunderstanding and that a decision by the British court banning him from working with children was not applicable in France.

The committee voted 35 to 0 to allow him to return to the classroom.

The case has emerged at a time when France is wrestling with a series of allegations of historic sexual abuse of children by priests in Catholic schools.