Poor judgment, but legal

This is an unfortunate case of poor judgment:

The Marion County deputy prosecutor who was assistant chief of the sex crimes division was fired this week for sending a romantic e-mail to a 16-year-old girl.

Jay Meisenhelder, 53, admitted he used poor judgment but insisted he broke no laws.

In Indiana, the legal age of consent for sexual relations is 16, so although it’s a little creepy for a 53 year old sex crime prosecutor to send love notes to a 16 year old:

In the e-mail, obtained through Indiana’s open records law, Meisenhelder repeatedly told the girl he loved her.

“I’m 53-years-old, and believe me, I know what love is — I know how it feels,” Meisenhelder wrote. “I love you as I have only loved two other women in my life. I also know that my feelings are not going to change anytime soon.”

He certainly sounds like a romantic:

[A]t a recent meeting with the girl, “he turned the lights down, lit a candle, made non-alcoholic Bananas Foster for them and played music from the sound track of ‘Phantom of the Opera.’ “

What gets me about this is the seemingly arbitrary lines drawn by Indiana law when it comes to sexual activity: A 15 year old is too young to have sex, but magically on your 16th birthday(provided your not a parent, guardian, or teacher), you become mature enough to have sex. But, you cannot take nude pictures or video of a person until they reach 18, a Meisenhelder knows well:

In November 2002, he successfully prosecuted Broad Ripple photographer Andrew R. Scalini for taking explicit nude photographs of 17-year-old girls. Scalini was convicted of child exploitation and possession of child pornography and served a six-month prison sentence.

Link.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 12th, 2005 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Criminal Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.