How a dating app hookup landed a teen on the sex offender registry

By Kyra Phillips and David Fitzpatrick, CNN Investigations

Updated 11:24 AM ET, Tue August 4, 2015

| Video Source: CNN

Story highlights

• Indiana teen Zach Anderson met a girl on the Internet and had sex with her
• She told him she was 17, but she was really just 14
• Zach was placed on a sex offender registry for the next 25 years and can't live at home with his 15-year-old brother

Elkhart, Indiana (CNN)Zach Anderson is 19 and a typical teenager. He's into computers and wants to build a career around his love for electronics.

But those plans and any semblance of a normal life are for now out the window. Under court order, he can't access the Internet, go to a mall or linger near a school or playground. His parents say because he has a 15-year-old brother, he can't even live at home any longer.

Why? He's been placed on the sex offender registry after a dating app hookup.

It began, Zach and his family say, when he went on a racy dating app called "Hot Or Not."

He was at his home in Elkhart, Indiana, when he met the girl, who lived across the state line in nearby southern Michigan.

The girl told Zach she was 17, but she lied. She was only 14, and by having sex with her, Zach was committing a crime. He was arrested and convicted. 

He was given a 90-day jail sentence, five years probation and placed on both Indiana and Michigan's sex offender registry for the next 25 years. A colossal mistake, say his parents.

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"It's a blatant lie," his father, Lester Anderson says. Amanda Anderson, his mother, says "it doesn't even fit our lifestyle; it doesn't fit how we raised our kids." Zach says his parents had always told him not to have sex before marriage. 

'I want to be in trouble and not you'

Both the girl's mother and the girl herself appeared in court, to say they didn't believe Zach belonged on the sex offender registry. The girl admitted lying and outside of court, she handed the Anderson family a letter. She wrote in part, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you my age. It kills me every day, knowing you are going through hell and I'm not. I want to be in trouble and not you."

But even if the sex was consensual and even if the girl did lie about her age, it is not a defense under current sex offender laws. 

In fact, Judge Dennis Wiley, who sentenced Zach, said he was angry that Zach had used the Internet to meet a girl.

"That seems to be part of our culture now," he said, according to a transcript. "Meet, have sex, hook up, sayonara. Totally inappropriate behavior. There is no excuse for this whatsoever,"

A former judge in a nearby town says the sex offender registry has to be changed. Especially for cases like Zach's.

"If we caught every teenager that violated our current law," says former Judge William Buhl, "we'd lock up 30 or 40 percent of the high school. We're kidding ourselves."

Everyone on the same list 

Buhl says the problem is that the registry is a one-size-fits-all list that treats everyone as if they pose the same threat, whether they are a predatory child molester or a teen who had sex with his girlfriend.

In a highly critical study of the sex offender registry in 2013, Human Rights Watch says there is "no evidence" that placing teens on the sex offender registries make communities safer. 

Even convicted sex offenders, the very people the registry was set up to monitor, say their type of criminal behavior and mindset is vastly different from some of these teens.

Ted Rodarm, who served prison time for molestation, says teens such as Zach don't belong on the same registry as sex offenders like him. Rodarm, who is now a part of a ministry for sex offenders, adds "the registry has become so diluted that you can't identify the truly dangerous, and that in itself is dangerous."

Buhl, who says he has presided over dozens of sex offender cases, agrees that the states are wasting resources on people who are unlikely to re-offend. He says one solution would be to have a risk assessment registry, in which offenders are assessed in terms of their threat to society. But he believes change is unlikely, because few lawmakers would be willing to back a provision that lessens the severity of sex crime laws. 

As for Zach, he's awaiting another court hearing in which his attorney will try to mitigate his sentence. 

There's no telling, of course, whether that will be successful.

November 24th, 2012

08:00 PM ET

My Take: Searching for God, settling for sex

Editor's Note: Shannon Ethridge is an advocate for spiritual and sexual integrity. She is a counselor, speaker, author and certified life and relationship coach. Her 19 books include the million-selling Every Woman's Battle book series, "The Sexually Confident Wife" and her latest book, "The Fantasy Fallacy," a response to the "Fifty Shades of Grey" phenomenon, a discussion of the roots and role of sexual fantasies.

By Shannon Ethridge, Special to CNN

(CNN) - When a friend alerted me to the "Fifty Shades" trilogy in April, none of us had any idea it would sell in excess of 40 million copies within months, or that sales of whips, chains and other BDSM paraphernalia would skyrocket as a result, or that a European hotel would replace its Gideon’s Bibles with "Fifty Shades of Grey."

Many legitimate possibilities have been offered for the seeming success of “mommy porn.” Women are more sexually liberated than ever before. Couples are longing for ways to spice up their sex lives. Many women have a deep inner longing to be dominated by a man who’s absolutely obsessed with them.

While there might be some truth to each of these theories, I think the real force behind this "Fifty Shades" phenomenon is that our society is clamoring for closeness. However, in the absence of genuine sexual intimacy (best defined as “in-to-me-see”), we settle for sexual intensity: erotica, pornography, an office romance, an extramarital affair or whatever strokes the ego and provides the sexual high we crave.

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I suggest that sexual intensity (such as that experienced between the lead characters of the "Fifty Shades" trilogy) is simply not the same as intimacy. If it were, then prostitutes and porn stars would be the most emotionally and relationally fulfilled people on the planet. That doesn’t seem to be the case.

Does the entangling of arms and legs and the exchange of bodily fluids scratch the human itch for intimate connection? Or is sex just the closest thing we can imagine to what we’re really craving: a deeper spiritual and emotional connection, both with our Creator and with His creation?

When I explain through my writing, speaking and life coaching that I am an “advocate for healthy sexuality and spirituality,” some assume I’m insane. Why would someone even use the terms “sexuality” and “spirituality” in the same sentence? I do so because I believe they are basically the same thing, or at least two sides of the same coin.

Regardless of gender, age, race, political views, economic status, etc., all humans have two things in common: We are both spiritual and sexual beings. And behind every sexual longing, I believe there’s an even deeper spiritual longing.

So we have much to learn about God through understanding our sexuality, and there is much to learn about our sexuality through a deeper exploration of God.

Looking at sexuality through a spiritual lens, and vice versa, is not a new concept. In the Song of Solomon, a man's and woman’s desires for healthy sexual intimacy are celebrated. In the book of Hosea, God uses the analogy of a husband’s relentless pursuit of a sexually unfaithful bride to illustrate the depth of His own passion and commitment to His people. God obviously knew that “sexual metaphors” would teach us about ourselves and about Him.

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This brings me back around to the "Fifty Shades of Grey" phenomenon. I don’t believe that fantasy is evil, even sexual fantasy. But when we divorce physical pleasure from emotional connection, such as when we selfishly strive for orgasm through pornography, masturbation or illicit sexual encounters rather than cultivating sexual ecstasy with our marriage partner, sexual ecstasy is only “half-baked.” Love and relational intimacy are the “yeast” that allows our sexual ecstasy to rise to its highest level.

My counseling experience shows me that we often seek healing for our deepest wounds via sexual encounters. Our minds and hearts believe we will “get it right” or “find the love I need” via an intensely satisfying sexual relationship.

If deep and spiritual intimacy is what humans seek, then relational or sexual intensity can never satisfy our deepest longings or heal our oldest wounds. Christian and Anastasia (for all the "Fifty Shades" fans) won’t discover heart-deep intimacy in whips, chains, pain and sexual intensity. Their deep wounds will be healed by sacrificial love (of which Christ is the incarnate example) and intimate relationship (both human and divine). Soul-deep intimacy is what we seek, and it’s ultimately found in the God who created human sexuality.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Shannon Ethridge.

Are men stupid?

By Frida Ghitis, Special to CNN

updated 7:19 AM EDT, Mon April 23, 2012

Former Sen. John Edwards leaves the courthouse after the first day of jury selection in his trial in Greensboro, North Carolina.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Frida Ghitis: Secret Service scandal is latest example of career-ending misbehavior
• She says men in positions of power and prominence risk everything
• John Edwards, a former presidential candidate, is on trial due to his misjudgment
• Ghitis: The common cause is arrogance, the belief they can get away with it

Editor's note: Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World Politics Review. A former CNN producer/correspondent, she is the author of "The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television."

(CNN) -- Are men stupid? How else can we explain the endless parade of otherwise successful individuals, who by all appearances seem intelligent and competent, and yet risk destroying their careers and their personal lives over the chance to have a sexual escapade?

John Edwards crashing from the heights of promise to infamy, from presidential candidate to defendant in a trial after a secret affair; Secret Service agents ending their careers in disgrace over dalliances with prostitutes in Colombia, all join that long procession of men who managed to self-destruct, pulling a pin on the grenade of their careers and perhaps their personal lives for the sake of a little fun.

The pageant of legacy-killing misjudgment includes a president, several might-have-been presidents, a few governors, a World Bank director, a former Dutch prime minister, an Israeli president and one of the top golfers of all time. And that is only a partial list.

Frida Ghitis

How to explain it?

The question has baffled women, mostly, since biblical times.

Perhaps the Secret Service agents thought their behavior, if discovered, would raise no eyebrows. But the stupidity was in evidence when one of the agents, who had earlier "protected" Sarah Palin, posted on Facebookthat he was "checking her out." Sounds like the claim of a 13-year-old boy. And the decision to post the comment displays the common sense of an 8-year-old.

But that level of maturity and judgment shines compared to the decision of, say President Bill Clinton, who risked his presidency to have an affair with Monica Lewinsky, and then lied about it repeatedly.

A brilliant man, everyone said about the president, but also one of only two presidents in American history impeached.

The Clinton experience almost numbed us to the epidemic scale of the problem. Over and over we hear stories that defy belief.

Men whose lives are filled with gifts and opportunity, men who have worked hard to achieve, risk it all and sometimes lose it all.

There's Edwards, of course, he of the winning smile, the heart-warming marriage, the beautiful children, and the gorgeous hair, still young enough to contemplate another run at the White House,now facing prison time after revelations that he had an affair, a child, and a complicated and foolish coverup during the last campaign

Another who might have reached the presidency, had he not succumbed to the same meltdown of reason is former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the law and order guy who threw it all away to cavort with prostitutes. He might have known someone would take relish in turning him in.

Some try to explain it as biology, testosterone's fault, they say. Others blame complex psychological needs. "The appeal of hookers lies in the temporary psychic relief they supply to men struggling with conflicts about guilt and responsibility," wrotepsychologist Michael Bader.

But I believe the common denominator, the proximate cause of the irrational behavior, is arrogance; the belief by some powerful men that they can get away with it. That the world is still their unchallenged domain, as it was years ago, when few people knew about a president bringing women to the White House to have sex, as John F. Kennedy did, or pressuring his secretary to yield to sexual advances, as was common. It is willful ignorance that the world has changed.

The sudden-IQ-drop syndrome affects Democrats and Republicans, Americans and Europeans, people of all colors and professions.

Did Tiger Woods think nobody would even learn about his affairs, with more than a dozen alleged relationships?

Did former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, who couldn't come up with an excuse so he simply disappeared to meet his Argentinian lover, think no one would find out?

Then there's the Democratic congressman who might have become mayor of New York. Anthony Weiner's tweeting ranks near the top of the stupidity charts.

But the competition is arduous. Republican Christopher Lee answered a Craigslist ad with a photograph of his flexed biceps, describing himself as a "fit fun classy guy."

Across the Atlantic, the man who almost everyone expected to become the next president of France, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, married to a multi-millionaire, may or may not have assaulted a maid at his New York hotel. (DSK denied the charges and the criminal case against him was dropped by prosecutors. He is seeking dismissal of a civil suit.)He now is under investigation in connection with procuring prostitutes for parties, a crime under French law.

The former Dutch Prime Minister, Ruud Lubbers, called it a "friendly gesture" after a woman accused him of "grabbing her behind." Lubbers had served as prime minister of the Netherlands, crowning a stellar career with a post as U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, when the accusations came. A U.N. investigation found no proof, but discovered a pattern of sexual harassment by the commissioner, which he also denied.

That we're finding out about these men, and that their political careers are in many cases ending, is a sign that society is changing. That it continues to happen, to seemingly intelligent, disciplined individuals, is a sign that the process will be slow. And that, in the final analysis, if it has to do with sex, some men really are stupid.

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