Outrage After Teen Gets 10 Years for Oral Sex With Girl -honor student/star athlete Genarlow Wilson

Feb. 7, 2006 — A wild New Year's Eve two years ago has landed a Georgia teen in prison for 10 years on charges of child molestation in a case that has state legislators reworking the strict law that put him behind bars.

Genarlow Wilson and a group of friends had the kind of bash no parent would want their teenager to attend. Crime scene investigators combing the room in a Days Inn in the small town of Douglasville, Ga., found evidence of drinking, as well as condoms and wrappers littered all over. Plus, there was a video camera.

In a portion of a tape obtained by "Primetime," Wilson, then 17 and an honor student and star athlete who was homecoming king, is seen having intercourse with a 17-year-old girl, who was seen earlier on the bathroom floor. During the sex act, she appears to be sleepy or intoxicated but never asks Wilson to stop. Later on in the tape, she is seen being pulled off the bed.

Other portions of the tape show a second girl, who was 15 and later said she did not drink that night. She was recorded having oral sex with several boys in succession, including Wilson.

The following morning, Wilson got a phone call that would change his life. He learned from a friend that the 17-year-old had gone to the police to report that she'd been raped.

"I was, like, 'What? When was this happening? Did this happen at the same party I was at?'" Wilson said. "It was shocking to me."

A Decade in Prison Authorities believed the 17-year-old alleged rape victim and said she was too intoxicated to consent to any sexual acts, which is what Georgia law requires, otherwise these acts can be considered rape.

Six boys, including Wilson, were arrested on various charges, including rape. District Attorney David McDade said the videotape was critical to his case. "There is no doubt that without the videotape we would have to be relying on the statements of these young people, and that would have been a more difficult prosecution," he said.

Wilson maintained his innocence. "I know that it was consensual," he told "Primetime." "I wouldn't went on with the acts if it wasn't consensual. I'm not that kind of person. No means no."

Five of the boys accepted plea deals, but Wilson -- the only one without a police record -- held out. "I knew Genarlow's state of mind," said his attorney, Michael Mann. "He wasn't going to prison willingly. He wasn't going to plea to something in his mind he didn't do."

He stood trial in February 2005 for five days. And at first, the jury's deliberations moved swiftly. Jurors voted to acquit Wilson of raping the 17-year-old.

"I mean it wasn't even an hour," said jury forewoman Marie Manigault. "We immediately saw the tape for what it was. We went back and saw it again and saw what actually happened and everybody immediately said not guilty."

But there was one other charge the jury had to decide on. The second girl in the videotape was 15, and the age of consent in Georgia is 16. And under state law, prosecutors charged Wilson with aggravated child molestation. To those close to the young man, it was an outrage.

And in Georgia, that they'd had oral sex made matters worse. Until 1998, oral sex between husband and wife was illegal, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. In Wilson's case, even though he is only two years older than the girl, she was 15 and -- willing or not -- could not consent legally that night.

Whatever their feelings about the law, jurors felt they had no choice but to find Wilson guilty of aggravated child molestation. Moments later, back in the jury room, jurors were told for the first time that the conviction came with a mandatory sentence of at least 10 years in prison. In addition, Wilson would be forced to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

McDade said Wilson could have had a better outcome if he had accepted the plea deal. "What I believe is that Genarlow Wilson listened to people who were trying to use this case for another agenda and he followed their advice," he said. "Do I believe that [in] Genarlow Wilson's case justice would have been served if he accepted a lesser plea? Sure I do. I wish he had of. Sure I do."

'Doing What's Right' Before the incident, Wilson -- by any measure -- had beaten the odds. The son of a single mom, the high school senior was an honor student and an all-conference football player and track star, with offers to play in college. He was popular enough to be elected homecoming king at Douglas County High.

"I was the first-ever homecoming king at my high school," he said. "That was a very great privilege for me."

Atlanta attorney B.J. Bernstein has filed Wilson's appeal. She said prosecutors should never have brought charges and that justice should have been meted out at home.

And a state legislator who helped pass the molestation law said it was never meant to police teen sex.

"The legislative intent was to protect women and children from sexual predators," said Rep. Tyrone Brooks, a Democrat in the Georgia State Assembly.

As the court considers Wilson's appeal, the Georgia legislature is rewriting the law that sent Wilson to prison. In a bill that has passed the House and is pending in the Senate, the crime would become a misdemeanor, punishable by no more than a year in prison, or even probation. And anyone convicted would not have to register as a sex offender.

Today Wilson remains as steadfast as ever about not taking the deal that would have reduced his sentence by half.

"It's all about doing what's right," he said. "And what's right is right, and what's wrong is wrong. And I'm just standing up for what I believe in."

This whole thing is a travesty of injustice and a huge waste of taxpayers' money. In most of these cases where a girl eagerly goes to the same sort of party she's gone to and enjoyed before, and does the same sort of ill-advised things she's done and enjoyed before, and then cries "Rape!", it's because this time her parents somehow found out, and it was lot easier to claim she was an unwilling victim than to say "Look mom and dad, I really LIKE getting drunk off my a$$ and getting laid by several different guys in a row". First story puts mom and dad into "Our poor little darling!" mode, while the second story puts them in "When we're done with you, you'll wish you'd never been born!" mode (somehow, nothing ever seems to put them into "Man, did we ever screw up bad in raising you!" mode). And how does a 17 year old boy getting "serviced" by a 15 year old girl constitute "child molestation"? They're both "children" and very close in age, and SHE was more active participant in the event. How come that doesn't make HER a "child molestor"?

This was a bunch of undersupervised teenagers all willingly behaving like wild animals. How does one of them end up in prison, with the total tab to the taxpayers for his trial, public defender, imprisonment, likely to top $1 million? Add in the fact that he won't be working and paying taxes for up to 10 years, and that this record will put a major damper on his future employment opportunities that will cut his lifetime earnings and tax payments in half, and we're probably looking at closer to $2 million.

No society has prospered once this action was taken, Not one.

I'd sure like to know what evidence you are basing that broad statement on.

The increase in knowledge requires that they be responsible for that increased knowledge at an earlier age, and remove the years of no responsibility

You all keep talking about childhood as years of no responsibility. That seems to be the problem in a nutshell.

My children had many more years of responsibility as children before I threw them out in the adult world and let them make adult decisions. Those added years of learning responsibility have helped them make better decisons when the time came for them to be fully in charge of their life.

Throwing kids out into the world at an early age might have seemed to work in the 'old days', but children were also raised a lot different than parents are raising their children now. Society as a whole was,at least outwardly, more moral. Children worked a lot harder and a lot more was expected out of them in terms of good behavior and perhaps they did learn more responsibility at a younger age.

I can't understand the people that seem to think that children getting married younger is somehow going to make our society more moral. That is just whack! We would only end up exchanging one problem for another, as cases of adultery would go up. I guess we would have a lot less problem with pedophiles, though.

I'm not a feminist by any stretch of the imagination, but I have to point out that in 'the old days' it was more prevelant for young girls to marry older men. While the girls might have been 13 or 14, the men was usually 19 or older. The girls usually had little choice in who they married due to the fact that their parents pick and chose who they could socialize with and marry. I don't think we can begin to imagine how many desperately unhappy marriages there were in the 'old days'. I would never condemn my daughters to making a life choice like that when they were 13 or 14. They don't even know enough about life to make a choice on a mate for life if it was up to their choosing.

>>People got married at puberty!>> Yes, and the marriages LASTED!

Go to an old age home and have a talk with some of the old women there. My mom is in a home in a rural area of the south. It was very traditional for women of their age to get married young and raise a family.

Sitting around talking to those women is a real eye-opener. I told my mom that it freaked me out how many women told me they were so unhappy in their first marriages that they were happy when their husbands died. Yes, those marriages lasted for years because it was taboo to get a divorce in this very moral, rural community, but this idea that they all were happy and everything was just great is far from the truth.

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