Syracuse, NY - A student teacher from a Connecticut school for the deaf, accused of coming to the Syracuse area for a sexual encounter with an underage girl he'd met in an on-line chat room, admitted his guilt this morning in Onondaga County Court. Micah S. Brown, 30, pleaded guilty before County Judge William Walsh to a single felony...
Micah BrownSyracuse, NY - A student teacher from a Connecticut school for the deaf, accused of coming to the Syracuse area for a sexual encounter with an underage girl he'd met in an on-line chat room, admitted his guilt this morning in Onondaga County Court.
Micah S. Brown, 30, pleaded guilty before County Judge William Walsh to a single felony count of third-degree criminal sexual act in exchange for a promised sentence of one to three years in prison.
That is just part of the plea deal: Brown also will be required to plead guilty to a federal charge for which he faces a sentence of at least 10 years.
The details of the federal plea have not yet been finalized, defense lawyer Randi Bianco told Walsh.
In pleading guilty to the state charge, Brown admitted he engaged in an act of oral sex with a 16-year-old girl Feb. 13 at her home in Marcellus. Authorities said the girl invited Brown to her residence - while her parents were away for the Valentine's Day weekend - where they drank alcohol, smoked marijuana and engaged in sexual activity.
She got caught when her parents returned home and found liquor bottles and a liquor store receipt and the girl confessed what had happened.
The parents then notified police and authorities set up a sting to have Brown come back to the area. Brown thought he was meeting the girl and a second girl at a DeWitt motel when he showed up and was arrested April 20.
Officials said Brown met the victim in an on-line chat room in October when Brown initially helped the girl with some math homework. The relationship led to an exchange of sexually explicit messages and sexually explicit photographs of each other before the girl and Brown met for a first date at the Lights on the Lake in December, authorities reported.
Assistant District Attorney Cindi Newtown said federal authorities decided to pursue a prosecution of the Internet-related charges in the case because federal law has much harsher penalties for that kind of conduct than state law.
That left the District Attorney's office to prosecute the Class E felony sex charge for the sexual encounter between Brown and the victim, Newtown said.
Brown faces a mandatory minimum penalty in federal court of 10 years in prison, Newtown said in explaining the two-pronged prosecution deal.
At the time Brown and the victim met on line, Brown was a 29-year-old graduate student in secondary education at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
At the time of his arrest, he was a student teacher at the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, Conn.
The victim told police she discovered Brown was older and deaf early on in their on-line relationship.
Brown entered his guilty plea today through a sign-language interpreter.
Newtown said Brown sacrificed the teaching career he had been working toward as a result of his conduct. His conviction will require him to register as a convicted sex offender.
Newtown also said the case should serve as a warning to parents to be alert to what their children are doing on the Internet.
"It's becoming a huge epidemic of a problem," she said of the kind of relationship that developed between the victim and Brown.
Walsh scheduled sentencing for Sept. 8 but said that date would be adjourned until after Brown pleads guilty and is sentenced in federal court.