First Degree Sex Abuse: NY Penal Law 130.65

Any and all arrests for one of the three degrees of Sex Abuse is New York is potentially catastrophic, but if you are charged with and indicted for First Degree Sex Abuse, Penal Law 130.65, not only do you face a felony offense but the crime is considered a violent felony as a matter of law. If you are uninformed, your sex crimes attorney will explain that this means that unlike its lesser degrees, this First Degree offense mandates incarceration upon conviction along with similarly mandatory sex offender registration according to New York’s Sex Offender Registration Act, or SORA.

For the purpose of this offense and the lesser Penal Law 130.60 and 130.55, any allegation must be born from a non-consensual touching. More specifically, you commit this crime when your sexual touching, even without any penetration, is accomplished by force in fact or based on a threat of the same. Alternatively, instead of forcible compulsion, your purported victim was physically helpless to your sexual advances and contact, he or she was ten years of age or younger, or a complainant is no older than twelve and you are at least twenty-one. Remember, the type of contact and touching that falls under the Sexual Abuse umbrella includes both on the skin and clothing contact with the penis, vagina, behind, breasts and intimate parts of the body as well as ejaculating on the clothing or skin of another person.

Though the criminal law could be violated in numerous ways according to the separate subsections, If under threat of attack whether by fist, knife, firearm, or some other object, you glide your fingers across the exterior of a woman’s skirt and on top of her vagina, or the target of your alleged sexual contact was a nine year old who did not want you to rub her breasts or his penis, you would find yourself charged with First Degree Sex Abuse and potentially other sex crimes codified in New York Penal Law Article 130.

The most severe of all the Sex Abuse crimes in New York, even if not the worst sex crime and a lesser offense than First Degree Rape for example, if you are convicted of Penal Law 130.65 you should expect that your sentencing judge will send you “upstate” for the presumptive minimum of two years and as long as seven years in a state prison. Keep in mind that once your required punishment in your prison cell has run its course, you will be added to the central database of the Sex Offender Registry (SORA). There, the police and the public will have access to your home address and law enforcement will have the ability to keep tabs on you for what will be measured not in years but decades.

No two cases are the same but there is a theme that runs strong through all felony sex crime cases: the police will investigate allegations thoroughly, the District Attorneys will assign specially trained ADAs to prosecute them with any eye towards significant punishment an accountability, and judges will not hesitate to enforce the law to the fullest extent possible if they subjectively deem it appropriate.

As slowly as Sex Abuse cases may move through the criminal justice system post-arrest, things can move rather quickly in terms of securing evidence and building a viable defense. Be neither naïve nor foolish and educate yourself on the law while securing the attorney you believe has the ability to navigate the courts and law enforcement to put you in the best place to either prove your accuser wrong or mitigate the penalties you face. Remember, like it or not, once you are convicted you will have to wear the shame of being a registered sex offender for what may be the rest of your days.

With so much at stake, from your personal liberty and good name to your career and family, there is never a substitute for experience, knowledge and advocacy. Jeremy Saland, a former prosecutor and sex crimes defense attorney who has secured non-prosecutions without an arrest, dismissals and downward departures pre-trial, and acquittals after trial, is ready and able to protect and defend you now and throughout the harrowing criminal justice process.

Call us at 212.312.7129 or contact us online today to speak with Jeremy Saland, a criminal attorney and former Manhattan prosecutor.