Hammond, INDIANA

Sentenced to more than 10 years.

Jan 14, 2008 - Matthew Hensley, 25, a coach at Andrean High School in Merrillville and St. Paul Elementary School in Valparaiso, was sentenced to more than 125 months in prison for using the Internet to find young girls for sex.

[U.S. District Judge Philip] Simon said he was troubled by Hensley's use of multiple online identities while chatting with an undercover agent posing as a 13-year-old girl. One personality claimed to be a young teen encouraging the agent to have sex with older men.

"That really is calculated," Simon said. "It's nefarious. And it's a window into what was going on in your mind."

Hensley was arrested in August 2006 at a park where he went to meet with what turned out to be an undercover agent posing as a 13-year-old girl. He was convicted by a jury in July of attempting to solicit sex from minors using the Internet.

From The Times (Munster, IN)

Unlike most other cases seen in Hammond District Court in the past year, the government did present an actual victim in Hensley's case: an 18-year-old California female who said she had been having sexually explicit Internet chats and phone calls with Hensley since she was 12.

AND,

[Hensley's attorney Alex] Woloshansky accused [U.S. Attorney Philip] Benson of "dirty" tactics by manipulating the court process to give Hensley a much longer prison term by delaying the sentencing date until after much harsher minimum mandatory sentences went into effect.

The minimum sentence Simon had to impose increased by more than three years because the sentencing hearing was held in January instead of the originally scheduled date last October, Woloshansky said.

Benson said Woloshanky's argument was inaccurate because the law that increased mandatory minimums for Internet sex predators went into effect in August 2006, and the delay in sentencing came about because of inaccuracies in a presentence evaluation for Hensley.

During Friday's sentencing, defense attorney Alex Woloshansky said Hensley had engaged in a harmless exercise in sexual fantasy.

"He engaged in what is commonly known as phone sex, over a computer," Woloshansky said. "There has been no harm done to anybody in this case except to Matt himself."

TT - That's a view not shared by the law or the courts.