Published: March 14, 2009 11:25 pm         

STEPHANIE SALTER: Are there ever mitigating circumstances when it’s a sex crime?

TERRE HAUTE — There are people who look at the arrest of Alex J. Edwards last week and see a tidy black-and-white picture of a man accused of one of the worst crimes in our society: sexual misconduct with a minor.

If Edwards, who tried to meet with a 14-year-old middle school girl, is prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to the maximum allowed, he will spend eight years in prison and be labeled as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

For people who see the distinctive, black-and-white picture, that will be appropriate justice, notice served that this community gives no quarter to child predators.

Although they usually are quiet about it, there are people who hold a somewhat different view. They look at Edwards, who turned 21 today in the Vigo County jail, and they see black, white and multiple shades of gray.

They see a tall, skinny, young man with an air of bewilderment that followed him from an afternoon arrest in a supermarket parking lot into Judge Michael Eldred’s courtroom the next day.

They see Edwards’ long drive from Racine, Wis., where, according to his uncle, Edwards lives with his mother, plays video games with his friends, had hoped to join the Navy, but possesses few social or intellectual skills to indicate an extraordinary future.

The people who see grays note the items police say Edwards brought with him to Terre Haute: an engagement ring, a love letter, ordinary photos of himself and an anniversary card for the 14-year-old. Cooperative with police, Edwards has readily acknowledged he visited the girl a few times over the past year, had sex with her once last summer (with a condom), and loves her.

If Edwards is prosecuted, convicted, sentenced to the max and branded forever as a sex offender, the people who see grays will consider the resolution legal overkill, a life-wrecking punishment disproportionate to the alleged crime.

Is it possible anymore, when a crime involves sex and a victim under the age of consent, to bring the black-and-white view and the gray one closer together?

Over the past few decades, in our admirable, ramped-up efforts to protect children from sexual predators, the notion of mitigating circumstances has virtually disappeared. The law still allows for some mitigation, but the general public is less inclined.

A sex crime involving a minor — whatever the circumstances — seems to elicit a one-size-fits-all condemnation. Along with terrorism, it is an offense about which few people talk of “degrees of guilt.”

As for allowing convicted offenders to pay their debt to society, a sex crime debt can’t be retired.

As some of the members of the Vigo County School Board recently demonstrated, a sex crime need not involve a minor to warrant a lifetime of societal shunning and alienation. To those board members, a child, teen or adult victim makes no difference. They want district policy to be amended so any paroled sex offender is barred from county schools.

Of course, Alex Edwards was not a paroled and registered sex offender when he walked into Otter Creek Middle School and asked a school secretary to give his 14-year-old acquaintance a cell phone. When the suspicious staffer followed protocol and school administrators called the girl’s home, they apparently learned enough to contact school corporation officials and law enforcement.

Local news media were alerted and advised to go to a north Terre Haute supermarket parking lot to cover the apprehension of an out-of-state man who had come to the middle school to meet up with an under-age student. Instead of a middle-age male with a computer full of child porn and the sick goal of having sex with a minor, reporters discovered 20-year-old Edwards and his card, letter, photos and ring.

“He’s not a predator, trolling the Internet for young girls,” said Edwards’ uncle, Bruce Edwards, in a telephone interview from Chicago. “He is an extremely immature, sheltered-by-his-mother, little-bit-slow young man.”

Alex Edwards, said his uncle, was raised by his grandparents and his single mother, who became pregnant at 17. Her boyfriend, Alex’s father, “was not in the picture.” Alex graduated from high school, hoped to go into the Navy on a delayed entry, and hadn’t much luck finding work.

“I’ve been trying to get him … to come to Chicago so I could give Alex some of my suits for job interviews,” said Bruce Edwards. “As a family, we’re, ‘How can this be?’”

Bruce Edwards said of his nephew’s alleged crime — having sexual intercourse with a 13- or 14-year-old — “He didn’t make a good decision.” No one, he said, expects nothing to happen to Alex, but must it look like prison and all that means?

Real predators exist, the uncle said, but distinguishing between their crimes and his nephew’s alleged crime is “what a justice system is supposed to do … You need to have a judge who can see the difference.”

During a probable cause appearance before Eldred in Division 1 court, Alex Edwards was asked numerous questions by the judge. Among them were whether Edwards had any psychiatric problems or ever took medication for such problems. Edwards said he had epilepsy and had taken medication for it, but now does not.

In the phone interview, Bruce Edwards ran through a list of prohibitions that will affect his nephew forever if he is sent to prison, survives and is placed on a national registry of sex offenders whose victims were minors.

Where will Alex live that isn’t off-limits? How could he get a job or ever again visit with his young nieces and nephews?

“He doesn’t drink or do drugs, he’s not violent. He likes cars and car stereos,” said Bruce Edwards. “He’s just a goofy kid that likes to hang out with his friends and play video games.”

To some people, that description will ring hollow, at best. They will look at Edwards’ age and the eighth-grader’s age and resonate with something school superintendent Dan Tanoos said after Edwards’ arrest: “This is a child, a 14-year-old child, a kid who didn’t deserve to be treated as anything but a kid.”

Other people will read Edwards’ explanation to reporters that he considered the six-year gap “the same as like a 26-year-old and a 20-year-old,” and those people will see black, white and lots more gray.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.