The Accidental Sex Offender

Marie Claire:

It was a classic teenage love story. He was a football star, and she was a cheerleader. They met, they fell in love, they started having sex. And then the cops got involved. Fifteen years later, they're still paying the price.

Frank Rodriguez cannot coach his children's soccer teams. He can't get a job at a major corporation. He can't leave the state without registering with local law enforcement. A married father of four girls, he is a convicted sex offender. Neighbors can find his name and address on a public registry online.

His crime? Sleeping with his high school sweetheart 15 years ago. At the time, Frank was 19 years old, a recent high school graduate in the town of Caldwell, Texas. That's when he first had sex with Nikki Prescott, his future wife. The two had been dating for nearly a year; the sex was consensual. However, the legal age of consent in Texas is 17, and Nikki was just shy of 16. Nikki's mother, worried that her daughter's relationship with Frank was getting too serious, reported Frank to the police. She expected the cops to issue a warning, but instead she set in motion a legal nightmare from which Frank would never recover. He became a registered sex offender -- for life.

Today, Nikki, 30, and Frank, 34, both say they unequivocally support laws that put sexual predators behind bars and protect children from attacks. "The registry isn't a bad thing," says Nikki. "It's a good thing. It's just that Frank shouldn't be on it."

Read the whole story: Marie Claire

Comments

[shelomith stow]

02:20 PM on 07/14/2011

Nikki, I wish you and Frank the very best. I know of other couples in like circumstances, and no one should have to be punished for life because he or she made a mistake as a teenager. I must, however, take issue with something that you say. The registry does not, as you believe, save children from sexual assault. You see, children are not at risk from registered sex offenders. Most of them had offenses that didn't involve a child to begin with. But the real reason the registry is misguided and wasted resources is that, while children are at risk, while they are sexually assaulted daily, those assaulting them are not strangers on a sex offender registry; they are people well known to the children, often someone living in the same house with them. Focusing on the registry keeps us from facing this horrible truth and dealing with it.
Blessings on you and your family.

[TheLibraryOfCodex]

07:59 AM on 07/14/2011

The fact she married him doesn't make him any less of a sex offender.

[MissIndependentLady]

11:46 PM on 07/13/2011

This is such a sad story. I feel bad for the guy most of all. I don't think their relationship back then was grotesque. He was only four years older than her. Had the girl not told her mom that they were having sex, he would've never been seen as a sex offender in the eyes of the law. I was upset when I read the part that the cops had taken her to the hospital for a rape kit after she said the sex between her and her boyfriend was consensual. They're not allowed to do that, are they? If she yelled rape, I would understand. That mother is so stupid to turn him in.