Greenfield man sentenced to decade in prison for unlawful sexual conduct with a minor

A Greenfield man was sentenced Tuesday afternoon to 10 years in prison after previously pleading guilty to multiple counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.

As previously reported, Zachary T. Jensen, 30, was initially charged in June with three counts of rape, all first-degree felonies; two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, both third-degree felonies; and one count of gross sexual imposition, a third-degree felony.

On Oct. 29, Jensen pleaded guilty to the two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor in the indictment as well as two additional counts of two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor contained in a bill of information (also third-degree felonies).

After accepting Jensen’s guilty pleas in October, Highland County Common Pleas Court Judge Rocky Coss ordered a pre-sentence investigation.

Under the plea agreement, the Highland County Prosecutor’s Office agreed to “take no position as to sentencing,” court records show. Highland County Prosecutor Anneka Collins told the judge Tuesday that the reason for that is because the victim in this case “asked that I not take a position on sentencing.”

In a lengthy address to the court, defense attorney Clyde Bennett asked Coss to sentence Jensen to community control “with mandatory intensive sexual misconduct treatment and therapy.

“Mr. Jensen is a 30-year-old productive member of society with the exception of his conduct with the victim in this case,” he said. “I think he needs treatment, not incarceration, and I think he’s amenable to treatment.”

Bennett also spoke about Jensen’s lack of prior criminal record, his compliance with pretrial supervision and the fact that he is “very remorseful.

“He did not contest these charges,” Bennett said. “He accepted responsibility without going to trial and without contesting the charges because he knew what he did was wrong.”

Bennett added that these crimes were “isolated” incidents.

Jensen also addressed the court, saying he was “sorry for what I did.

“I don’t by any means diminish how serious it was,” Jensen said. “It is not something I planned on doing. I didn’t seek out to do this. It’s a situation I found myself in, and it’s one that I didn’t know how to get out of when it continued happening.

“As terrible as this situation is, there is good that has come out of it. I have a family that still supports me through this. … I do have hope for the future no matter what you decide. I don’t know what else to say other than I’m sorry.”

A relative, who also addressed the court on Jensen’s behalf, agreed that they will “always support him and we will always love him” and that they have seen an “extreme amount of remorse on his part.”

However, Judge Coss told Jensen that “the court has concern about the danger you pose to others.

“I’ve been doing this 48 and a half years,” Coss said. “I’ve read lots of literature and looked at various reports about treatment of sex offenders, and it’s pretty much acknowledged that treatment for sex offenders — successful treatment — is very difficult.”

Coss added that the impact on the victim is “significant” and also must be weighed in his judgment.

“It’s clear you have real sexual deviant problems,” Coss told Jensen. “The experience that I have, and the data that I’m aware of, shows that sex offenders are at a high, high risk of reoffending.”

Coss said that imposing community control “would seriously demean, in my view of the evidence of what occurred here, the harm that occurred to this [victim].

“It would send a wrong message to the public that the court and the law doesn’t take into consideration of that, and the court has to,” Coss said.

Coss added, “There are various forms of the seriousness of this offense. Some cases, the victim is 15 years of age and a young man, maybe 20 or 21 or something like that, the parents were aware of it, they consented to it. Those are different situations. That’s not what happened here. This was just, pure and simply, sexual abuse of a child.”

Coss then sentenced Jensen to 30 months on each of the four counts, to run consecutively, for a total of 120 months in prison.

“I think you’ve been trying to minimize the seriousness of this,” Coss told Jensen. “These offenses were committed as part of a long-term course of conduct, repeated victimization. If it had been a one-time thing, that’s different, but this case, God knows how many times it happened.”

Jensen had 46 days of jail time credit. He will also be classified as a tier II sex offender, which requires registration every 180 days for 25 years.

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