After soliciting a minor for sex, last summer, a Centreville man received a suspended sentence in court, last Friday. However, he must receive mental-health treatment and undergo a sex-offender evaluation.
He is Kaleb S. St. Clair, 36, of 14513 Castleford Court in Crofton Commons. The incident occurred Aug. 16, 2003; Fairfax County police charged him with attempting to persuade an underage person to commit crimes against nature.
ACCORDING TO POLICE, around noon that day, St. Clair asked a neighborhood boy to call him. Believing the man wanted yardwork done, the boy did so. And when St. Clair asked him to come to his house, the boy went there with two friends.
However, St. Clair invited them to watch pornographic movies with him. They declined and left; later that day, St. Clair solicited one of them for sex. He declined, and police were notified.
The grand jury indicted him Nov. 17 and, Feb. 3 in Circuit Court, he pleaded guilty before Judge Stanley Klein. However, Klein didn't accept his plea until just before Friday's sentencing.
"My client suffers from a number of health problems," said defense attorney Katherine Carlo. "He'd just woken up and had alcohol [when the incident occurred]."
"Three boys would testify that he did what they said he did," said Klein. "And what concerns me is that he takes no responsibility for it."
Replied Carlo: "His conversation with them was entirely inappropriate, and he admits that. He has mental-health problems that he needs to deal with."
THE JUDGE told her he wanted some statement from St. Clair showing his "remorse and regret." Carlo explained that, since her client has agoraphobia and claustrophobia, it's been difficult to establish a rapport with him. But after they conferred, St. Clair stood and — in front of his wife — apologized.
"I'm very sorry," he said. "It's bothered me, my wife, my family. I have done wrong. I've prayed every day that God forgives me for what I said to those boys. I apologize to them, to the court, to my family and to my two children. I take full responsibility, and I ask for mercy."
Klein sentenced St. Clair to 30 months in prison, suspending it all and placing him on three years active probation. He ordered him to receive whatever mental-health counseling, treatment and testing his probation officer deems appropriate. The judge also ordered St. Clair to undergo a sex-offender evaluation and to completely abstain from alcohol.
"I understand that the combination of alcohol and medication could have caused you to say things you wouldn't otherwise have said," said Klein to St. Clair. "I really hope this was an aberration and is something that will never happen again."