Judge says sex offender's sentence keeps him 'on bigger hook'

The five months in Cook County Jail and four years of intensive probation imposed on Concepción Junetti Padilla Monday afternoon fell short of the three-year prison sentence prosecutors requested for the man convicted last month of sexually assaulting a Schaumburg teenager he met online.

But as Cook County Circuit Court Judget Thomas Fecarotta pointed out, that sentence "keeps the defendant on a bigger hook" by placing him under the court's jurisdiction for a significant period of time. Padilla faced up to seven years in prison for the Class 2 felony of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Probation was also available for Padilla who has no other criminal background.

Fecarotta also ordered Padilla to undergo sex offender counseling, perform community service in Illinois, adhere to a curfew and pay $7,000 in restitution to the victim's family for psychiatric treatment. He must also register as a sex offender.

Prosecutors said Padilla knew the girl was only 16 when he traveled from his New York home to have sex with her in the basement of her family's home while her father slept upstairs.

"I'm sorry. I was in love. I was in love," said Padilla.

Fecarotta doubted the declaration.

"With love comes respect, and with respect and love comes honor for the family of the person you love," said Fecarotta who agreed with the victim's parents who likened Padilla sneaking into their home to have sex with their daughter to an invasion.

"Because of him, I lost the sense of what real love was," said the victim, who was eight days shy of her 17th birthday in March 2009, when the incident took place.

Describing herself as Padilla's "puppet" she claimed he brainwashed and manipulated her.

"He was like a highly addictive drug I need to detox from," she said.

Rejecting her claims that Padilla threatened and manipulated her, defense attorney Nicolas Albukerk pointing out to the court that the voluminous e-mail correspondence between the two reveal no such manipulation, else prosecutors would have mentioned it.

Insisting his client is neither a predator nor nefarious, Albukerk argued the sex was consensual, referencing the young woman's admission that she sent Padilla nude photographs of herself and invited him to her home when she knew her parents would be out of town.

Consent was not an issue, declared Fecarotta.

"The only issue is whether the victim was 16, whether the defendant knew it and whether they had sex," he said, adding that if the victim were older than 17, the evidence would have favored the defense, Fecarotta said.

"There's no evidence he did this with anyone else," Fecarotta said.

However he said the facts - the online chat room meeting, the sex talk, the condoms Padilla brought with him - suggest a predator. Albukerk suggested it amounted to bad judgment.

"He made a mistake and he broke the law," said Albukerk and now he must register as a sex offender for 10 years.

"But we all know how the Internet works," Albukerk said. "In reality, it's for the rest of his life."

Fecarotta was undeterred

"Let's remember, the Internet got him here," Fecarotta said. "And now it won't let him loose."