A registered sex offender and an Internet acquaintance from England were sentenced to prison after they were found guilty of molesting three young brothers.
Jerry Lester Wiley, 45, of Lady Lake and Miles Esterson, 28, of London pleaded no contest to lewd and lascivious conduct, second-degree felonies that had been reduced from capital sex battery of the boys.Wiley, a registered sex offender, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, Esterson to five.
Both men had faced possible life sentences if they had been convicted as originally charged.
Their trials had been scheduled to begin this weekwith Circuit Judge Mark Hill presiding, according to court records.
Assistant State Attorney Lori Lockshin said the boys' mother wanted to spare her children the ordeal of a criminal trial, which would likely have forced them to detail the sexual encounters with the men in Florida hotels.
The charges in Lake County involved sex abuse that occurred at a Days Inn in Leesburg.
The boys, who range in age from 5 to 11, told Lake County investigators that they had been molested several times during the course of two summers while on vacations with the men, friends of their father.Lockshin said investigators had no evidence that the boys' father knew of the abuse, pointing out that he had passed lie-detector tests. Authorities also could not say if the father knew Wiley was a registered sex offender.
The boys' father often slept in an adjoining room.
Wiley, then 22, was sentenced in 1986 to 20 years in prison for sexual assaulting Mount Dora children.
Lake County sheriff's detectives said Wiley and Esterson apparently met online as Wiley ran a computer business from his home in Lady Lake and Esterson was a computer expert who worked at a girls' school in London.
Wiley and Esterson were arrested last summer at Wiley's home.
According to a search-warrant drafted by Detective Chris Loyko, the youngest brother said Wiley had threatened to "whoop" him if he told anyone about what happened in the hotels between them and their father's friends.
But one of the boys broke his silence when he returned home from visiting his father.
The brothers lived in Georgia with their mother but spent summers with their father in Leesburg.
They told investigators they were molested numerous times by the men, who took turns. At hotels, the boys shared a room and beds with Wiley and Esterson, while their father and a sister had a separate room.
Wiley refused to speak with detectives.
But according to the search warrant, Esterson admitted that he paid for their admission, travel, hotel rooms and other theme-park accommodations for the boys and their father, and had taken them shopping.
"25% of all sex offenders re-offend within 15 years"
.........Sarah Tofte
.........Sarah Tofte
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