Net case nets
6-month termArmando Sierra is sentenced
for trying to lure a girl for sex
through the Internet
A 50-year-old Mililani man who used the Internet to arrange what he thought would be a sexual encounter with a 13-year-girl was sentenced to six months in prison yesterday.
Armando Sierra, a copy machine repairman, had pleaded no contest to first-degree electronic enticement of a minor. On Sept. 9, Sierra arrived at Zippy's in Nuuanu expecting to meet the girl he had lured via the Internet. Instead, he was arrested by police, who had posed as a teenage girl on the Internet as part of a sting.
Sierra is one of six people charged so far under a new law that enables law enforcement to pose as minors on the Internet. The law is intended to prevent children from becoming victims of electronic enticement.
Sierra is the third to be sentenced and received the longest term so far. One defendant received no more than a month in jail. Another received a deferral of his plea, enabling him to eventually remove the charge from his record if he stays out of trouble.
Circuit Judge Michael Town denied Sierra's request to defer his plea and ordered him to serve five years on probation with jail as a condition.
In reaching his decision, Town said he considered the safety of the community and holding Sierra accountable for his actions.
"I need to impress upon you and the community that this kind of conduct must stop," Town said.
Deputy attorney general Kristin Izumi-Nitao argued for the maximum 10-year term based on Sierra's conduct, statements he made and a sex-offender evaluation that diagnosed him as a pedophile.
"When you really look at this case, it could have been a real child victim," she said.
Sierra is accused of engaging in at least six sexually explicit conversations through an Internet chatroom with "Lisa," who he believed was a 13-year-old girl.
In those conversations, he described what he wanted to do to her in terms that the judge said made him wince. Sierra also displayed himself nude through a Web camera.
He was arrested in September when he showed up at Zippy's on Vineyard Boulevard where he had arranged to meet the "girl."
Izumi-Nitao said Sierra also told a probation officer that he had chatted with 10 other girls under the age of 18 and that when he looked at girls under 13, he wanted to have sex with them.
"What happened here shocks the conscience," Town said.
Defense attorney Isaac Smith had opposed additional jail time for Sierra, saying it would jeopardize his new job and the eight months of a 2 1/2-year sex offender treatment program he has undergone. The program is not available for those incarcerated.
Sierra spent at least 50 days in jail after his arrest and was later released when the court reduced his bail. He voluntarily entered into sex offender treatment. If he goes to jail, he could get kicked out of the program, Smith said.
Sierra said he made a mistake when he logged on to the chatroom.
"I realize what I did was awful, very bad," he told the court. He said therapy has helped him identify and understand his problem.
Izumi-Nitao said national statistics from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children show 25 million children chat regularly online, and about one in five receives sexual solicitations.
Deterrence is only as good as the sentences handed down by the courts, she said.