Representing Juvenile Offenders in Ohio Juvenile Criminal Courts

Ohio Sex crimes Attorney Joslyn explains defending juvenile offenders charged with sex crimes. Joslyn Law Firm has successfully represented juveniles charged with sex offenses in Ohio and has the experience and knowledge to provide guidance to parents. A strong defense in these cases can minimize or eliminate the potentially severe consequences to a young person’s future. Call (614) 444-1900 or submit an online contact form to schedule a free initial consultation to discuss your case with one of our attorneys.

We handle a lot of cases involving juveniles accused of sex crimes. For obvious reasons, you know, children are curious about their bodies, their anatomy, their sexuality, and they often make mistakes in their youth. Generally speaking, if you’re under 10 years old, you don’t really see a lot of those cases in our juvenile courts. Because the prosecutor policy and position of a lot of those type of cases is they’re too young to go through our court system. When individuals are 10 or greater, you start to see that they start to actually charge the children for conduct. For children under 10, usually, it’s more of an involvement of children protective services and other agencies, job and family services, and police departments, that more council families and provide guidance and make sure that there’s safety precautions that are being put in place so that this type of conduct doesn’t continue. There are limited circumstances where a child that’s under the age of 10, that the conduct that’s alleged is so egregious that they will charge them. Generally speaking, that’s left for more social services type of outcomes. When they turn 10, and 11, and 12, and as you start to tick up to 17 years of age. The cases start to be handled and scrutinized more and more. Because as you grow older, the courts and prosecutors view your conduct more serious, because you should know better. So a typical 10 or 11 year old that gets accused of touching another, or committing some type of sex crime, it’s probably not gonna be geared more towards a detention home sentence or a detention youth services sentence, or they’re being incarcerated. It’s gonna be more probably about educational awareness, and supervising them and getting the type of evaluations they need to make sure they understand that they can’t conduct themselves this way. When you start to hit 12, 13, 14, the prosecutor’s offices start to take a little bit of a different position, and depending on exactly the type of sex crime you’re being accused of, you’re starting to be more likely to be placed into some type of a facility. Especially depending on which county you might be being accused of this crime in. prosecutor’s offices handle these cases differently, as people age. And when they start to turn 14, 15 and 16, you certainly see a change in how prosecutors want to pursue these cases. They’re not as apt to just quickly offer you the types of things like counseling, and educational classes as a form of punishment. And it becomes more realistic that you could very well potentially do some juvenile hall time or some detention youth services time. It’s not guaranteed, but certainly, it becomes more likely. And then when you’re 16, 17 and creeping into 18, you really need to be on the lookout there, because if you’re adjudicated for certain sex crimes, you’re chances of going are extremely high, it’s just a matter of how long. And the courts, even though you turn 18, can hold you up until your 21st birthday. And a lot of people say, he’s about to turn 18, so all of this will go away, no. the juvenile court retains jurisdiction over for this conduct all the way up until they’re 21 years of age. And they can choose to, the prosecutor’s office, bind it over as an adult. It’s a rare process, and it’s usually only done in crimes that involve the most egregious type of alleged conduct. But it can be done. And a juvenile can be charged as an adult when they’re closer to 18.