Last Nov. 7, a Flagler County grand jury indicted 22-year-old Giovanni Gabriel Curtis, a Palm Coast resident, on a rape charge involving a child younger than 12. The offense occurred in Palm Coast when Curtis was 13 and the victim was 10. The victim was his younger brother. He similarly victimized one other sibling, but not in Flagler County, so he was not charged for those offenses.
Curtis, a diesel technician in the U.S. Army, was initially jailed where he was based in El Paso, Texas. He was booked at the Flagler County jail last Dec. 5 on no bond. He faced a charge of rape punishable by up to life in prison, and a charge of molestation punishable by 15 years in prison.
On Wednesday, Curtis pleaded guilty to two counts of child abuse and was sentenced to 10 years of sex-offender probation. But adjudication was withheld, which means he will not be branded a felon, and he will not be designated a sex offender. The more grave charges were dropped.
No one is disputing that the offenses related in Curtis’s arrest report took place. Curtis himself confessed, with great remorse.
The extraordinary resolution and “downward departure” from sentencing guidelines was the result of a negotiated plea between Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark and Curtis’s mother–the mother of both the defendant and the victim, or victims, as the case happened to be. Neither Curtis’s mother nor his siblings wanted him imprisoned. Neither wanted his Army career derailed. They want to continue to have contact, though that contact will be limited to electronic means.
The resolution was another example among many locally where similar charged offenses are resolved differently, depending on the wishes of the victim’s family. (See: “Day of Disparities: 3 Men Charged with Statutory Rape Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison, 4 Years in Prison, Probation.”)
Recognizing the disparity between the indictment and the negotiated plea, Clark gave Circuit Judge Howard Maltz a long prefatory brief to explain the plea to different, third-degree felony charges, based on many conversations with the family and a psychosexual evaluation.
“You can hear from her that we’ve had conversations about this,” Clark told the judge, referring to the mother. “This is what she would like to see happen, and why she would like to see this happen, and based upon those conversations, why I came up with a resolution for proposing today.”
The offenses happened when everyone was of minor age, but were not disclosed then, which is why Curtis was indicted as an adult. Otherwise, he would have been charged as a juvenile and the case disposed of at the time in juvenile court, likely with juvenile dispositions not dissimilar, if even less harsh, than those to which he pleaded on Wednesday.
It was Curtis’s mother who, in court, asked the prosecutor whether “we are talking about both victims,” when Clark asked her a series of questions. Curtis has four siblings.
“I know that during the course of the investigation there were allegations made that your son, the defendant, Giovanni, had also done similar acts to other siblings,” Clark asked the mother, who confirmed it. “But fair to say, much of that happened in other jurisdictions.” So Curtis could not be prosecuted for those offenses in Flagler County.
“And you indicated to me that you had spoken to all of your children who were victims of Giovanni, and you indicated to me that as this family discussion went down, that you all agree as a family, you did not necessarily want the defendant to be labeled a sex offender,” Clark said.
“That is correct,” the mother said. “Because he is still at this point in time enlisted in the Army, the family had agreed that that was the one thing that we were trying not to take away from him, so that he could remain accountable. We feel like the military would keep him accountable to some terms.”
The same principle applied to the family wishing for adjudication to be withheld, “to potentially give your son, the defendant, an opportunity to kind of get his life back on track, be able to have an occupation, things of that nature,” Clark said.
The mother said some of the siblings are not sure at the moment whether they want contact with him, but she did not want the possibility of contact eliminated. She said the conditions of the plea were “absolutely” in the best interest of the family.
The negotiations also determined the sort of sex-offender conditions that would apply during the 10 years of probation, even though Curtis would not be legally defined as a sex offender.
“I’ll go along with the plea agreement because I trust the state knows its case better than I do,” the judge said. He read the conditions of probation: lie-detector tests, prohibition on porn or access to the internet outside of work duties, without permission from his counselor, no work or volunteering at places where children gather, including parks, day cares and schools, no Halloween costumes, no drugs or alcohol, required random urinalysis, plus sex offender treatment and substance abuse evaluation.
He was to also wear a GPS monitor. The mother objected, saying that it would prevent his return to the Army. The judge relented, though he termed himself “surprised” that the military would take him back.
“I have not spoken to them,” Clark said of the military. “I have had other cases where they have kept people in the military when they’re on felony probation, but I don’t know what they will do in his circumstance.”
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