It went down to the wire.
After five years of legal wrangling and before a jury was seated Oct. 20, Joseph Edmund Chiquet — the Bradenton Beach man arrested in 2009 for promoting the sexual performance and pornography of a 15-year-old Manatee High School student — entered a no-contest plea agreement to more than 20 felony charges.
At a sentencing hearing two days later, the convicted 39-year-old Chiquet stood silently, eyes downcast, next to his attorney, Mark Lipinski, as 12th Circuit Judge Charles E. Roberts sentenced him in accordance with the plea.
The judge meted out 10 years prison time in the Florida Department of Corrections, followed by 10 years on sex-offender probation, with credit for time served.
The fourth prosecutor assigned to the case, Assistant State Attorney Anthony DaFonseca, said he was prepared for trial Oct. 20 when Lipinski offered the plea agreement.
Before accepting it, DaFonseca said he spoke at length with the victim and her mother.
“We accepted the plea. We’re really very happy with it,” said Holly Cameron, the victim’s mother, who moved from Manatee County with her daughter shortly after Chiquet’s arrest.
Lipinski’s first offer was only eight years prison time, she said.
“I believe justice prevailed,” Cameron said. “We got the bad guy and the world is a better place for it. Your area no longer has this wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
The victim’s mother watched as the judge delivered the expected sentence, sitting next to Bradenton Beach detective Sgt. Lenard Diaz in the sixth-floor courtroom of the Manatee County Judicial Center, 1051 Manatee Ave. W., Bradenton.
Diaz had been the lead detective on the case since Chiquet’s arrest, and last month predicted the plea agreement “because there is so much evidence against him.”
According to DaFonseca, Chiquet’s actual prison time may be adjusted by the state’s calculation of “gaintime” — an incentive for inmates used to reduce their sentence by good behavior — in addition to time credited for his loss of liberty since his arrest.
Chiquet served 1,565 days in county jail.
The victim’s mother estimated Chiquet’s actual time in prison will be about five years.
After his arrest July 14, 2009, police seized pornographic pictures and material pertaining to the 15-year-old following searches of Chiquet’s residence and vehicle, and the prosecutor added the porn charges.
While out on bond in 2010, Chiquet was re-arrested for witness tampering after he allegedly offered an ex-girlfriend $10,000 to tell law enforcement she was depicted in the pornographic photographs and not the 15-year-old girl.
Chiquet’s bond then was revoked and he returned to jail.
Since 2010, his case saw two evidence-related appeals, and Lipinski twice suggested his client was incompetent.
After mental health experts weighed in, incompetency rulings resulted in Chiquet being transferred to a mental health institution to regain competency and, in August, the judge ruled him competent.
Over the years, Cameron, a state trooper’s daughter, said she’d been a driving force in the case, making numerous phone calls to law enforcement, closely following the case and attending court proceedings.
Asked what she thought about the back-and-forth competency claims, she called the efforts were fabrications and needless delay.
At one point before Cameron’s deposition in June 2010, she learned an investigator from the defense met her daughter at a public library and asked her “a bazillion questions.”
The investigator told her daughter “the whole thing could be over” if her mother signed a paper, she said.
Hearing this, Cameron said she was “beyond angry” but believed her daughter could have arranged the meeting because she was talking to Chiquet’s family at the time.
Before and for some time after Chiquet’s arrest, her daughter had been brainwashed into believing Chiquet loved her, she said.
Chiquet knew she was 15 and had lied about his age, she said.
“He had separated her from all her friends and family. He made her believe that there was no one she could trust. That couldn’t have been further from the truth,” Cameron added.
Cameron first suspected something was wrong when her daughter, an A-student and athlete, began losing friends, and her grades dropped.
After seeing a series of texts between the two, Cameron spoke to Chiquet, who told her he was 17 years old. And she caught him in the lie.
She began reaching out to her daughter’s friends and their parents.
Her investigation led her to a closed skate shop on Manatee Avenue near the high school, where her daughter first met Chiquet, and the landlord told her about Chiquet’s activities and how the shop closed when he failed to pay rent.
From her daughter, she gradually learned some of what happened in Chiquet’s apartment.
In her deposition, Cameron testified about her daughter’s visits to Chiquet’s Bradenton Beach apartment on the 500 block of Gulf Drive, and seeing one photograph, which portrayed her daughter naked on a coffee table.
She testified about Chiquet choking her daughter until she passed out and grabbing her arms and threw her against a wall.
Cameron said Chiquet may have victimized other underage victims who have not come forward, but understands and respects their reasons.
She believes her daughter is now making better choices after learning about inappropriate behavior, including Chiquet’s sexual and violent acts, kiddie-porn and “him offering her off to others, which he did,” Cameron said.
“The lesson I’ve learned is no matter how good of a student or athlete your child is, you really have to stay on top of them,” she said.
“Because something like this can do a lot of damage in a short period of time,” Cameron said.
At press time, Chiquet was in the Manatee County jail, awaiting transfer to state prison.
Sentenced to the maximum 10 years on the second-degree felonies and five years on the third-degree felonies, his sentences will run concurrently, according to DaFonseca.
According to court records, the charges included Chiquet’s commitment are:
· Two counts of lewd and lascivious conduct, battery and exhibition to a child.
· Five counts of promoting the sexual performance of a child.
· One count of witness tampering.
· Sixteen counts of possession of child pornography.
DaFonseca emphasized the need for closure and optimism.
“This marks the end of an ugly chapter in her life. It is day one of her new life,” he said.
Great article!