Band singer charged for sex with girl, 15, he met on MySpace.com
He’s busted when he crashes his car after they have sex
By Eric Litke
Sheboygan Press staff
The 20-year-old lead singer of a Milwaukee-area metal band was charged Friday with felony sexual assault for allegedly having sex with a 15-year-old Kewaskum girl after arranging the encounter on MySpace.com.
The girl had snuck out of her parents’ house to meet Randall S. Shesto II, 20, but the two were found out when Shesto crashed his car shortly after the two of them had sex, according to a criminal complaint.
Shesto, of Waukesha, was charged in Sheboygan County Circuit Court with sexual assault of a child, which carries maximum penalties of 25 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. He was released Friday on a $1,500 cash bond.
Sheboygan County District Attorney Joe DeCecco said Shesto has confessed to the crime.
The case has parallels to that of Jason Lee — a 22-year-old Hmong man convicted Wednesday of having sex with his 16-year-old wife when she was 15 — but DeCecco said Shesto will be treated differently. Lee accepted a plea deal under which the charge will be dismissed if he stays out of trouble for a year and performs 25 hours of community service.
“This isn’t some type of relationship,” DeCecco said of Shesto’s case. “He located a child that appeared to be somewhat vulnerable on the Internet, hooked up with her and then met her up here specifically for sex — I mean, there’s no talk of marriage or love — that makes a difference to us. It shows the exploitive nature.”
According to DeCecco and the complaint:
The girl told police the two met on MySpace and she knew Shesto only as RJ, though she had attended his concerts. Shesto is the lead singer of the band Nailwounds, a hardcore metal band according to its My Space Web site.
The pair’s first in-person meeting was the night of the alleged assault.
Shortly after 1 a.m. Jan. 12, Shesto picked up the girl and drove to a remote area in the Town of Scott, where he pulled off the road into a field entrance and the two had consensual sex in the back seat of his car.
The two were then driving on Mapletree Road north of Brazelton Drive about 1:40 a.m. when Shesto veered off the road and crashed the car, according to the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Department. Both suffered minor injuries in the crash.
DeCecco said the girl was fortunate nothing worse happened.
“Maybe young people just think they’re invincible, and they know what they’re doing,” he said. “Unfortunately, they have no idea what’s out there in the world, the type of twisted people that won’t think twice about doing some very serious things to them, including killing them to cover their own tracks.”
Capt. Dave Adams of the sheriff’s department said the department has investigated about 10 cases of underage sex involving the Internet in the last year or two.
“We’re finding more and more cases where MySpace or a chat (Web site) facilitates it, partly or totally,” he said.
Fred Sutkiewicz, a psychologist for the Sheboygan Area School District, said parents need to be as vigilant in knowing their children’s online whereabouts as their real-world whereabouts.
To that end, Sutkiewicz recommended keeping all computers in community rooms — so children know a parent could walk by at any moment — and creating a contract with children under which they agree to certain boundaries in exchange for the privilege of Internet access. He said parents should talk with their children about their online habits or find other ways to monitor if they are abiding with the contract.
In July 2006, an Oostburg mother thwarted a sexual encounter when she uncovered sexual dialogue on her 14-year-old daughter’s MySpace account and plans of a “menage a trois” with another girl and a 20-year-old man, according to the sheriff’s department.