Flower Mound, Texas, October 9, 2007. Five years ago Timothy DavidSon,  a 19 year old African American male met a female in an internet chat room.   He arranged to meet her on a summer day at a park.  Both of them were sitting upright, and making-out in his vehicle.   An officer approached the vehicle and asked Timothy to get out.  There were no warrants, tickets, violations, priors, stereo-typical gang attire or slang.

As DavidSon recalls the police asked him to exit the vehicle, and after a series of questions wagered with him that the girl was underage.  The officer spoke with the girl, a white-female who was large for her age, and discovered she was thirteen.  DavidSon, startled by the girl’s revelation and police action was arrested and taken to the Garland, Texas police department.   The investigating officer asked DavidSon for a statement without an attorney present.  Given his own ambiguous statement, they charged him with aggravated sexual assault carrying a penalty of 3 to 99 years in prison.  The aggravated nature of the offense was based on her age.  The following week DavidSon received an email from the teenager against the desires of her parents stating that she was so sorry for lying to him (about her age), and that she would do anything to assist him.  The DavidSons still have the original email.

DavidSon’s father, Dr. Steven B. DavidSon a nationally known Christian counselor shares that it was just the beginning of the travesty.  Seeking an attorney, they identified Steven Hayden a Dallas attorney.  The elder DavidSon was adamant there would be no acceptance of any substantive jail time without a jury-trial.   Six months later, the Dallas District Attorney’s office offered deferred adjudication, a probation period, and thirty days in jail, which the DavidSons accepted. “As a father, I did not want to convey that he was without error.  We did not like it, but the offer appeared reasonable for his part.”

However, the DavidSon’s would be devastated by how swiftly justice can turn. When the day of the plea hearing arrived,  the DavidSons were supported by a host of members from their local church.  However, they all would be shocked by the court’s declaration.  Along with the matters agreed, the younger DavidSon was not to use the internet, and he was ordered to register as a sex offender.   

The elder DavidSon recalls, “Following the hearing, our representative’s advice was that I could manage my son’s use of the computer, and we needed to wait for a later period to challenge the registration issue.  We relied on his counsel, and it was worse than the judge’s decision.  Now, we are discovering that we should have responded immediately to the part of the plea we had not considered.“

Five years later, Timothy has been denied employment and terminated because of the registration issue.  He’s in a self-perpetuating fee-based probation system.  Recently, vigilantes started an internet campaign warning persons in the surrounding cities about Timothy as a registered child-molester.

His father concludes, “The American Way! We perpetuate a sexually promiscuous society, and when our young fall in the slightest way, we abort them before and after birth. Race and the other issues are symptomatic.  As with similar cases, this is about unparalleled darkness in this nation and world.   We’ll do what we can legally, and we pray that God will be glorified by our circumstances. But today, I’m similar to my spiritual namesake David who cried upon hearing the death of his son. I cry, ‘my son, my son, my son.’”