Lisa Roose-Church

Livingston Daily

A 39-year-old woman, who was “blackout drunk” when she mistook her then-11-year-old son for her boyfriend and molested him, was sentenced Friday to county jail time.

Judge Michael P. Hatty told the mother that children have an absolute right to feel safe and she took that away from her son. He sentenced the woman to one year in the Livingston County Jail and five years of probation for second-degree criminal sexual conduct. An allegation of third-degree child abuse was dismissed in a plea deal.

“It’s clear in this circumstance there was an unlawful touching of a child,” the judge said. “I’m certain that the degree of intoxication contributed to this crime being committed. …

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“I’m confident this was a case of two touches, one of the child and one of the mother guiding the child’s hands to her private parts and that was done while she was believing that person was her boyfriend and not her son, but nonetheless it doesn’t justify it in anyway,” Hatty said.

The Livingston Daily is not identifying the woman because it can identify her son.

“I’d like not to speak,” the woman said when asked if she wanted to make a comment.

Assistant Prosecutor Scott Ehlfeldt said he was “struck by” the defendant’s statement that “she believes her son was telling the truth.” He said “excessive alcohol abuse … clearly played a part in this incident” and that she acknowledged she “was blackout drunk” when she molested her son.

The woman's level of intoxication was not known.

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“My concern is, though, regardless of how intoxicated one gets, I cannot fathom a circumstance or scenario like this,” he said.

“I believe at some level she was aware of what she was doing to her son,” Ehlfeldt added. "She failed in grand fashion to do the one thing a mother should and that is to protect her son. … Whatever she was supposed to do in ensuring the protection of the young man, she put herself in a position where she became the danger.”

Defense attorney Terry Olson said his client “would never have abused her child” sexually had it not been for the combination of alcohol consumption and mental illness.

“That caused her to believe in that moment of total drunkenness that she was actually touching her boyfriend. That’s what I think happened in this case,” the defense attorney said. “It was a tragic, horrible error. …

“I see no reason why she would call out the name of her boyfriend, no other rational explanation, than she thought at that moment she was touching her boyfriend,” Olson added. “I don’t think she was a pedophile before this and I don’t think she’ll be a pedophile again.”

Contact Lisa Roose-Church: 517-552-2846 or lrchurch@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @LisaRooseChurch.