CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A judge in Cuyahoga County sentenced a former Olmsted Falls Boy Scout leader who sexually abused a former scout to eight years in prison.

Aaron Robertson apologized for "the mistakes that were made" and told the judge that he looked forward to being able to "create a business and move past this." He did so as the former Boy Scout he sexually abused several times sat quiet in the back of the courtroom and watched.

He watched as deputies led the man who will now have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

Tuesday marked the first time that the boy had been in the same room with Robertson since the 30-year-old pleaded guilty to multiple counts of sexual battery and gross sexual imposition last month and finally admitted what he had denied since the boy first came forward to authorities in 2016.

Robertson's attorney Jay Milano argued that the judge should impose a lesser sentence because the sexual abuse of the boy who was 13 years old was "consensual."

The boy wrote in a letter that Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Jeffrey Schnatter read aloud at the sentencing.

"However long you serve, I never want you to have any contact with me or members of my family," the boy wrote.

The hearing came about three years after Robertson, then an assistant scoutmaster in Olmsted Falls, first began abusing the boy.

The boy wrote in his letter that he and the other scouts in his troop looked up to Robertson, who in addition to being a scout leader was also an auxiliary police officer in Olmsted Falls and for the U.S. Coast Guard, a volunteer firefighter in Columbia Station and Lodi and a small business owner.

Plus, he had a cool truck, the boy wrote.

Robertson began grooming him through small physical touching, and eventually worked his way up to sexually abusing him, the boy wrote.

The abuse occurred on official scout functions in February 2015 at Camp Mantic, in November 2016 at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, in March 2016 at Camp Firelands, and in June 2016 at Seven Ranges Scout Reservation.

"You were in a perfect position to help kids," the boy wrote. "You wasted so much."