Required

Penalties For Sex Crimes in Virginia

Just as there are numerous different sex crime charges, the penalties can also vary between sex crime offenses in Virginia. The most heavily penalized sex crimes include violent sex crimes like rape, object sexual penetration, and forcible sodomy. At the other end of the spectrum, sexual battery is typically penalized as a misdemeanor. Below we discuss some common penalties for sex crimes in Virginia.

If you have been charged call today and schedule a free consultation with a sex crimes lawyer in Virginia.

Rape and Other Violent Sex Crimes

All violent sex crimes are categorized as felonies. In many cases, the punishment is a large number of years up to life. In all violent sex-related crimes, a person can get life imprisonment without a possibility of parole.

The general punishment for rape is five years to life, which is obviously a very large range. However, there are many other factors that go into this, such as whether the victim was over a certain age, or had some kind of mental incapacity. There are a lot of different factors that go into calculating exactly what the possible range of punishment can be for rape or object penetration or any of those other crimes. It is almost too many to list here, but the important thing to understand is that they are all very serious, none are less than five years, and most have the possibility of life in prison.

Long Term Implications

The long-term implications of these offenses are a lengthy potential prison sentence and the person will have to be a registered sex offender for the rest of their lives.

That means every single place that they live for the rest of their life they need to register with a state-sponsored list that identifies them to anybody that can look up on the Internet where they’re living or what they were charged with, what they were convicted of, and what kind of sentence they served. It will have their picture and their address up on the Internet for the rest of their lives. If they fail to maintain their registry and keep it up to date in places that they are living then that is a separate charge and the charge is treated very, very seriously.

Aggravated Sexual Battery

Aggravated sexual battery is a felony that is punishable by confinement not less than one nor more than twenty years. So it’s a 1-20 year felony. Although it does not carry a life sentence like rape, it is still a very serious offense,

Penalties for Sexual Battery in Virginia

Sexual battery is the one prevalent sex crime that is considered a misdemeanor. It is a class one misdemeanor which has been categorized as a penalty of up to 12 months in jail and up to a $2500 fine.