In a story that has garnered national attention, Aimee L. Sword was sentenced Monday to serve 9-30 years in prison for sexual misconduct with a boy she had given up for adoption as an infant.
In 2008, Sword tracked the boy down through Facebook, after she failed to receive an annual report from the Grand Rapids couple that adopted and raised him. Unfortunately, seeing the boy, then 14, triggered instincts in the biological mother that were not maternal. As her lawyer Mitchell Ribitwer told the New York Daily News: "When she saw the boy, something just touched off in her, and it wasn't a mother-son relationship..."
Unaware that Sword's sexual interest was piqued, the adoptive family permitted the boy to visit her. It seemed safe enough, since Sword was married with five children.
But the artful and insistant Sword seduced the boy, ignoring the maternal link and the fact that the boy had not reached the age of consent, not to mention the 20 year age difference.
According to the boy's testimony at Sword's preliminary examination, Sword had sex with him at a motel, and the Waterford Twp home of one of Sword's relatives. Finally, the boy reported the incidents to a counselor.
Sword ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of first degree criminal sexual conduct in exchange for dismissal of other charges. At Monday's sentencing, she apologized for her actions.
The prosecutor was less than forgiving, characterizing Sword's sexual contact with her biological son, now 16, as a "selfish, cowardly, dispicable act."..
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