The Age of Consent: When Young Love Is a Sex Crime

March 7, 2008— -- This "20/20" story original aired on March 7. Tune in Friday, July 18 for John Stossel's special hour on "Sex in America."

Twelve years ago, Frank Rodriguez pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a child.

Faced with two to 20 years in prison on the charge, he signed a plea bargain that gave him seven years probation. He was told he must never be near children. That meant he couldn't be any place where children gather, like playgrounds or parks, which made it tough to find work.

"They literally just break you down to nothing," Rodriguez said. "They tell me I can't do this, I can't do this, you know. It gets real bad."

Rodriguez completed his seven years' probation without another violation, but he will forever be on the Texas sex offender registry. And what was the nature of the sex crime he committed? Well, when he was 19, Frank had sex with his 15 year-old girlfriend, Nikki Prescott, at her suggestion.

"It was my idea," she said. "I would say I pushed it more."

Nikki, now 27, was a freshman in high school at the time. Frank, now 30, was a senior. She says the relationship was not at all unusual at their high school.

"All my friends were having sex, all of them," Nikki said. "All my friends, you know, were dating older guys."

Nikki's mom, Melissa Wiederhald, knew her daughter was intimate with Rodriguez, and at one point even took Nikki to Planned Parenthood to get her birth control pills. She didn't like what the couple were doing, though, and she thought their relationship was getting too serious. One night, after an especially bad fight with Nikki, in a fit of anger, Nikki's mom made a fateful decision.

"I said, 'This is it,'" Wiederhald recalled. "I said, 'We're going to the police station.' I said, 'I've had it.'"

Wiederhald went to the police station because she knew that it was illegal for Rodriguez and her daughter to be having sex. The age of consent in Texas is 17, and Nikki wasn't quite 16. Wiederhald didn't think that Rodriguez was violating Nikki, but she felt she had no other way to make a point to her teenage daughter.