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ROGERS CITY -- The sexual assault of two girls justifies 10 years in prison for a Presque Isle County man, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday.
In October 2020, Judge Aaron Gauthier in Presque Isle County's 53rd Circuit Court sentenced Kenneth Kierzek, then 68, to 10 to 15 years in prison for touching a young girl in a sexual manner sometime between 2004 and 2006 and, in 2018, leading a 4-year-old girl to touch her genital area with a sex toy.
Kierzek pleaded guilty to those charges.
Gauthier's sentence nearly doubled the 5-year, 9-month sentence recommended by sentencing guidelines.
Had Kierzek sexually assaulted only one child, that lower sentence might have been adequate, Gauthier said at the sentence hearing.
Kierzek's admitted actions toward two children, separated by more than a decade, indicates "that your sexual deviancy is a significant feature of the arc of your life," Gauthier told Kierzek at the sentencing hearing.
Kierzek in his appeal argued that Gauthier should not have considered the two incidents as part of a pattern when imposing his stiffer sentence.
Guidelines suggesting a five-year limit to calling offenses a pattern are inadequate in Kierzek's case, given the circumstances of what he admitted to doing, the appeals court ruled on Thursday.
To limit a judge to the five-year standard "misses the whole point of departure sentencing," which allows a judge to decide that guidelines given by the state might not produce a sentence that fits a particular crime, the appeals court said, affirming Gauthier's decision.
To veer away from sentencing guidelines, "I would basically have to find that, in the category of (second-degree criminal sexual conduct) offenders, you're among the worst," Gauthier told Kierzek at the sentencing hearing. "I do think you are."