A former Lee County Sheriff’s Explorer post cadet was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years of sex offender probation after a judge ruled he didn’t deserve prison time for molesting two young boys.

The mother of one of the boys, who are not being named because of the nature of the charges, wept in court as she explained how the molestation by Bonita Springs resident Philip D. Moorehead, 21, keeps her son awake at night since charges were filed. Moorehead is accused of twice molesting one young boy after promising him Pokemon cards and cash in exchange.

“I don’t understand why. I have to live with this the rest of my life,” the woman told Lee County Circuit Judge James R. Thompson in court Wednesday. “It affected my son a lot.”

Moorehead – who applied to work with the Sheriff’s Office before his arrest – could have been sentenced to 12½ years in prison on the three counts of lewd and lascivious molestation charged after his August 2004 arrest.

But defense attorney Daniel Hanuka said Moorehead didn’t deserve prison or jail time. He requested probation for crimes prosecutors say he committed against relatives when he was 15 years old and 17 years old.

“It’s very difficult to know what sentencing is called for in this case,” Thompson said before ruling. “The parents of the children probably want you dead, in all candor.”

Thompson sentenced Moorehead as an adult to 10 years of sex offender probation. He must register as a convicted sex offender twice a year for the next 10 years, cannot obtain a job working with kids, cannot live near schools, parks or playgrounds and must continue sex offender treatment.

But Thompson decided to withhold adjudication of guilt, meaning that if Moorehead successfully completes his probation, he will not have a felony conviction on his record.

Hanuka said Moorehead cannot apply to have the sex offender designation removed until 30 years from now. For the next 30 years, Moorehead will be registered as a sex offender.

“They seem to be disappointed in the sentence, as am I,” said Assistant State Attorney Francine Donnorummo after the hearing. “It’s a very difficult situation, how to treat adults who (molest while teens).”

She said she will not appeal the sentence because it is legal.

“All through high school I’ve been bullied, picked on, beaten up,” Moorehead said, explaining that he was hospitalized after he told a friend he wanted to commit suicide.

But he became company commander in junior ROTC, was a member of the Boy Scouts and rose to post captain in the Explorers, he said.

“What I did was very wrong in every aspect you can look at it,” said Moorehead, who cried through much of the hearing.

He pleaded no contest to the charges – which each carried a sentence of up to 15 years in prison – on Jan. 5 in Lee County Circuit Court. Such a plea means he didn’t contest the allegations that he rubbed his genitals against the boys’ backs and back of their legs.

Hanuka said the incidents were reported in 2004 after a babysitter overheard children calling Moorehead a derogatory word and the children had to explain the same-sex sexual activity.

Until then, “it never was a problem for the boys,” Hanuka said after the sentencing. “He (one of the victims) slept fine for years. He continued to go over and hang out with my client.”

Sheriff’s and court records say Moorehead molested one child twice, once in 2000 and once in 2002, as well as another child. Both children, at these times, were between 9 years old and 11 years old. Both now are teens, Donnorummo said.

Moorehead told one child he would give him the then-popular Pokemon cards and $20 in exchange for rubbing Moorehead’s genitals against the boy, sheriff’s reports said.

“At the time of the offense, I had just had a baby and was raising a 1-year-old,” Moorehead’s mother told Thompson. With Moorehead and another son, “I had a lot of kids in the house and didn’t focus my attention on” Moorehead.

He was diagnosed with depression some time after he was molested as a child.

Donnorummo said he was charged as an adult, after he confessed. Her last plea deal came with five years in prison.

While on probation, Moorehead must abide by a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew.

“He will not be able to have unsupervised contact with minors,” Donnorummo said.

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