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They met on the Internet. The girl says she is in love with him, but lawyers and the judge say he manipulated her.
By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 27, 2000
LARGO -- They met on the Internet, one a 13-year-old girl from St. Petersburg, the other a 25-year-old South Dakota man who loved computers and, prosecutors say, young girls.
They told each other about a love that would last an eternity. Michael S. Gisi promised to marry her and visited Florida to have sex with her in a Treasure Island hotel room.
But as the girl sobbed Friday and professed her continued devotion for her first love, a circuit judge told Gisi that eternal love with an underage girl comes with a steep price -- 71 years of his life in prison.
"And I'm being generous," Senior Judge Helen Hansel said moments after sentencing Gisi, who now is 27.
Pinellas prosecutors Bill Burgess and Magda McSwain asked for a life sentence for Gisi, who was convicted by a jury last month of 14 felonies for luring and enticing the girl into having sex with him in November 1998.
The minimum sentence allowed by law for his convictions was 71 years.
The girl's family nearly lost their child to Gisi. After their sexual rendezvous, Gisi bought a bus ticket for her and wanted the girl to live with him in his Crooks, S.D., home.
Her parents tracked her down to Georgia as she fled north to Gisi on a bus. They brought her home to St. Petersburg.
Gisi "enticed a young, unsophisticated girl whose head was filled with romantic ideas . . . into acts she says were consensual," the judge said. "It's painful to watch a young man who apparently has some intelligence, some advantages and some opportunities throw them away."
The girl, who is nearly 15 now, cried as Gisi was sentenced, her face either hidden in her hands or buried in an older sister's shoulder.
During the sentencing, she repeatedly peeked between bailiffs at Gisi. He never searched her out in the courtroom.
She came to court with a letter she began writing two weeks before. She went through several drafts, searching for the right words to tell the judge.
She loved Gisi still, she told Hansel. She wanted some of the charges dropped. She wanted the court to show leniency. Gisi didn't deserve life. She wanted the relationship.
"I believe I should share that responsibility," she said. "I believe 70 years is far too much punishment."
Burgess, the prosecutor, told the judge the girl's words were just a sign of Gisi's control.
"She's still fragile, still under the influence of the criminal activity," Burgess said before the girl spoke. "She will show you the phenomenon of victim guilt."
Gisi declined to address the court and showed no emotion as his sentence was announced. His mother, Joanne Contreras, sat in the courtroom but declined comment to a reporter.
Gisi, a computer technician, and the girl met in an Internet chat room in August 1998. For months, they shared e-mails and phone calls, and both say they fell in love online.
He left his wife and 4-year-old daughter to be with the girl, buying her a diamond ring too big for her finger.
Gisi was arrested in December 1998 after acknowledging the affair to a St. Petersburg police detective and an FBI agent.
John Swisher, Gisi's attorney, acknowledged his client had done wrong. But he said the punishment didn't fit a crime in which the sex was consensual, especially for a man with no prior criminal record.
The maximum sentence for the rape of an adult, he noted, is just 15 years. "I just ask that we use common sense," he said.
But the judge said consent was irrelevant. In the eyes of the law, a minor cannot have consensual sex with an adult, Hansel said.
The girl's parents have separated since Gisi's arrest. They blame their family split largely on Gisi and the stress he brought into their home.
The girl and her parents are not identified in this story because of the nature of the charges.
The father wanted Gisi to be imprisoned long enough that his daughter would be grown and married by the time he is free again.
He doesn't want Gisi to ever see her again.
He said he wished Gisi had received a sentence much less than 71 years, for nothing other than his daughter's peace of mind.
"She's just blaming a lot of this on herself," the father said. "Seventy-one years is a long time. But what he did is going to last forever as far as this family."
He doesn't think his daughter realizes how Gisi manipulated her. He struggles to understand his daughter's professions of undying love.
"Is it love?" the father said. "I don't know. Everybody has a right to their feelings. I'm not going to tell her she's wrong in her feelings. I have to allow her to reach her own conclusions about that."
With time and counseling, he said, he hopes she will come to realize Gisi is not a man to be admired or loved.
The judge told Gisi, "You are a sexual predator."