'Predator' Woman With Low Self-Esteem Had Sex With Teenage Boy, Avoids Jail-Time

A mother was branded a "predator" for having sex with a 15-year-old boy but her attorney told court Monday she suffers from low self-esteem. Lori Suggs was sentenced for child sex abuse Monday and her attorney, Perry Ancona, said in her defense that the mother had "a lot of emotional problems."

"When these events occurred, Lori Suggs was definitely not a whole person," Ancona told Hamilton County Common Pleas Court in Ohio. "She still, as she stands here today, is not a whole person."

Monday’s sentencing hearing saw Suggs avoiding a jail sentence, and she was handed four years of probation, put on house arrest for six months, and ordered to continue a two-year sex offender treatment program. She will be a registered sex offender for the next 25 years.

"You preyed on a young child. You took advantage of him," Judge Thomas Beridon told Suggs. The mother of three performed sex acts on the youngster on four different days between August 2018 and the end of October 2018.

Suggs had pleaded guilty in March to four counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. She already is in a sex offender treatment program that lasts two years.

In one of the incidents, she took the teenager to the downmarket Carrousel Inn and Suites in Sycamore Township, court documents, seen by the Cincinnati Enquirer, stated.

The victim’s mother also spoke out in court Monday, saying Suggs’ abuse "isn’t something that’s going to go away" for the boy and that it had scared her child for life. She also said her son would need counseling to help him process what had happened.

"I especially want to apologize to everyone that I’ve hurt. ‘To your son. To you. To everyone that it’s affected – the entirety of your family. Because I know it has," Suggs said in an apology letter that she read out in court.