FARMINGTON — Society cannot condone criminal actions like those committed by Robert Lloyd Zesiger, a judge said.
Zesiger, 31, of Layton, was sentenced Tuesday to serve three years to life for first-degree felony attempted rape and one to 15 years at Utah State Prison for second-degree felony aggravated sexual abuse of a child. Those sentences are to run consecutively.
Judge Glen C. Dawson also handed Zesiger three sentences of one year each for three counts of sexual battery, a class A misdemeanor. Those sentences could be served concurrently with the other two sentences.
Zesiger was arrested April 11 by Syracuse police and was booked in Davis County Jail, where he has been held on no bail.
He entered the guilty pleas to the charges on Sept. 11.
“These acts simply cannot be tolerated by our society,” said Dawson in the sentencing hearing.
Dawson cited several reasons he was ordering Zesiger to serve the prison sentences consecutively. Those reasons include “multiple young females” who were victimized by Zesiger, as well as a lack of “empathy” and the need Zesiger had to minimize his role in the crimes when speaking to a probation officer for his presentence report.
The probation officer also wrote that Zesiger did not participate in his treatment while on federal probation and he is “narcissistic,” Dawson said.
Deputy Davis County Attorney Cristina Ortega said five teenage girls were victimized by Zesiger, who had a “definite grooming pattern” so he could get close to them.
A father of one of the girls spoke in the sentencing hearing.
“He’s a monster,” the man said. “He will continue to destroy children. He should never see the light of day. Sex offenders do not rehabilitate.”
One of the girls also spoke. She said she is OK now, but she is concerned with the pain the other girls are going through.
“What he did was wrong,” she said.
Zesiger also spoke in the sentencing hearing.
“I know I got a problem I need to deal with so it never happens again,” Zesiger said. “I don’t see myself as a bad person.”
Zesiger, a registered sex offender, had been convicted in 2004 in 2nd District Court in Ogden of one count of lewdness involving a child, a class B misdemeanor, and in 2007 he pleaded guilty to a third-degree felony attempted sexual abuse of a child. He had been sentenced in 2007 to serve up to five years in the Utah State Prison, according to the court website.
In 2006, Zesiger pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of possession and distribution of child pornography. He had been sentenced then to four years of probation.
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