By Stevie Stewart

March 23, 2007 | SALT LAKE CITY -- A Utah State University associate professor accused of coercing a minor over the Internet left Salt Lake City with his wife after entering a plea of not guilty at an arraignment in U.S. District Court Thursday afternoon.

Tilak Dhiman of the College of Agriculture is charged with one count of coercion and enticement for illegal sexual activity. If convicted, Dhiman could face up to 30 years in prison.

According to the indictment, the defendant knowingly and intentionally attempted to persuade, entice and coerce an individual who had not reached the age of 18 to engage in sexual activity.

At the arraignment, the defendant quickly waived the formal reading of the indictment to enter the not guilty plea. If a plea agreement between the defendant and the U.S. District Court attorney is not reached by May 15, a three-day jury trial is scheduled for May 29.

Dhiman is accused of communicating online with a "13-year-old girl" via a Yahoo! chat room. The "girl" turned out to be Roy police Officer Matthew Gwynn. Between January and March, Gwynn said the two had several Internet conversations. According to the court documents, after explicit sexual language and detail were used by Dhiman, who pretended to be a 20-year-old Logan resident named Timothy Johnson, Gwynn said Dhiman asked for directions to the "girl's" house.

According to an affidavit from Gwynn, on March 14, Dhiman went to the "girl's" house in Roy, where he was met by police officers. As Dhiman approached the house, he had flowers in his hands and a condom and Dr Pepper in his pocket. At that point Dhiman was arrested.

Gwynn's affidavit reads that at the time of arrest, Dhiman admitted to being "Lucky Sharma," the person from Logan chatting with the underage persona. Gwynn said Dhiman denied that he would have participated in sexual activity with the "girl." He also said he had used both his home and work computers, said Gwynn.

Gwynn said his current duties are with the Northern Utah Internet Crimes against Children. He said his sole job is to communicate with potential perpetrators and set up Internet sting operations to catch them.

"It is not just about the sting operations and catching someone that only committed a crime online," Gwynn said. "It is more about catching someone that intended to commit a physical crime and would have likely done so given the opportunity."

Gwynn said because Yahoo! is in Sunnyvale, Calif., and messages must be relayed across state liness, this qualifies as a federal offense.

Dhiman was released from U.S. marshal's custody by Judge Samuel Alto, the presiding judge at the arraignment, on Monday under many conditions. Among the conditions laid out by Alto were that Dhiman had to surrender his passport, submit to an electronic monitoring system and have no unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 18, including his own children.

Upon leaving the courthouse, neither Dhiman nor his attorney had any comment. According to USU officials, Dhiman's teaching position is under review. Another teacher who has previously taught his classes will teach Dhiman's class the rest of this semester.

MS
MS