Former Volleyball Coach Gets Over Four Years In Prison For Arranging To Have Sex With ’13-Year-Old Girl And Her Mother’

A former assistant high school volleyball coach was sentenced Tuesday by Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Mary Chrzanowski after pleading guilty in January to three counts of child sexually abusive activity. Fifty-three-year-old Charles E. Goubert of Emmett, Michigan, coached volleyball at Yale High School for around a decade, but was put on administrative leave last fall after his arrest. The district issued a no trespass and no contact order for the former volley ball coach at that time and, later, he was fired. At the time of his arrest, the parents of every ninth grade, junior varsity, and varsity volleyball player who was around Goubert was contacted, but it was reported that no students were believed to have been involved with an inappropriate relationship with the former volleyball coach.

The former volleyball coach also faced three counts of using a computer to commit a crime, but those charges were dismissed as part of the deal for his guilty plea, according to the Times Herald. According to that report, he was sentenced to slightly more than four years in prison to a potential twenty years in prison for his crime of attempting to meet an under-aged girl for the purpose of having sex.

The three counts of child sexually abusive activity stem from trying to arrange a meeting to have sex with a mother and her 13-year-old daughter. The meeting was arranged over the computer, after the former volleyball coach posted an ad online in search of a relationship with a mother and daughter duo. Police said his ad was enough to put up flags that he might have been interested in sexual activities with a minor, so they went undercover, according to the Macomb Daily. Expecting to meet a 13-year-old teen for sex, he ended up meeting an undercover officer with the Sheriff’s Office’s computer-crime unit, the Macomb Area Enforcement Team.

Goubert’s guilty plea came after the judged denied his claim of entrapment. Jonathan Jones, his lawyer, argued that the former volleyball coach would have never arranged for the meeting with a girl of that age had it not been for the police putting it out there. He mentioned that Goubert does not have a criminal record, that it was the first time he engaged in behavior like that, and that as a girls’ volleyball coach, he never committed any offenses like this.

“The only way he would do this is by nurturing by police,” Jones argued. “I don’t see a place for the government to encourage someone to commit a crime. The extent by which they participated went way beyond creating an opportunity.”

Assistant Macomb Prosecutor William Harding said the former volleyball coach showed a “predisposition” to trying to have sex with minors. Once the fake mother and daughter invitation was on the table, the prosecutor said, he did describe “the acts he wanted to perform with the child,” which is where the three counts for each charge came from.

“I cannot say enough how sorry I am for the immoral acts I’ve committed,” Goubert said at his sentencing. He also apologized to his family. He reportedly was previously married for almost three decades and had three daughters. “This decision will brand me for the rest of my life … It was a mistake, one I deeply regret.”

Goubert must register as a sex offender and was ordered to pay $1,000 in restitution to the Macomb Area Enforcement Team that participated in his arrest. The former volleyball coach was sentenced in Macomb County, because the original arrest for the attempted sex with a minor took place in Clinton Township.

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