Child molester hasn't served single day of 43-year prison term

For nearly two years, a South Florida middle school art teacher forced a boy to have sex in a classroom supply closet. But Aaron Mohanlal, here in his sex offender registration photo, was allowed to stay out of prison on bond.

Sometimes, Mohanlal would call in sick to work, take the boy to his home for sex and drop the seventh-grader back off at school at the end of the day.

To keep the abuse secret, Mohanlal bought his 13-year-old victim a cell phone and created nicknames for their genitalia. When police arrested him, the teacher was caught on hidden video trying to destroy letters threatening the boy if he ever told.

Last summer, a Broward County jury convicted Mohanlal of 13 counts, including child abuse, molestation and lewd battery, and a judge sentenced him to 43 years.

But a year later, Mohanlal has yet to spend a day in prison.

"I can't understand why he isn't behind bars," said the victim, now 18.

"I want to move on with my life. I'm trying to graduate high school and forget about this," he said. "I try not to think about it, but it's hard, because all I can think about is, what if he's out there around other kids?"

Weeks after the trial, Broward Circuit Judge Marc Gold, who presided over the trial and sentenced Mohanlal, granted the teacher a rare bond that allows him to remain free while his case is tried on appeal, a process that could take years.

The judge gave Mohanlal the right to live, work, travel and attend church in South Florida, according to numerous interviews and documents CNN has obtained. The judge ordered Mohanlal to wear a GPS device, register as a sex offender and surrender his passport.

He stipulated that Mohanlal cannot contact the boy and his family but did not order him to stay away from children, according to a transcript of the July 2007 bond hearing.

Post-conviction bonds are rarely given in criminal trials, but judges occasionally grant them if there was a procedural error during trial that would make a conviction reversal at the appellate level likely, legal experts say.

But there were no procedural mistakes during Mohanlal's trial, both prosecutor Anita White and defense attorney Steve Rossi said.

Gold refused to talk on record about why he granted the bond. He would only give this statement: "The simple truth is that I had to rule based on what was presented to me during that hearing. And I took everything into consideration and felt a bond was appropriate."

"This was one of the most disturbing cases I've ever worked on, and there's no doubt in my mind that Aaron Mohanlal is a dangerous person," said Miramar Police Sgt. Jeff Armiento. "I don't see what would stop him from doing this to other kids."

"This guy has all the reason in the world to take off," said Florida state criminologist Tom Blomberg, who conducted a 2006 study of sex offenders who are monitored by wearable GPS devices. "He's looking at prison for the rest of his life, and child molesters are almost always victimized in prison. He has to know that.

"This is not effective monitoring. In fact, it's a little bit beyond imagination what's going on here," Blomberg said. "The [GPS] technology works; that's not the problem. Police can only do so much. The question is whether this guy should be out of prison.

"This seems like a system failure on down."

Should judges be able to make decisions like this, that affect a crime victim, their family and a community as a whole, without having to justify them? Should loopholes like this that allow convicted criminals to avoid jail if their cases are likely to be appealed even exist? Do you trust that GPS tagging systems do what they're supposed to?