A former Pennsylvania state trooper on trial for allegedly soliciting underage sex on the Internet from an undercover cop said yesterday that he never intended to go ahead with a planned meeting.
A Delaware County prosecutor disagreed and said work kept the trooper from the appointment.
Albert Silveri III, 40, of Aston, opted to forgo a jury trial and have his case heard before Common Pleas Court Judge Frank T. Hazel. Silveri was arrested in July on charges of criminal solicitation and criminal use of a communication facility.
In April, Silveri first made contact in an Internet chat room with a Delaware County detective who was posing as a woman with two daughters, ages 8 and 10. Silveri used the screen name "Strongwilled07." Sex was discussed in all of the chats. In late July, Silveri made an appointment to meet with the woman and her daughters.
Yesterday while on the stand, he told Michael Galantino, deputy district attorney, that the fantasy was in the conversation. He said that he had corresponded in chat rooms hundreds of times and that the sexually explicit language came easily to him. But, Silveri said, he never intended to carry through with the meeting and didn't.
Galantino questioned whether Silveri, an accident-reconstruction specialist in the Belmont barracks in Philadelphia, missed the appointment he had set up with the fictitious mother and her daughters because he was busy at work.
Steven M. Pacillio, Silveri's attorney, said that although the conversations in the chat room were "reprehensible and not socially acceptable," they were not illegal.
Hazel said he would issue a verdict June 26.
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