May 5, 2017, would forever change Alex Heineman’s life. He was 16 at the time and working at the Hudson, Wisconsin, YMCA during an event for teenagers. Heineman, who is autistic, left the event with then-15-year-old Sierrah Parmeter to take a walk into the nearby woods. The two had an on-again, off-again kind of relationship due to their mutual troubled family lives and apparently kissed in the woods, where Heineman left a hickey on Parmeter’s neck.
Heineman was described by Susan Du in City Pages as “a quiet kid with a gangly athlete’s build, jet black hair that stood straight up, and a slightly sunken gaze” who also “had learning disabilities that relegated him to the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum and a lower rung of Hudson High’s social food chain.”
Less than an hour after Parmeter and Heineman’s encounter in the woods, her father reported to police that she had been sexually assaulted. Parmeter later told police that the pair kissed in the woods but that Heineman left hickeys on her neck and breast against her will and tried to force her to perform oral sex on him. She refused, she said, so he pushed her down and walked away. She also told police that Heineman forced his hand into her pants and penetrated her vagina with his finger.
The hickeys on Parmeter’s neck were swabbed at the hospital when her mother took her there after accusing Heineman. The swabs found Heineman’s DNA. Parmeter refused to allow a nurse to examine her vagina.
Police interviewed Heineman the next day. He denied anything happened other than him giving Parmeter a hickey on her neck. He also told police that the girl was “obsessed with him,” according to the National Registry of Exonerations, which published Heineman’s story earlier this month.
Heineman plead guilty to third-degree sexual assault at his mother’s insistence in order to avoid facing 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, though he was ordered to register as a sex offender for life.
It wasn’t until June 2019 when Parmeter began admitting she had lied. Parmeter was participating in the Kinship of Polk County mentoring program in Balsam Lake, Wisconsin, when she apparently told her mentor that she falsely accused Heineman of sexually assaulting her in 2017. The mentor claimed Parmeter told her she couldn’t tell the truth because the process to prosecute Heineman “moved quickly.” The mentor also said Parmeter’s grandmother had been told about the lie, but when she told Parmeter’s social worker about it, that worker told them not to do anything about it.
Police interviewed Parmeter about these allegations on June 12, 2019. She admitted she lied at the time. A police report noted that Parmeter knew “nothing had happened, but she felt like she had to go through with everything after reporting it….she feels guilty about lying.”
Heineman’s case was dismissed on August 29, 2019, making him the 2,690th person to be exonerated since 1989, according to the NRE.
Heineman may have been exonerated, but this false entrance into the criminal justice system certainly left a mark. The NRE reported:
Heineman, who was autistic, dropped out of school. He subsequently was ordered to undergo treatment at the Eau Claire Academy, a residential treatment center for youths with behavioral, mental, emotional or physical problems. There, he wound up being charged with battery after getting into a fight with another resident. In May 2018, he was sent to Lincoln Hills, a juvenile detention facility in Irma, Wisconsin.
A month later, he was hospitalized at the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison following suicide attempts and more fights with inmates at Lincoln Hills.
In September,[sic] 2018 he was released to a halfway house in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Instead of finding a job, he cut off his ankle bracelet and walked away. He later turned himself in and spent nine months in the Eau Claire County jail—working during the day and spending nights in a cell. But he again walked off. He was subsequently arrested and later convicted of escape and failing to update his sex offender registry address.
As Du wrote in City Pages, Heineman’s troubles in treatment stemmed at least partially from the fact that he was deemed an unrepentant sex offender, even though he was innocent.
Du also explained that the reason Heineman left the halfway house was because it was, as he called it, “a group home for sex offenders.”
“There were creepy guys that lived with me. Multiple of them were meth addicts. I didn’t do no meth. Like these guys would offer me s**t,” he told Du.
The NRE reported that Parmeter was charged in January 2020 with defamation and obstructing police, but the case is still pending.