Kootenai County man gets maximum prison term for child exposure

A Kootenai County judge sent Wade T. Weingart to prison for the maximum 12 and a half years after prosecutors said he cornered an 11-year-old child in a store, exposed himself and fled before officers later detained him.

First District Judge John Cafferty imposed the sentence Monday after Weingart, 50, pleaded guilty in March to attempted sexual abuse of a child under 16. Under the sentence, he will be eligible for parole after eight years.

The case moved quickly from the February store encounter to a guilty plea and then to the maximum term, a timeline that underscores how seriously Kootenai County prosecutors and the court treated the offense. The child was targeted in a public place where families routinely shop, and the outcome now stands as a clear warning about the consequences for anyone who preys on children in front of witnesses and then tries to leave the scene.

Prosecutors said Weingart was already a registered sex offender and was on federal supervised release when the new offense happened. That history was central to the sentencing picture. In 2014, Weingart, then identified as a Coeur d’Alene resident, was sentenced in federal court to 60 months in prison and five years of supervised release for possession of sexually explicit images of minors, and the court ordered $3,000 in restitution.

Sex offender registration is designed to give local and federal authorities, and the public, information about an offender’s name, current location and past offenses. Federal authorities also prefer the term child sexual abuse material because it more accurately describes the abuse involved, a distinction that fits the severity of Weingart’s prior conviction and the new case that brought him back before a judge.

For Kootenai County, the sentence reflects a firm approach to repeat sexual offenders and crimes against children in public settings. It also shows the county’s prosecuting attorney’s office pushing for long prison terms when a defendant has a documented record of sexual exploitation and violates the trust that supervised release is meant to enforce.