WESTERLO — A Westerlo felon out on parole after pleading guilty in 2016 to the attempted rape of a 15-year-old has been charged this week for a similar crime. 

Michael J. Dickershaid, 32, was arrested on Aug. 19 by state police at his home for third-degree rape. 

He is alleged to have had sexual contact with a child under the age of 17 in November 2021.

The 2021 victim “was known to him,” and had told a mandatory reporter who then contacted state police, State Police Trooper and Public Information Officer Stephanie O’Neil told The Enterprise this week.

Dickershaid had previously been incarcerated for the attempted rape of a 15-year-old in Westerlo in 2015. He was sentenced, when he was 25, to six years in prison the following year for that crime, The Enterprise reported at the time. 

According to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Dickershaid had been released from prison to community supervision on April 28, 2021, but was reincarcerated on Oct. 13, 2022 “after incurring a new arrest.”

Conditional release, a spokesperson explained to The Enterprise in an email, “is a statutory type of release that the Board of Parole does not have discretion to grant or deny.”

To be eligible, an incarcerated person must apply for conditional release and “agree in writing to abide by the conditions of community supervision until the expiration of their maximum term, or post-release supervision maximum expiration date.”

The spokesperson said that “all incarcerated individuals, except those serving Life sentences, have a conditional release date equal to either one-third (1/3) off their maximum sentence for indeterminate sentences and one-seventh (1/7) off their maximum sentence for determinate sentences.

“A Time Allowance Committee (TAC),” the spokesperson said, “will review an incarcerated individual's good time approximately four (4) months prior to the CR date at which time the CR date will either be certified or changed based upon whether there is a loss of good time.”

The DOCCS database says Dickershaid was last released from prison on June 21, 2023, with a post-release supervision maximum expiration date of Aug. 6, 2035. 

According to the state police, Dickershaid was arraigned in Westerlo Town Court and released on his own recognizance. Westerlo Court Clerk Jamie Motschmann told The Enterprise that no bail had been set by Justice Robert Carl, who presided over the arraignment. 

Dickershaid is scheduled to appear again before the court again on Sept. 13, Motschmann said.