I can't imagine the heartbreak of a FANTASY causing his life to be changed so much.  As a Clinical Psychologist, I would like to give a little  piece of advice.  I KNOW this feels like your and his lives are ruined.  AND I understand in what ways they ARE damaged so severely.....but......if you and he want to move on and have some quality of life - some joy in your lives - then I think that framing this as "ruining your  lives" is somewhat - no, greatly damaging to both of you.  Once you have decided, cognitively, that your life is ruined, how can you ever find joy again?  How can you ever have hope? I do not mean to sound like I am not empathic - I am.  What happened to him should be illegal....it should be a crime and he should be able to sue and get millions of dollars for this mistreatment.  Did you see the movie "Little Children" which dealt exactly with this issue, but the man involved was more damaged than your son.  Your son had raging hormones at the time he was having "sexy talk" (a funny name I heard somewhere) with a chick.  Men under 25 or so are biologically sex machines.  Evolution made them that way because they are supposed to be procreating far & wide.  I know this is probably not your church's position, but this is the biological reality of a young man's brain.  He cannot help it.  He can help NOT ACTING on it, as your son did.  He just talked - he didn't take any actions.  The measure of almost all crimes in our country are based on ACTION, not thought.  How could it possibly be thought.  We would ALL be in the Big House if we were arrested for our thoughts.  This whole scene reeks of Big Brother, Thought Police, and worst of all, moral condemnation of natural biological drives.  So I have tremendous empathy for both of you.  I too have a son I am very close to, and if this happened to him, I would be heartbroken.. But I would try to do what we call a "cognitive reframe" and turn it around from "ruining our lives" to how can we find some meaning and job in this life, given the horrible circumstances we find ourselves in?