Posted by
Frigglesnitz on Monday, October 30, 2006 9:38:41 PM
Reading Townhall.com news article entitled "Man Gets 508 Years in Sex Assault Case" (10/30/06) made me want to cheer.
And I did, silently. For a while.
Then I read the last paragraph, which stated that "In 1998, ... was charged with 23 counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor. He served 321 days in jail after pleading guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor" (emphasis mine).
Will somebody please tell me why it is, how it is, that someone charged with 23 counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor gets to plead guilty to "contributing to the delinquency of a minor," and spend not even a year in prison?
It sounds to me very much as though the prosecution in that 1998 case had been so eager to get a guilty plea that it might have been satisfactory merely to obtain a guilty plea for jaywalking or littering.
Does anybody reading that story realize what has happened here? Since approximately 1999 -- almost seven years now -- that creep had been free to molest and savage "18 boys and one girl between ages 13 and 15.... He was convicted in August of 63 counts, including sexual assault on a child with a pattern of abuse...."
The travesty is that this subhuman was not sentenced in 1999 to 508 years in prison. I do believe that if such a sentence had been handed down then, those 19 children may have been just a little safer. We let them down. All of us.
What is wrong with a system that allows convicted child sexual predators to get out of prison – ever? Is there no reckoning?
The referenced column is as follows:
http://www.townhall.com/News/NewsArticle.aspx?contentGUID=8cfe7f78-3997-4671-9355-bbdcacec0e40