Posted on 12/16/2003 7:56:39 AM PST by sherim
Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.
Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnist Baby raped: Will justice be served?
The lights are up, the Christmas Ships are out, but dark things churn in the waters this season.
On Sunday, this newspaper unveiled a yearlong investigation that found that 159 school athletic coaches have been reprimanded or fired for sexual misconduct in the past decade. Of those, 98 continued to coach or teach, while schools, the state and even some parents looked the other way.
I hope no one looks the other way in the case of another predator.
Last month, Joseph Lehman Jr., 38, pleaded guilty to raping his girlfriend's 2-month-old daughter last December. Because of his plea, the state's standard, seven- to 10-year penalty likely will be suspended when Lehman is sentenced Friday at the King County Regional Justice Center.
Instead, Lehman may receive just six months of jail time, three years of treatment for sexual deviancy and a lifetime of supervision. A court psychologist has deemed him "amenable to treatment."
Court officials stress that this improbably light sentence has nothing to do with the fact that Lehman's father, Joseph Lehman Sr., heads the Washington State Department of Corrections.
Roxanne Crowder wonders.
She is the mother of Lehman's victim (she says the baby is his, making the unthinkable even worse) and the one who walked in on Lehman that day. Crowder has held nothing back about Lehman — or about her worry that he will get special treatment. That has meant naming her baby and describing her abuse on radio and television and to me.
"I will do whatever I have to do to ensure that another child is not hurt by him," Crowder said. "He already robbed my daughter of some of her innocence. I am not going to let that happen to another child."
She asserts that Lehman is manipulative and that his family hasn't acknowledged that what their son did was wrong.
"I agree Joe needs counseling," she said. "But he needs counseling in prison."
On that day, Crowder was resting at their Auburn apartment when Lehman went to change the baby's diaper. Crowder heard the baby screaming, went to investigate and saw what she can't forget.
It took her three weeks to call police.
"I will always feel guilty that I didn't break up with him or kick him out for all that time," she said. "I just couldn't process it. It's almost like a movie you saw."
A year later, the baby still wakes up screaming and pushes her mother away. Crowder has to turn on a light so the baby will know it's her.
The whole thing makes me sad, for someday it will be too easy for this baby-turned-woman to connect the dots.
I hope then that she sees her mother's crusade as The Right Thing to Do, especially in a society where schools and churches turn their heads, witnesses clam up and judges go easy, not realizing that in doing so, they create more victims.
That could change Friday. One man sentenced, a baby's purity somehow restored and unknown others spared.
And if that doesn't happen?
Crowder sighed: "I take some relief knowing he will have to face God someday."
Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@s....
More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists. Save her a seat in the courtroom.
Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company
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You're right, happygirl. But I'll take the hit. It had to be said, for she created the conditions that led to to all this.
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