Posted on 10/16/2013 4:27:39 PM PDT by Uncle Chip
A northwest Missouri prosecutor announced Wednesday that he's asking for a special prosecutor to look at the case of a 14-year-old girl who says she was plied with alcohol and raped by a 17-year-old acquaintance.
Melinda Coleman, the mother of 14-year-old Daisy Coleman, claims justice was denied when Nodaway County prosecutor Robert Rice dropped felony charges against the 17-year-old boy last March, two months after Coleman found her daughter passed out on the family's front porch in below-freezing temperatures.
The county sheriff and Rice have insisted their investigation collapsed after the Colemans became uncooperative with investigators and refused to answer questions. Coleman says she and her daughter did cooperate and that investigators didn't do enough to push the case forward.
Rice stood behind his earlier statements at a news conference Wednesday but said he was asking a court to appoint a special prosecutor because of publicity surrounding the case and recent media stories questioning the integrity of the justice system in the county. Rice said the special prosecutor will investigate the case and decide whether charges will be refiled.
The case has drawn international attention to the small northwest Missouri town of Maryville after The Kansas City Star on Sunday published the results of a seven-month investigation. The newspaper's story described a town where many appeared to be closing ranks around the accused and blaming the girl......
Rice has said there wasn't enough evidence to pursue the charges because the accusers had stopped cooperating and asserted their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Rice said Wednesday that he had been concerned about the Colemans' decision and so he had asked that they assert their Fifth Amendment right under oath in a deposition. He said he couldn't release the deposition because it's a closed record.........
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
That family didn’t burn down their own house. The people in that town are pure evil.
Maybe I should just go turn myself in.
I hadn’t heard that.
http://www.kansascity.com/2013/10/12/4549775/nightmare-in-maryville-teens-sexual.html
That’s one article of many that state details. The family was harrassed daily. Son kicked off sports team, mother fired, daughter perpetually insulted and called a skank. A mother of a perp worked at the police station so police support wasn’t given, etc. Small town almost all turned on them. The family fled the town, mother put their home up for sale, and it was burned down by someone. Absolutely disgusting what that town did to that family.
Sadly, all too believable in the US today.
I just noticed that this place is just down the road a short ways from Skidmore Missouri. Remember the Ken McElroy case? When the town decides to close ranks around their own, I doubt that a Special Prosecutor will get much done.
Members of prominent local families in small towns not just in Missouri but most places get protection from legal prosecution or ostracism for their crimes or shortcomings. This was probably as true in 1813 or 1913 as it is in 2013. Predominantly white, Republican rural areas have their own power structures and corruption as surely as liberal multiethnic urban hellholes like St. Louis or Chicago, just on a smaller scale.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.