Posted on 02/19/2002 4:24:16 AM PST by Lance Romance
Teen rape victim blasts lenient judge: Confessed attacker got probation
A 14-year-old rape victim yesterday lashed out at a lenient New Bedford Superior Court judge, calling the jurist ``an idiot'' after he sentenced her confessed assailant to probation two weeks ago. ``Now I have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life,'' said the nervous high school freshman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, at a press conference her mother arranged in the backyard of her Mansfield home. ``I'm not the only one out there afraid. Other victims are going through the same thing I am because Judge (Ernest B.) Murphy chose to free their attackers, too. Judge Murphy made me feel that I was guilty and that Dean (McSweeney) was the victim.'' Murphy has come under heavy fire by law enforcement officials for imposing light sentences on a slew of violent criminals, including Dean McSweeney, 19, who received eight years probation after confessing to twice raping the Mansfield girl in her home last summer. Murphy, a civil attorney appointed in 2000 to the superior court bench by former Gov. Paul Cellucci, also sentenced a convicted armed robber to five years' probation after he assaulted a 72-year-old sausage vendor and stole $1,100, and a Brockton man to five years' probation after he pleaded guilty to assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and armed robbery. Murphy has also released four accused rapists without bail, pending their trial, including one man who police tracked for 18 months before finding him in Louisiana. After McSweeney's controversial sentence, Murphy chastized the young girl for wanting a harsher sentence on her attacker. ``She can't go through life as a victim,'' Murphy told a prosecutor, according to courthouse sources. ``She's 14. She got raped. Tell her to get over it.'' The young victim maintained her composure yesterday as she responded to his comments. ``After he knew everything that had gone on, he said that and I thought it was really disrespectful of him,'' she said. ``Dean walked out of the courtroom a free man. I will never be free. This will follow me for the rest of my life and I will always be a victim.'' When someone asked her for a word to describe Murphy, she said, ``an idiot,'' echoing earlier comments by her adopted mother. The girl's mother, Teri Taylor, last week filed a complaint against Murphy with the Judicial Conduct Commission, seeking to oust him from the bench. ``The more I read, the more I realized this guy's an idiot and needs to get down off . . . that bench,'' Taylor said earlier in the press conference. ``I feel sorry for all the rest of the victims that are going to come into his court.'' On Friday, Judge Suzanne DelVecchio, the head of the state's superior courts, said she wouldn't remove Murphy. Instead, she wants him to attend a ``judge rookie school.'' Murphy's attorney, J. Owen Todd, didn't return a call yesterday. The young girl, with her hair in a pony tail and wearing heavy eyeliner and jeans, said she has not been able to live a normal life since the rape. She didn't attend the final tryout to be a varsity cheerleader, which she described as being her ``life.'' She doesn't trust anyone except her family and friends and she finds it difficult to sleep at night. ``Every time I close my eyes, I see everything that happened all over again,'' she said. ``I (used to) have nightmares about him killing me in the courtroom.'' Taylor said about four days ago, she called McSweeney's probation officer to report him for yelling profanities out of his car window while driving by her son's employer. ``He's been warned to stop,'' Taylor said. ``He got slapped again.''
by Franci Richardson
Tuesday, February 19, 2002
These comments struck me the wrong way. What does the heaviness of her eyeliner have to do with anything? Seems to me the writer is trying to make her out to be loose or a tramp who deserved it, and/or an airheaded cheerleader. I thought the days were over when the clothing, makeup and personal life of a rape victim was relevant.
No, no, no. That is not what the discussion is about. We are trying to figure out (or at least I am) whether or not this 19-year-old kid's sentence was to light. Apparantly people are suggesting the judge should be reprimanded for not handing down a tougher sentence.
At this point I should give up. I thought this was a place where we could get some facts but it seems everyone wants to blabber on about how awful this or that is when they don't even know what this or that is. Not that I mean you are blabbering. I just want to know if any one knows what the circumstances were that is being called rape in this case. Best Regards.
I might be inclined to agree with you on this except that it gives way too much credit to the reporter. Did the reporter understand the distinction that you have correctly identified or to them is a rape is a rape is rape.
Actually, in this day of rampant advocacy journalism, it is quite possible the report new the difference but purposefully blurred the distinction to surpress any sympathy are reader might have for the 19-year-old boy if it was indeed consensual - presuming the repoter is sypathetic to women's issues and the notion that 2/3 of all women have been raped in their life.
So, I agree with you but still am not satisfied we can draw the proper conclusion from the information given.
Perhaps a very large fellow named "Bruce the Butt Banger" should pay the good jurist a visit and explain homosexual rape to him in a graphic fashion! Maybe then he would understand the law!
If I was that young girls father, the judge and I would have a conference away from the bench!
Whether she was compliant or not (and it does not sound as though she was) she is 14 years old, and he is legally an adult. That is rape. That is the law.
You ask for more information on the circumstances, but truly, what more detail do you need? Are some rapes more okay than others and justify such a lenient "sentence"?
Don't be rediculas and don't assign positions to me that I do not hold and have not stated. Unless you found information in the story that I have not seen, it has not been determined in this thread that it was, as you say, statutory rape.
Stay on topic. We are trying to ascertain from the information provide - or another source if someone has it - what the circumstances of the rape were and then determine if the light sentence was appropriate. That is after all, the gist of the story, that the judge was "stupid" for handing down such a light sentence.
Certainly a 19-year-old should not be having sex with a 14-year-old. That out of the way, yes, some forms of rape are more egregious than others. As to what more detail I need, it is hard to make a determination about the appropriateness of the sentence if we don't know the circumstances.
If this guy ever gets 'done' by some perv, I'll be curious to see if he'll be quite as cavalier about the subject!
It's certainly true that some people have ridiculously broad definitions of rape. However, if this only fit one of the more questionable definitions, I doubt the guy would have admitted to raping her. And I don't think the girl would have been as angry and traumatized as she seems to have been if it was just statutory rape.
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