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This is from the "Gazette":

"..."I beg you, your honor, make them pay!" said the girl's grandfather, who urged 4th Judicial District Judge Michael McHenry to reject their plea agreements and order the defendants to trial.

But at the request of a prosecutor and the victim's mother, McHenry ultimately accepted the deals, sentencing brothers Tommy Williams, 20, and Clarence Williams, 19, to 10 years to life on sex offender intensive supervised probation.

Under terms of the agreement, both must register as sex offenders and abide by strict supervision. If they get in trouble, both would be eligible for indeterminate prison sentences, meaning they could spend up to life in prison, McHenry noted.

In asking the judge to accept the plea bargains, prosecutor Tyler Uhlenbrock alluded to evidentiary problems while tiptoeing around them. He said the District Attorney's Office had to consider the "likely outcome" at trial as well as the trauma in having the girl take the stand six times to describe her ordeal.

A series of evidentiary hearings last year highlighted factors that could have complicated the effort to obtain convictions at trial.

Defense attorneys assailed the girl's credibility, pointing to ways her story had changed over time and suggesting she had exaggerated or fabricated parts of her account to avoid getting in trouble herself. They focused on her marijuana use and past claims that she was older than her real age, sparking eruptions in court from relatives on both sides.

The four guilty pleas - together with results of a rape examination, a condom wrapper and other physical evidence gathered by police - left little doubt that a crime was committed, however. At 13, the girl couldn't grant lawful consent, but claims that she was a willing participant could have been used to attack her veracity.

The girl, a runaway at the time, has been placed in protective custody, her family members said, declining to provide details. She suffered a "mental breakdown" after learning that two more defendants were headed for probation, her mother said after the hearing.

>>But at the request of a prosecutor and the victim's mother, McHenry ultimately accepted the deals, sentencing brothers Tommy Williams, 20, and Clarence Williams, 19, to 10 years to life on sex offender intensive supervised probation.<<

I'm going against my instincts here and think that the judge might have come up with the strongest available sentence. It looks like this group could have easily "skated" with a trial. I'd prefer that the six be hanged from the nearest light standard but am not blaming the judge.