As promised, here is more information about the sentencing handed down yesterday by a Topeka judge. This is simply a description of what was said during the radio show On the Other Hand on WIBW 580 AM this past Friday. Where possible I’ll note what has and has not been confirmed as true.
The show had on the father of the 14 year old rape victim. He stated that the problem began when their daughter went over to a friends house to spend the night and the mother of the friend had over company. This is when the abuse began. He commented that the abuse didn’t begin overnight but rather that the man conditioned the girl before going to far, being sure to give her answers to questions as to where she had been and to keep the relationship a secret. Apparently the girl felt threatened enough that she instructed friends at school that if she didn’t show up one day to tell someone.
On a Monday night in October of 2006, the parents woke up at midnight and found their daughter missing. They called the police and began searching. Sometime around 5am while they were out searching for their daughter, she came home. The father claimed that no one was at home at the time so they don’t know how she got back home.
Eventually, throughout the day on Tuesday as police questioned the girl things began to unravel. When she didn’t show up for school her friends began to talk. By Wednesday the man was under arrest and was being booked into jail.
By this time the father claims to have been up since Monday at midnight, which is why he asked to be excused from his job at the Shawnee County correctional facility that Wednesday morning (the same place the rapist was being booked into.) He was told no, he reported for duty, exchanged words with the man who raped his daughter, and was then fired for it. He claims he made no physical contact with him.
(This was his story as told on the radio…again, I can’t testify to it’s validity because the main-stream press has thus far ignored this part of the story.)
That Monday marked the fifth day after the little girl’s birthday. Even though the abuse had been going on for months, at least since the summer, the prosecutor was only able to prove the one night of abuse because that was when the girl was discovered missing. Because the girl was 14 years and 5 days old at the time, Jessica’s Law didn’t apply. (This is factually true.)
20 charges were brought forward, 3 were dropped before trial. The rapist was convicted on all 17 counts that remained. Yesterday during sentencing his 12 year sentence was suspended for 3 years of probation. The judge commented that in this case 12 years would have been ‘excessive.’
Judge Dowd is up for retention in 2008.
I’ll continue to research over the weekend if anything can be done to remove him from office before the 2008 elections.
James Meier
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