What I'm writing about is in reference to this post that appeared a couple of weeks ago here on Daily Kos. This is a bit of an update on the whole sickening affair.
Since that post there has been this article in the St. Joseph News-Press. It was hard to believe that the prosecutor in the case, Robert Rice, essentially called the victim "garbage" in the story. (He said the story was "garbage" but many in the community know exactly what he meant. What a terrible thing to do.)
Once again, just as they had to do with their original story about the charges being dropped, the News-Press shut the comments off and deleted them because sock puppets (people related to the case writing under pseudonyms) were disparaging the young victim's character and saying incredibly awful, but predictable, things. One of them was also clearly a mother of one of the boys formerly charged with sex crimes and she said the worst things about the victim. I don't know that I blame the newspaper for doing that actually. It was a pretty terrible spectacle.
The most amazing thing was that one of the sock puppets was someone related to the prosecutor Robert Rice in some way (friend or family member) who gave details that only a friend of the prosecutor's would know (Rice had spoken to the attorney general about the case but not to Rex Barnett, etc., etc. I don't believe the last part but I digress.) However, if Rice has shared any of those details with a friend, he's already broken some nondisclosure laws.
It was an ugly affair and demonstrated just how bullying works. One of the sock puppets eventually insisted that people start identifying themselves on the comment board I would presume so they could hound the person personally in town and, worse yet, the person's kids at school. The irony was these were probably people related to the case hiding behind anonymity wanting others to give theirs up! It was a very ugly episode and demonstrated just how far supporters of the GOP cabal were willing to go to silence people.
Since reading that article, I have since come across the information that Matthew Barnett, the alleged perpetrator of this rape, who was kicked out of his house a few weeks before the incident, is now living with his grandfather, Rex Barnett; who has also provided him with a car. Furthermore, I have also discovered that Rex Barnett also largely bankrolled Rice's campaign for prosecutor, thus making it much easier to understand why the charges were dropped in the first place.
Most of the town is sickened by the miscarriage of justice. They are worried about what these young men, having gotten away with child rape, will do for an encore. There are stories of phone calls from the local U.S. Congressional Representative (a man who, like Rice, also owes his career to Barnett) to Rice requesting the charges be dropped as well. This is a case of a politically-compromised prosecutor who found it much easier to go along with what his major financial backer ordered him to do (and what was politically-expedient) than to do the hard thing and be an instrument of justice. One can't help but wonder aloud if this is a situation in which Federal intervention may be necessary.
I suspect Rice will be surprised when he turns out to be a one-termer. If he's re-elected, it will be a very sad statement about this community.