Last year there was widespread outrage when a Montana judge sentenced a former teacher who had been convicted of statutory rape to a mere 30 days in jail. Judge G. Todd Baugh made comments at the sentencing hearing suggesting that the victim who had committed suicide following the incident shared in the responsibility for what happened to her. Now there is a new controversy over a federal investigation of the lack of prosecution of sexual assault cases in Missoula.
Accusation in Montana of Treating Rape Lightly Stirs Unlikely Public Fight
For nearly three years, this college town in the hills of western Montana has lived under the shadow of stories of rapes gone unpunished and complaints that officials minimized or ignored reports of sexual assaults — especially if the suspects played for the University of Montana Grizzlies, the wildly popular football team.
The latest blow landed over the winter when federal investigators released a 20-page report saying the county prosecutor’s office had disregarded sexual assaults to the point that it was placing “women in Missoula at increased risk of harm.” The accusations were vivid and damning: The Justice Department described accounts of a victim who had been told, “All you want is revenge,” and said a prosecutor had told a mother that “boys will be boys” in the wake of an adolescent’s sexual assault of her 5-year-old daughter.
But rather than bringing about contrition and vows to reform, the investigation set off what legal observers call a remarkable standoff between the elected county attorney, Fred Van Valkenburg, and the Justice Department.
The issue of whether complaints of sexual assault are vigorously investigated and prosecuted is a chronic matter of debate all over the country. However, Montana seems to present some extreme situations. The prosecutor in Missoula has filed suit in an attempt to block the investigation by the Dept. of Justice. They had conducted two other related investigations of sexual assault at the University and at the Missoula Police Dept. Both of those institutions entered into agreements with DOJ to improve their procedures. However, Valkenburg has vowed to fight what he sees as an unconstitutional federal infringement on local authority.
The types of issues involved about claims of the difficulty of prosecuting rape cases are not at all unusual. What is unusual is that the DOJ would delve so deeply into the situation in one particular college town. There is a nation wide push for more aggressive policies for dealing with sexual assault at colleges under the requirements of title IX. The Dept of Education has seemed inclined to handle the issue like a hot potato.