District Judge Michael Gibbens, serving a district containing Leavenworth, Kansas, created a stir this weekend when, as part of his sentencing of 67 year old Raymond Soden for five years, 10 months in the sex crimes against two children, aged 13 and 14. From the bench, Gibbens made this argument, as noted in the Kansas City Star:
In doing so, the judge opined that the girls, who were both younger than 15, were partly to blame for what happened and questioned how much they were harmed. The judge pointed out that the children went to Soden’s house voluntarily and didn’t appear in court when he was sentenced.
“I do find that the victims in this case, in particular, were more an aggressor than a participant in the criminal conduct,” Gibbens said before sentencing Soden. “They were certainly selling things monetarily that it’s against the law for even an adult to sell.”
The judges decision to chastise the young girls and reduce the criminals’ conviction from an 8 year recommended sentence as a minimum to 5 years, 10 months isn’t just controversial, it again places the burden of sexual abuse on women, in this case young girls who are below the age of consent.
“These girls are minors, and are the victims, not the aggressors,” said Michelle Herman, president and CEO of Sunflower House, a child advocacy center based in Shawnee.
“Sexual assault is never the victim’s fault. It doesn’t matter what the girls did or didn’t do, he is still the adult and nobody deserves to be taken advantage of sexually.”
The Huffington Post has covered the dangers of Child Sex Trafficking:
According to EPCAT USA (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) Children as young as 12 years of age, and even younger, are being forced to perform sexual acts for commercial reasons. Furthermore, Dr. Kaylani Gopal, the founder and president of the SAFE Coalition for Human Rights (SAFECHR) that the youngest victim she has worked with “was four years old and a female. The youngest male was six years old. These small children were made to perform “tricks” on one another in order to “entertain” adults in exchange for $10 that their parents would receive.”
Lenient sentences such as these, which blame the victim set a standard that shows others who engage in trafficking of minors how to get away with or mitigate their risk.
Representative Stephanie Clayton, (D-Overland Park) made it very clear the damage verdicts like these cause:
Monday, Feb 4, 2019 · 12:54:52 AM +00:00
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Chris Reeves
Update: Due to a copy/paste error, the first notice of sentence in this diary was in error. It was corrected once notified in comments. The recommended sentence is 8 years, the convicted received a lesser sentence, 5 years, 10 months.