I’d like to say this is unbelievable, but unfortunately it’s not. The defendant, whose name is not revealed because he is a minor, ran into “Mary” at a party. (Both were 16 years old at the time.)She was visibly drunk, stumbling and slurring. The defendant took advantage of her state, led her into a darkened basement and raped her. To add insult to injury, he recorded the rape and circulated the video around the school. In the recording her head bangs repeatedly against the wall as he takes his “pleasure.” Mary found out that the video was making the rounds and asked him to stop disseminating it, but he didn’t — sending it around to accompany a text, “When your first time having sex is rape . . . “. Evidently she eventually went to the police. Prosecutors called him predatory and sophisticated, and attempted to charge him as an adult, but New Jersey family court judge James Troiano denied the request. The judge
said the boy's actions were not predatory and not necessarily rape because "traditional" rape cases involve "two or more generally males involved, either at gunpoint or weapon, clearly manhandling a person."
He said the boy shouldn't be tried as an adult because he "comes from a good family who put him into an excellent school," because he was an Eagle Scout, because he was probably headed for a "good college" and because his "scores for college entry were very high."
Troiano said the girl and her family should have been told that bringing charges against the boy could have a "devastating effect" on his life.
I guess getting raped doesn’t have a devastating effect on a young woman victim, at least not enough to derail the rapist’s promising future. This makes me sick!
Fortunately, a court of appeals has now overturned the lower court ruling.
I wonder how much sympathy this judge would have had for a rapist had he been a person of color, or even a white kid from the wrong side of the tracks.