compiled by Patrick H. Moore
The people of Billings, Montana are outraged over the incredibly lenient 30-day sentence former schoolteacher Stacey Dean Rambold received after admitting to raping his 14-year-old student Cherice Moralez. The judge G. Todd Baugh is under pressure to resign and the prosecutors are poring over the relevant case law hoping to find legal standing with which to appeal the sentence.
The facts of the case are as follows:
It began in 2008 when Cherice, then 14, was a student at Billings Senior High School and Rambold, then 49, was a teacher. According to Cherice’s mother, Aulelia Hanlon, Rambold “groomed” her daughter in a manner that eventually led to the pair having sex. When school officials learned of the relationship, Rambold resigned. Later that year, he was charged with three counts of sexual intercourse without consent.
As the case meandered its way through the legal system, Cherice committed suicide. She was a few weeks shy of her 17th birthday.
Paul Vercammen and Kyung Lah of CNN report:
“As a result of the sexual assault and its aftermath, (Cherice) experienced severe emotional distress, humiliation and embarrassment and fell into irreversible depression that tragically led to her taking her own life on February 6, 2010,” Cherice’s mother Auliea Hanlon said in a complaint filed against Rambold.
Hanlon told CNN the relationship was to blame for her daughter’s death.
“Well, it definitely had something to do with it,” she said. “A teenager’s whole life is about school and their friends, and he turned everyone against her.”
Scott Twito, a prosecutor with the Yellowstone County attorney’s office, voiced the opinion not only of his department but the community in general:
“This case is very important. As I’ve said before, this resulted in the loss of one of our young people in my community. We take these charges very seriously. And we fight for those victims.”
Twito stated in no uncertain terms that he strongly disagrees with the sentence District Judge G. Todd Baugh gave to Stacey Dean Rambold this week. As is now well-known, the juege remarked at sentencing:
“It’s not probably the kind of rape most people think about. It was not a violent, forcible, beat-the-victim rape, like you see in the movies. But it was nonetheless a rape. It was a troubled young girl, and he was a teacher. And this should not have occurred.”
CNN was able to obtain a copy of a memo from Twito’s office to the Montana attorney general’s office, in which the attorneys argue the relevant statue was “misapplied and the minimum sentence that could be imposed in Rambold’s case was two years.”
Meanwhile hundreds of protesters — in a protest organized in part by the National Organization for Women (NOW) – rallied at a Billings courthouse Thursday, demanding the judge step down.
“The demand and goal of this is to ask the judge to resign. The broader message is to really unite as a community against victim-blaming,” said protest organizer Sheena Davis, adding that the protest aimed to address “a larger issue on how we protect children from rape in this justice system.”
So far, more than 33,000 people have signed a petition at MoveOn.org, demanding that Baugh resign.
One of the hot-button issues in this matter is the fact the judge said Cherice “seemed older than her chronological age” and was “as much in control of the situation” as the teacher.
“How could she be in control of the situation? He was a teacher. She was a student. She wasn’t in control of anything. She was 14,” Cherice’s mother told CNN. ”She wasn’t even old enough to get a driver’s license. But Judge Baugh, who never met our daughter, justified the paltry sentence saying she was older than her chronological age. I guess somehow it makes a rape more acceptable if you blame the victim, even if she was only 14.”
Baugh made a half-hearted attempt at apologizing on Wednesday.
“I made some references to the victim’s age and control. I’m not sure just what I was attempting to say at that point, but it didn’t come out correct. What I said was demeaning to all women, not what I believe in and irrelevant to the sentencing.”
Baugh also stated that he would file an addendum to the case file to “better explain” his rationale.
The Deferred Prosecution Agreement:
Although the prosecution is now “beating the drum and standing on the soapbox”, it should be remembered that after Cherice’s death, it entered into a “deferred prosecution agreement” with Rambold and his attorneys. The agreement stated that all charges against Rambold would be dismissed if he completed a sex-offender treatment program and met other requirements. One of them was to have no contact with children.
In the agreement, Rambold admitted to one of the rape charges. The defendant was unable to meet the requirements of the sex-offender treatment program. He had platonic relations with female family members who were minors and hid the fact that he was engaging engaging in adult relations with at least one woman from the counselors. As a result, he was dropped for the treatment program and the case was revived in December 2012.
It was at the hearing on Monday that the prosecutors, no doubt soft-peddling the fact that they had previously agreed to the no-time deferred deal, demanded that the judge send Rambold away for 20 years.
The defense argued that Rambold has suffered enough. His lawyers pointed out that he has lost his career and his marriage and has the “scarlet letter of the Internet” due to the publicity surrounding the case.
Judge Baugh sentenced Rambold to 15 years in prison. Then, he suspended all but 31 days of the sentence.
Incredulous at what had happened, Hanlon shouted at the court, “You people suck!”
* * * * *
As more information about this case is revealed, it becomes increasingly clear that the prosecution is playing CYA to the best of their ability. No one forced them to sign the deferred prosecution agreement. If fact, if I’m not mistaken, their rationale was in part based on the fact that after Cherice’s suicide, they felt they lacked the evidence to convict Rambold of rape without having Cherice there to testify against him.
So, if we look at this logically, we see that the prosecution may well have been “stuck between a rock and a hard place.” They are — of course — not to be faulted for that; what they are to be faulted for is the fact that their current stance of outraged incredulity is disingenuous. Walking into the courtroom for sentencing, I’m quite sure they knew perfectly well that Judge Baugh was unlikely to hit Rambold with much more than a slap on the wrist.
Click here to view our earlier post discussing this very troubling case:
Teacher Given Only 30 Days for Rape of 14-Year-Old Girl