Judge’s Attitude In Child Rape Betrays Kids
Any judge with his head screwed on tight would have one thing to say before locking up a pervert like Roy “Bubba” Love:
“Don’t let the courtroom door smack you in the backside on your way to the slammer.”
In Adams County, however, the judicial attitude toward child rape is still stuck in the sexist Stone Age.
Love, 19, showed up at the Ritzville courthouse the other day to be sentenced for having sex with a 12-year-old girl. This prize louse is no stranger to courtrooms. He already has a prior juvenile conviction for molesting a 5-year-old child.
During this proceeding, Superior Court Judge Richard W. Miller seemed to side with Love’s weepy relatives who tarred his young victim as a sexually aggressive harlot.
“Judge (Matt) Driscoll, who used to sit in this court many years ago, and was highly respected, used to say that this type of law was never intended to protect a tramp,” Miller said.
“There’s probably some wisdom in those words.”
Prosecutors are seething over Miller’s remarks and that he backed up his words by giving Bubba a break in prison time.
“This sends out such a horrible, horrible message to victims,” says Gayle Petrusic, the deputy prosecutor who worked the Love case. “Unless you are considered acceptable by polite society, then you aren’t deserving of the law’s protection. That’s basically what the judge is saying.”
A livid Adams County Prosecutor David Sandhaus agrees.
“Judge Miller seems to be suggesting that it is all right for a 30-, 40- or 50-year-old man to have sex with a 12-year-old girl that the man determines to be a tramp,” he says.
“It is going to be tough to get child victims and their families to report sexual crimes if they risk being called a tramp in court.”
When interviewed, Miller tried to wriggle out of what he said like a worm struggling to get off a hook. He denied taking Love’s side, yet a recording of the sentencing tells the tale.
During the June 3 sentencing, deputy prosecutor Petrusic explained that Love got sex out of his victim by plying her with booze and drugs.
An antagonistic Miller interrupted the woman to point out that Bubba didn’t use any threats or pressure. The judge later described Love as “caught in the middle” of a law that doesn’t take consent into account.
Bubba Love and his lawyer had cut a deal. Love would plead guilty to one count of second-degree rape of a child, a Class A violent sex offense. In exchange, the prosecutor dropped three other charges, including two counts of communicating with a 15-year-old girl for immoral purposes, and agreed to ask that Love serve 72 months.
Miller instead gave the man 67 months as recommended by a corrections investigator. That was the least time Love could get under state sentencing guidelines. Love was ineligible for sex offender treatment because of his juvenile conviction.
Was the judge overly sympathetic to this 6-foot-4 bruiser because one of the felon’s close relatives works in the Adams County juvenile facility that Miller oversees? The judge says it isn’t so, but something sure smells.
Miller sounded almost apologetic for not being able to do more for Love. “I really don’t have a choice but to sentence within the range,” he told Bubba, adding that deviating from the state’s fixed sentencing law would certainly provoke an appeal.
Score this one for the Washington Sentencing Reform Act. Had Miller been free to concoct his own sentence, you can bet this rapist would have skated.
“No doubt in my mind whatsoever,” adds Petrusic. “I’m sure he was none too pleased I even filed the case.”
Judge Miller - who is up for re-election next fall - should get his mind out of the boondocks.
Young girls become sexually active because they are preyed on by sharks like Bubba Love. Studies show most underage mothers are impregnated by adults.
These troubled girls are typically the love-starved products of disinterested parents. They are sad kids who lack the maturity to realize the consequences of their inappropriate actions.
They need to be protected, judge, not labeled as tramps.
, DataTimes