Linsey Attridge's False Rape Report

     In 2008, Linsey and Gary Attridge were married in the central Scotland town of Grangemouth. The 26-year-old bride had grown up in Grangemouth where her mother worked as a seamstress and her father was a window cleaner. Linsey and her new husband, a financial advisor, honeymooned in Malta.

     Less than two years after the wedding Linsey Attridge was unhappy with her marriage. In August 2010, after meeting kickboxing instructor Nick Smith online, Linsey and her daughter moved into the 32-year-old's house in the northern city of Aberdeen. By the summer of 2011 that relationship had fallen apart after Linsey confessed to having sex with one of Nick Smith's friends while he was in the house asleep. Although they were no longer a couple, Nick Smith allowed Linsey and her daughter, to whom he had become a surrogate father, to remain in his house.

     In August 2011, while browsing through Facebook pages, Linsey Attridge came across a photograph of 26-year-old Philip McDonald, a cook at a downtown Aberdeen cafe. He was pictured with his 14-year-old brother James. Philip lived outside of the city in a modest flat with his partner Kelly Fraser and their daughter. To Linsey Attridge Philip and James McDonald were total strangers.

     A few days after stumbling across the Facebook photograph Linsey Attridge, in a scheme to rekindle her relationship with Nick Smith, decided to falsely report that that Philip and James McDonald had broken into her house and brutally raped her. Before alerting the authorities she staged the crime by overturning furniture, punching herself in the face and ripping her clothing.

     Police officers responding to the false report found a woman who looked and acted as though she had been beaten and sexually assaulted. She submitted herself to various physical examinations including tests for sexually transmitted diseases. In an act of extreme self-centered cruelty Linsey Attridge identified Philip and James McDonald as her rapists. 

     Two days after receiving the false crime report police officers arrested 14-year-old James McDonald at his mother's house. He was a student at a residential school for teenagers with behavioral problems. Less than an hour after taking James into custody police officers walked into the cafe where Philip McDonald worked as a cook.

     On the worst day of Philip McDonald's life the detectives told him that he and his brother were the prime suspects in a brutal rape case. The officers asked the shocked and frightened young man to accompany them to the police station for questioning. In the police vehicle en route to police headquarters the officers identified the victim and described the home invasion and crime. Philip broke down and cried. (The officers probably took this as a sign of guilt.)

     At the police station detectives photographed, fingerprinted and swabbed Philip McDonald for DNA. During the five-hour interrogation, when a detective revealed exactly when the crime had taken place, Philip was relieved. While the two men were supposedly raping Linsey Attridge, Philip was at home putting his daughter to bed. Several members of his family were in the house with him that night. His relatives would vouch for his whereabouts at the time of the rape. He had a solid alibi.

     The detectives questioning Philip were not interested in his alibi. Everyone had an alibi. Big deal. Philip didn't realize that many police investigators, once they have a suspect in their cross-hairs, were extremely reluctant, even in the face of exonerating evidence, to change targets, switch gears.

     Over the next two months Philip McDonald's life was a living hell. He couldn't be out in public without being harassed and had to enroll his daughter in another school. By October 2011 Linsey Attridge's story began to unravel. When pressed by detectives who had become skeptical, she admitted that she had made the entire story up. She had done it in an effort to attract attention and sympathy from her estranged boyfriend, Nick Smith. In so doing she had put Philip and his brother through hell, wasted police resources and made the detectives look like incompetent fools. 

     Shortly after Linsey Attridge's false report confession, a pair of detectives walked into the cafe to inform Philip that he was in the clear. That was it. Out of the blue he was accused of rape, and out of the blue he was told that he had been cleared. The officers left the restaurant without even offering an insincere apology. Like their counterparts in America, and probably throughout the world, police officers rarely say they are sorry. Why? Because many of them are not sorry. The rest are afraid of being sued.

     A local prosecutor charged Linsey Attridge with the crime of filing a false report. In June 2013 the defendant pleaded guilty to the charge in an Aberdeen courtroom. The judge shocked everyone by sentencing her to 200 hours of community service and two years probation. Nick Smith, her former boyfriend, was in the courtroom that day. He told reporters outside the court house that he thought the judge's sentence was "ridiculous." By that he meant lenient. He was right. This woman should have been locked up for at least five years.

The Brock Allen Turner Sexual Assault Case

     During the early morning hours of January 18, 2015 in Palo Alto, California, two Stanford University students came across a man lying on top of a woman near a fraternity house dumpster. The man and the woman had passed out from excessive alcohol consumption.

     The Stanford student on top of the partially clad woman was 20-year-old Brock Allen Turner, an all-American high school swimmer from Dayton, Ohio. He had met the woman found beneath him at a fraternity party that night. (Her identify was not made public.)

     Turner had twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system. The 23-year-old woman was three times over the legal limit for intoxication.

     After being examined at a hospital in San Jose a deputy sheriff told the woman she may have been the victim of a sexual assault.

     Brock Turner, when questioned by the police, admitted that he had sexually fondled the unconscious woman but did not rape her.

     Shortly after being questioned by detectives a Santa Clara County prosecutor charged Brock Turner with three felonies that included the sexual assault of an unconscious woman and assault with the intent to commit rape. If convicted as charged he faced up to 14 years in prison.

     Following his arrest on the three felony charges Brock Turner withdrew from the university.

     The Turner sexual assault case went to trial in Palo Alto in March 2016. Prosecutor Alaleh Kianerci in her opening remarks to the jury called the defendant the "quintessential face of campus assault." The victim had consumed four shots of whisky before attending the party as well as a quantity of vodka at the fraternity house. As a result of her intoxication she had been unable to consent to having sex. Lack of consent constituted the legal basis for the prosecution.

     Brock Turner took the stand on his own behalf and testified that the woman had been a willing participant in the sexual activity. Following his testimony, and the closing arguments, the jury found the defendant guilty as charged. He faced up to 14 years in prison.

     At the convicted man's sentencing hearing on June 2, 2016 his defense attorney asked Judge Aaron Persky to sentence his client to probation. The defendant's father, Dan Turner, took the stand and said, in reference to his son spending 14 years behind bars: "That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life."

     The female Santa Clara County probation officer who conducted Brock Turner's pre-sentencing investigation took the stand and said: "When compared to other crimes of similar nature, this case may be considered less serious due to Mr. Turner's level of intoxication." The probation officer also pointed out that the former Stanford student did not have a criminal record, was young and unlikely to re-offend. The county agent concluded her testimony by saying that Mr. Turner had "expressed sincere remorse and empathy for the victim." The probation officer recommended a short jail term followed by a period of probation.

     Prosecutor Kianerci, in her pre-sentencing statement to the court, noted that Mr. Turner experienced a run-in with the police in November 2014. He had, according to police reports, run from an officer after the officer spotted him and other young men drinking on campus. Turner also admitted to possessing a fake driver's license. The prosecutor wondered out loud how the defendant could be so remorseful and empathetic when he had pleaded not guilty to the charges. Prosecutor Kianerci asked Judge Persky to sentence the defendant to six years in prison.

     The most dramatic phase of the pre-sentencing hearing occurred when the victim took the stand and read from her lengthy victim impact statement. She read, in part: "You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence and my own voice, until today. The damage is done, no one can undo it. And now we both have a choice. We can let this destroy us, I can remain angry and hurt and you can be in denial, or we can face it and head on: I accept the pain, you accept the punishment, and we move on."

     Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Brock Turner to six months in the county jail followed by three years' probation. Turner would also have to register as a sex offender. With good behavior the convicted man was expected to serve three months behind bars.

     Judge Persky's sentence in the Turner sexual assault case created a firestorm of protest from an angry and vocal segment of society that considered the sentence a mere slap on the wrist. Others more sympathetic to the offender believed that making the young man register as a sex offender was, by itself, severe punishment. This group argued that the sexual assault conviction had essentially ruined his life.

    Judge Persky's sentence immediately prompted a movement to recall him from office. Under California law the California Assembly could impeach Judge Persky after which he could be removed from office on a two-thirds vote in the state senate. Moreover, the State Commission on Judicial Performance could censure or remove the judge from the bench. This action would be subject to a review by the state supreme court.

     Those outraged by the Persky sentence called for Stanford University to apologize for the sexual assault. The activists also demanded that the school bolster its effort to prevent campus rape and other sexual offenses. In response the university issued a statement that deflected criticism of its handling of the Turner case.

     Following the national uproar over the judge's sentence a group of prospective Santa Clara County jurors refused to serve in Judge Persky's courtroom. The judge and members of his family also received death threats.

     The national publicity associated with the Turner case prompted several politicians, including Vice President Joe Biden, to express concern over the sentence and the problem of campus rape and other sexual crimes.  

     While the California Commission on Judicial Performance found no wrongdoing in Judge Persky's sentencing of Brock Turner, voters recalled the judge in June, 2018. 

The David Wise Spousal Rape Case

     In 2008, Mandy Wise kicked her husband David Wise out of their home in Indianapolis, Indiana. She then filed for divorce. After eleven years of marriage she discovered, on his cell phone, video recordings of him having sex with her. She was unconscious. The tapes revealed she had been surreptitiously drugged and raped by her husband.

     When confronted with the tapes, Mr. Wise responded with the following email: "I was taking advantage of you in your sleep and you kept coming to me and telling me it was not okay. I needed to stop." He did not admit to drugging her, and they never, according to the victim, discussed the matter prior to her discovery of the videotapes.

     In January 2010, not long after the finalization of the divorce, the ex-wife, now going by her maiden name Boardman, complained to the police that her ex-husband had been harassing her with repeated phone calls and text messages. She also claimed that he threatened to kill the man to whom she was engaged. A judge granted her a protection order, but Mr. Wise was not charged with any crime.

     In 2011, two years after the divorce, Mandy reported the rapes to the police. As evidence she submitted a DVD copy of the sex tapes. When asked to explain the delay in reporting and submission of evidence, she said she didn't want their two children to grow up without a father.

     A Marion County prosecutor charged David Wise with one count of rape and five felony counts of criminal deviate conduct. If convicted as charged he faced a maximum sentence of forty years in prison. After spending 24 days in the county detention center David Wise made bail and was released to await his trial.

     The David Wise spousal rape trial began in April 2014 in Indianapolis. Mandy Boardman's testimony for the prosecution comprised the state's principal evidence in the three-day proceeding. She took the stand and told the jury that on numerous occasions she had awaken with the feeling that her body had been "messed with." One time she woke up with a pill still dissolving in her mouth. She had also discovered, in the bedroom, eyedroppers that were not hers.

     Following two days of testimony the case went to the jury. After a brief deliberation the jurors returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. The judge set May 16, 2014 as the sentencing date. On that day the prosecutor asked the judge to sentence Wise to twenty years in prison. The convicted man's attorney argued for two years of house detention.

     Marion County Superior Court Judge Kurt Eisgruber, on May 16, 2014, sentenced the 52-year-old rapist to twenty years, with twelve of those years suspended. David Wise would serve the remaining eight years wearing a GPS monitoring device in his home. Following the house detention he would serve two years of probation.

    Following the sentencing hearing Wise's attorney, Elizabeth Milliken, told reporters that she planned to appeal her client's conviction.

     On Monday, May 19, 2014, Mandy Boardman, in speaking to a reporter with the Indianapolis Star, said, "I was very pleased with the conviction but the sentencing was a punch in the gut by the justice system. During the reading of the sentence the judge looked at me before he gave the final decision. I was told that I needed to forgive my attacker and move on. I received zero justice on Friday."

     Boardman, to a reporter with the Los Angeles Times, added: "I never thought he [Wise] would be at home, being able to have the same rights and privileges that I do."

    On July 24, 2014 Judge Eisgruber put David Wise behind bars for five years after the convicted rapist violated the terms of his house arrest by letting his GPS tracking device's battery go dead. He also failed to maintain contact with correction authorities. Mandy Boardman responded to her ex-husband's incarceration with the following statement to a local reporter: "Now that I know that he will be in prison for the next five years I think I can finally get some peace" 

Serial Killer And Rapist Joseph Naso

     On April 11, 2011, police officers in Reno, Nevada arrested 77-year-old Joseph Naso on four first-degree murder charges filed against him in Marin County California. The former commercial photographer stood accused of raping and murdering four Bay Area prostitutes between 1977 and 1994. The victims, Roxene Roggasch, Carmen Colen, Pamela Parsons and Tracy Tafoya ranged in age from 18 to 38, and each had first and last names that began with the same letter.

     Forensic scientists connected Naso to two of the victims through DNA. A search of his house produced several nude photographs of women who appeared unconscious or dead. Police officers also found a so-called "rape diary" containing narrative accounts of women and girls who had been picked up and raped. The murder suspect's house was also littered with female mannequin parts and women's lingerie. In Naso's safety deposit box searchers found a passport bearing the name Sara Dylan. (A skull, found years earlier in Nevada matched Sara Dylan's mother's DNA.) Naso's safety deposit box also contained $152,400 in cash.

     The Joseph Naso serial murder trial got underway in San Rafael California in June 2013. The prosecutor in her opening statement to the jury said the state would prove that Naso had drugged, raped and photographed the four victims. He strangled them to death then dumped their nude bodies in remote areas in northern California.

     Naso, who represented himself at the trial, told the jury that he was not the monster the prosecution was trying to make him out to be. The defendant said the nude women he had photographed had been willing models. "I don't kill people, and there's no evidence of that in my writings and photography."

     Following two months of evidence that featured the defendant's rape diary, the nude photographs and the DNA evidence linking Naso to two of the murder victims, the case went to the jury. During the trial, Naso, as his own attorney, made a courtroom fool of himself and tried the patience of the judge. On August 19, 2013, after deliberating seven hours over a period of two days, the jury found the defendant guilty of the four counts of first-degree murder. The verdict also included a finding of special circumstances that made Naso eligible for the death penalty.

     While the jury recommended the death penalty in the Naso case there was no chance the state would put him to death. In 2006 a federal judge had put California's executions on hold until the state modified its execution protocols. That has not been done. Naso would join 725 inmates on California's death row. While some politicians and judges threw roadblocks in the path of the state's death penalty procedure, juries in California continued to impose the death sentence.

     Homicide investigators believe Naso raped and murdered three 11-year-old girls between 1971 and 1973 in Rochester, New York. He was living in the city when these murders occurred. These victims also had first and last names that began with the same letter. One of the girls, Carmen Colon, had the same name of one of the women Naso killed in California. Detectives also believed that Joseph Naso murdered at least ten other women. Following the verdict Mr. Naso insisted that he had not raped or killed anyone.

Judges Soft on Rapists

Judge G. Todd Baugh and Rapist Stacey Rambold

      In August 2013 after a jury in Billings, Montana found a 49-year-old high school teacher named Stacey Rambold guilty of having consensual sex with a 14-year-old student, Yellowstone County Judge G. Todd Baugh sentenced the defendant to thirty days in jail plus three years probation. The court ordered Rambold to register as a sex offender.

     Rambold's distraught victim, Cherice Moralez, committed suicide during his rape trial.

     According to Judge Baugh, even though the victim was 35 years younger than her rapist, Moralez was "older than her chronological age." The judge considered this a major mitigating factor in the case.

     On the day after his unpopular sentencing of the former teacher, Judge Baugh, in speaking to reporters baffled by the light sentence, stood by his ruling. "Obviously," he said, "a 14-year-old can't consent [to sex with an adult]. I think that people have in mind that this was some violent, forcible, horrible rape. It was horrible enough as it is, just given her age, but it wasn't this forcible beat-up rape."

     Stacey Rambold served his thirty days behind bars and walked free. Having avoided years in prison for ruining a young girl's life he was one lucky rapist. The judge later apologized for his "chronological age" comments, and due to the public uproar over his sentencing of the teacher declined to run for his fifth term in office.

Judge Marie Silveira and Rapist Timothy L. Lyman

     On December 27, 2012, 44-year-old soccer coach Timothy Lyman hosted a party for his players at his Oakdale, California house. The coach provided his young party-goers with vodka and rum. One of his guests, a 16-year-old girl, after having consensual sex with a boy her age in one of Lyman's bedrooms passed out from the effects of alcohol. She awoke to find her coach performing oral sex on her.

     On November 12, 2013, after Timothy Lyman pleaded no contest to rape, Stanislaus County Judge Marie Silveira sentenced the coach to three years probation. Lyman was also ordered to register as a sex offender. The prosecutor and members of the victim's family were shocked and outraged by the judge's light sentence.

     In speaking to reporters after Lyman's sentencing, the victim's father said, "Whoever would do this to a 16-year-old girl is just sick. This has devastated my family. There have been lots of sleepless nights for my daughter and sleepless nights for myself. I'm just sick."

Judge James Woodroof and Rapist Austin Smith Clem

     In 2007 19-year-old Austin Smith Clem had, on two occasions, forcible sex with 14-year-old Courtney Andrews. The rapes took place in Athens, Alabama. Clem swore the girl to secrecy. Moreover, if she told anyone he threatened to harm her and her parents.

     Four years later, at age 23, Clem forcibly raped Andrews who was then eighteen. This time she asked a friend to report the assault to her parents.

     In September 2013 the Limestone County jury, after deliberating just two hours, found Austin Smith Clem guilty of two counts of second-degree rape and one count of first-degree rape. The jury recommended a 35-year sentence. On November 13, 2013 Judge James Woodroof sentenced the convicted rapist to a non-custody correctional program designed to make offenders "likely to maintain a productive and law abiding life as a result of accountability, guidance, and direction to services needed."

     Clem, after completing the two year program for "nonviolent, low-level offenders," was placed on probation for three years. He also paid a $2,381 fine and register as a sex offender.

     In response to Judge Woodroof's sentence Courtney Andrews told reporters that she was "livid" and afraid for her family. The rape victim's father said this: "We thought justice was finally being served, and although the system was very slow, it was not totally broken. We were forced to hear a judge hand down a light sentence."

     In April 2017 a Limestone County prosecutor charged Austin Clem with first-degree theft by deception. The convicted rapist had been accused in 2016 of taking money to repair vehicles and not doing the work. Clem was charged because he had no intention of fixing the cars and refused to return the money. He also violated his probation in the rape case.

     A Limestone County judge, in December 2017, revoked Clem's probation and sent him to prison to serve his 35 year rape sentence.

The Debacle at Sparkman Middle School

     On January 14, 2010, Jeanne Dunaway and Teresa Terrell, vice principals at Sparkman Middle School near Huntsville, Alabama, received a complaint that a male student had touched a girl inappropriately. The subject of the complaint was no stranger to this kind of allegation. He had been accused of predatory sexual advances fifteen times in the recent past. The latest complaint resulted in the boy being placed on "in-school suspension."

     A couple of days later, teacher's aide June Simpson spoke to principal Ronnie Blair about the boy. According to Simpson, he "repeatedly tried to convince girls to have sex with him in the boy's bathroom on the special needs students' corridor. The teacher's aide reported that the young predator had actually engaged in sex with one of the girls.

     Because the boy and the female special needs student denied having sex in the boy's restroom, the principal informed the teacher's aide that because the kids had not been caught in the act his hands were tied. The concerned teacher's aide recommended that school officials keep a close eye on this boy.

     On January 22, 2010, a 14-year-old girl who wasn't physically or mentally handicapped but took special education classes, told teacher's aide Simpson that the alleged schoolboy sex fiend had been pestering her to have restroom sex with him. Simpson asked the girl if she'd be willing to act as bait in a plan to catch the sexual predator. The girl refused to participate in the sting, then changed her mind.

     The teacher's aide, accompanied by the girl, laid out her plan to vice principal Dunaway who didn't endorse or approve of it. The vice principal didn't forbid the execution of the scheme either. The plan was this: the girl would agree to have sex with the boy in the special needs bathroom where teachers would be hiding to confront the kid before things got out of hand.

     Shortly after leaving the vice principal's office, the girl encountered the young predator in the hallway. She agreed to have sex with him. But instead of getting together in the special needs restroom, he told her to meet him in the sixth-grade boy's bathroom in another part of the school. The girl did not have time to alert the teacher's aide of the change in plans.

     In the sixth-grade boy's restroom, with no teachers hiding nearby to intervene, the girl rejected the boy's advances. Unable to fight him off, he raped her.

     After the victim reported the crime to a teacher, police officers were summoned to the school. They took the girl to the National Children's Advocacy Center in Huntsville where medical personnel used a rape kit to gather physical evidence. Hospital personnel also photographed signs of trauma consistent with the girl's rape allegation.

     The young suspect, when confronted with the accusation, claimed he only kissed the girl.

     After the alleged rape victim refused to cooperate with detectives, the police department turned the case over to the Madison County District Attorney's Office. Without the victim's testimony, an eyewitness, or the boy's confession, prosecutors closed the case for lack of evidence.

     Pursuant to an internal administrative inquiry into the incident, vice principal Terrell testified that after seeing photographs of the girl's injuries she didn't know whether or not the sex had been consensual. Vice Principal Dunaway testified that when the girl willingly entered the sixth-grade restroom with the boy she was on her own.

     In the school's final disciplinary report on the matter, the incident in the school restroom was described as the "inappropriate touching of a female." The principal suspended the boy for five days. Following the suspension the kid spent fifteen days at an alternative institution before returning to the Sparkman Middle School.

     The 14-year-old girl withdrew from the Sparkman Middle School. After extensive counseling she ended up in North Carolina with her mother. Upon her mother's death shortly thereafter, the girl and her brother were placed in Child Protection Services.

     June Simpson, the Sparkman teacher's aide, resigned not long after the incident. Her attorney described her as a scapegoat in the case.

      In October 2010, the girl's father filed a Title IX "Jane Doe" lawsuit in federal court against the boy, school administrators, the teacher's aide and the Madison County School Board. Title IX is a federal law aimed at ending gender discrimination in public education.

     A few months after the filing of the lawsuit a U.S. District Court Judge tossed out the claim against the boy because he was a minor. The judge also threw out the Title IX portion of the action. He did allow, however, the claim of negligence against the teacher's aide and the school administrators. Attorney Eric Artrip appealed the lower court ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta.

     On September 17, 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education filed amicus briefs (friend of the court arguments) in support of attorney Artrip's appeal of the Title IX rejection.

     The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2015 overturned the district court ruling against the student used as sexual assault bait. That meant that "Jane Doe" could proceed with a lawsuit against the school system

     In March 2016, the Madison County School System settled the "Jane Doe" suit for an undisclosed amount.

The Lee Kaplan Rape Case

     On Thursday June 16, 2016, officers with the Lower Southampton Township Police Department, operating on a children-in-danger tip, visited the home of 51-year-old Lee Kaplan. Mr. Kaplan resided in the eastern Pennsylvania town of Feasterville located in Bucks County twenty miles northeast of Philadelphia. When the police officers entered the Kaplan dwelling they encountered twelve girls, ages six months to eighteen. Several of the children responded by running about the house in panic searching for places to hide.

     When questioned by the police Mr. Kapan explained why the girls were living in his house. In 2012 a former Amish couple from the Lancaster County town of Quarryville named David and Salvilla Stoltzfus, in return for money from Kaplan to help the couple keep their farm, gave him their 14-year-old daughter. Mr. Kaplan and the Stoltzfuses were partners in a metalwork business in Quarryville.

     According to Mr. Kaplan he and the Stoltzfus teenager, since 2012, had produced two children. Their daughters were six-months and three years old. The other nine girls in the house were also Stoltzfus children.

     Mr. Kaplan was the only adult living in the Feasterville house. None of the girls had birth certificates or social security numbers.

     Police officers booked Lee Kaplan into the Bucks County Jail on numerous offenses that included rape, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault and corruption of minors. The twelve girls were placed into protective custody.

     David and Savilla Stoltzfus were also taken into custody on charges of conspiracy of statutory sexual assault and child endangerment. Mr. Kaplan and the ex-Amish couple were held on $1 million bond. Mr. Stolzfus told the police that when he gave up his children he had no idea he was breaking the law. In fact, after researching the issue online, he was convinced the transfer was legal.

     On Saturday June 18, 2016 one of Kaplan's neighbors told a local reporter that she had complained about Lee Kaplan to the authorities three years earlier. Mr. Kaplan's windows were boarded up and his yard was overgrown with uncut grass and weeds. According to this neighbor, the children were occasionally let out of the house, and when she did see them, "They were so sad and fearful. That's what made me call. I've been telling my husband for years that 'something isn't right.' "

     Another one of Lee Kaplan's neighbors in Feasterville told a reporter that Lee Kaplan seemed "weird" and that the neighbor now wished he had called the police.

     On June 18, 2016 police officers executed a search warrant at the Kaplan house. Officers also searched a greenhouse on the property where the long-haired, bearded resident grew Avocado trees. As officers searched the property, several chickens wandered about the place. Inside the house officers discovered several air mattresses, a large catfish tank and an elaborate and expensive model train layout. Following the search the authorities impounded Lee Kaplan's two vehicles, a blue conversion van and a white sedan.

     According to another neighbor the girls were occasionally seen working in Kaplan's vegetable garden. He also took them to a nearby Dollar Store and a local hotdog restaurant. Kaplan and the oldest Stoltzfus girl, according to this witness, had been seen in public holding hands.

     According to the Lower Southampton Township Public Safety Director, "We don't know if maybe there were babies born that were destroyed or whatever, but that's not the case as far as we can tell."

     An investigation of the Stoltzfuses revealed that in 2001 Mr. Stoltzfus borrowed $300,000 from an Amish run institution called the Old Order Amish Helping Program. At the time Mr. Stoltzfus operated a scrap metal business in the small Lancaster County town of Kirkwood. Eight years after taking out the loan to keep his business going, Mr. Stoltzfus lost the property to foreclosure. At this point he left the Amish faith, became a born again Christian and sued the Old Order Amish Helping program for initiating the foreclosure and forcing him out of business. In his lawsuit Mr. Stoltzfus claimed the Amish wanted to close him down because they didn't approve of him doing business "with an individual of the Jewish faith named Lee Kaplan." A judge dismissed the Stoltzfus lawsuit a few months later.

     The scrap metal business was sold at a sheriff's auction for $342,000. The Stoltzfuses, in 2011 filed for bankruptcy.

     In digging into Lee Kaplan's past, investigators learned that he graduated from Cheltenham High School in 1983. In 1994 he and his wife Virginia bought a house in the Melrose Park section of Cheltenham for $110,000, a place they worked hard to refurbish. Kaplan and his wife rented rooms in the house to students at a local university.

     According to a Cheltenham man who had lived next door to the Kaplan and his wife from 1994 to 2003, Mr. Kaplan was "born again, but not as a Christian. He was a born again Jew--a Jew for Jesus."

     In 2003 Lee Kaplan sold the house in Cheltenham for $250,000. Around this time he and his wife got divorced. After that he drastically changed his looks by letting his hair and his beard grow out.

     On June 6, 2017 a Bucks county jury found Lee Kaplan guilty of 17 counts of rape. According to the prosecutor, he "brainwashed the Stoltzfus family seeking "power, manipulation and control." 

     The 47-year-old rapist was sentenced to life in prison.

     A month later the judge sentenced David and Savilla Stoltzfus to seven years behind bars.

The Edward and Marilyn Bagley Sex Slave Torture Case

      There are people who shouldn't have been born. They include serial killers, pedophiles, child pornographers and a small group of perverts who physically torture unwilling victims for sexual pleasure. Whether or not these sexual deviants are born or made is irrelevant. They are among us and by the time one of them is caught and brought to justice the harm has been done. In the end we are frustrated because our justice system is often more civilized than the criminal it punishes. We have to live with the fact these predators never get what's coming to them. In the world of sadistic sex crimes there is no such thing as justice.

     Edward and Marilyn Bagley, a pair of practicing sexual sadists, lived in a trailer near Lebanon, Missouri in the western part of the state. In December 2002, when Edward was 35 and his wife 37, the Bagleys took in a mentally deficient 16-year-old foster home runaway. (The girl was identified by the FBI as FV or Female Victim.) Proudly calling himself "Master Ed," Mr. Bagley and his wife promised the girl a better life that featured a career in modeling and dancing. When FV was still a minor, Edward Bagley forced her to wear "slave clothes," provided her with marijuana and ecstasy and repeatedly raped her. "Master Ed" informed the girl that she was being trained and groomed to be a sex slave. In that regard he forced her to sign a life-time sex slave contract that she believed was legally binding.

     Between February 2004 and February 2009 Master Ed and his accomplice spouse used a crank telephone to electrocute the girl's private parts, flogged her, sewed-up and pierced parts of her body, choked her to the point of unconsciousness, made her watch as they shot her beloved pets and threatened to bury her alive in the woods behind the trailer. The pathologically cruel couple even waterboarded FV and nailed parts of her body to slabs of wood. To mark her as their property Edward Bagley tattooed a barcode on his captive's neck and inked the Chinese symbol of a slave on one of her ankles.

     The Bagleys published FV's torture sessions on live Internet webcasts for the enjoyment of other sexual monsters willing to pay a fee for the thrill of watching a young woman suffer. A sadist in his later twenties from St. Louis named Bradley Cook watched these pornographic obscenities on his computer, downloaded photographs of FV and forwarded to the Bagleys images of his own sex slave activity. Sixty-year-old Michael Stokes, a California connoisseur of the sadistic arts, traveled to the Bagley torture chamber where he paid for the opportunity to inflict his own brand of pain on the hapless victim. Mr. Stokes, after he paid the Bagleys $1,300, was allowed to transport the sex slave to his home on the west coast where he subjected her to a pornographic photo-shoot and various deviate sexual assaults.

     Beginning in June 2007 the Bagleys forced their 21-year-old slave to work as a stripper and exotic dancer in several of the region's adult entertainment clubs. Whenever FV failed to be a club's top monthly earner the Bagleys punished her with extra beatings and acts of sexual depravity.

     FV's seven-year ordeal came to an end in February 2009 when the young woman required emergency medical treatment and hospitalization after the Bagleys' excessive electrical shocking led to cardiac arrest. Shortly after FV's near-death experience the FBI entered the case.

     In September 2010 a federal grand jury sitting in Kansas City, Missouri indicted the Bagleys for commercial sex trafficking and forced labor trafficking involving aggravated sexual abuse. The first charge carried a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison without parole. The second, life without the chance of parole. Several months later the feds indicted Michael Stokes and Bradley Cook for their roles in the Bagley sex slave conspiracy. The grand jury also returned indictments against 52-year-old Dennis Henry and James Noel who was 47. Both of these degenerates had participated in FV torture sessions.

     Early in 2012 Stokes, Cook, Henry and Noel pleaded guilty to federal sex trafficking charges. On December 6, 2012, Marilyn Bagley, now 47, pleaded guilty in a Kansas City federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit commercial sex trafficking. In return for her plea the judge sentenced Marilyn Bagley to a probated sentence.

     On January 15, 2013 Edward Bagley, faced with the realization that Michael Stokes and the other perverts had agreed to testify against him, pleaded guilty to one count of using an interstate facility to entice a minor into illegal sexual conduct.

     A federal judge on September 10, 2013 sentenced Edward Bagley to twenty years in prison with no chance of parole. The next day Bradley Cook was sentenced to twenty years behind bars. The judge gave Dennis Henry and James Noel fifteen years each. Michael Stokes was sentenced to five years in prison.

     In a criminal justice system sympathetic to victims all of these people should have been put away for life. 

Gary Irving: The Bail Jumping Rapist

     In 1978 a jury in Norfolk County, Massachusetts found 18-year-old Gary Irving guilty of three counts of rape with force, unnatural acts and kidnapping. He knocked one of his victims off her bike, dragged her to a secluded area and viciously raped her. He threatened a second rape victim with a knife. The convicted rapist faced up to life in prison.

     Immediately following Gary Irving's guilty verdict and prior to his sentencing, the rapist's attorney asked Judge Robert Prince to extend his client's bail a couple of days so Irving could make final arrangements before being packed off to prison.

     The prosecutor in the case, Louis Sabadini, pointed out that if Gary Irving was not sent straight to prison he would flee. Extending bail to a convicted rapist who was facing at least 35 years in prison was simply out of the question. This young man was a violent sexual predator.

     Judge Prince shocked the prosecutor and the rape victims' families by granting Irving the weekend to settle his affairs before his incarceration. Irving took this opportunity to flee the state. Except perhaps for Judge Prince, Gary Irving's bail jump surprised no one.

     The convicted rapist would remain at large for 35 years.

     In trying to find this fugitive the police received plenty of help from reality television. The Irving bail jumping case was featured on "America's Most Wanted," "Unsolved Mysteries" and "Real Stories of the Highway Patrol." It seemed that Gary Irving had somehow left the planet.

     On Wednesday, March 27, 2013, local police and FBI agents arrested Mr. Irving at his home in Gorham, Maine where the 52-year-old had been living under the name Gregg Irving. He hadn't even bothered to change his last name.

     On July 14, 2014, Judge George Singal sentenced Gary Irving to 47 years in prison. The 57-year-old wouldn't be eligible for parole until he was 84.

     What can you say about a judge who made such a reckless decision? What was he thinking? Could he have been that stupid or were his motives more complicated and perhaps pathological? One can only hope that Mr. Irving, during his 35 years of freedom didn't rape more victims. If he did, Judge Prince was his accomplice. (The judge has since died.)

The Ron Jeremy Sexual Assault Case: The Legacy of a Former Porn Star

     Ronald Jeremy Hyatt, born in 1953 into a middle class family, grew up in Queens, New York. Following a stint as a school teacher he tried to establish a career as an actor on Broadway. When that didn't pan out the chubby, five-foot six aspiring actor moved to the Los Angeles area to pursue a career in the film industry. Hyatt, now going under the name Ron Jeremy, found his place as a Hollywood actor when in 1979 the 26-year-old appeared in his first porn flick. (According to porn film fans, inches that would have made Jeremy six-foot three, ended up elsewhere. For the porn industry he was tall in the right place.)

     By 2018, having appeared in more than 2,200 adult films, Ron Jeremy, having acquired the nickname "Hedgehog" because of his stature and hairy body, had become an icon in the porn business. According to the Guinness Book of World Records he held the record in the category "Most Appearances in Adult Films." Moreover, his fame reached beyond the porn community into popular culture where, through endorsements and his "acting," he became a multi-millionaire. In 2001 Jeremy was the subject of a documentary called "Porn Star: The Legacy of Ron Jeremy."

     On November 15, 2017 Rolling Stone published an article by EJ Dickson that discussed a June 2017 YouTube video posted by a woman named Ginger Banks. In that ten-minute clip Banks told the stories of several women who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Ron Jeremy.

     Ron Jeremy's attorney attempted to get Rolling Stone to retract the damning piece, but the magazine stood behind the reporting.

     In 2018, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Special Victims Bureau launched an investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Ron Jeremy.

     On June 23, 2020, Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies arrested the former porn star. The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office charged Jeremy with raping a 25-year-old woman in her home in West Hollywood in May 2014. He also faced charges related to the sexual assault, on separate occasions, of two women in a West Hollywood bar. The alleged assaults of these women, ages 33 and 46, took place in 2017. The final charge involved the alleged rape, in the same bar, of a 30-year-old woman. This offense allegedly occurred in July 2019.

     The 67-year-old former porn star, incarcerated in the Los Angeles County Jail under $6.6 million bond, pleaded not guilty to all charges. If convicted as charged he faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.

     On August 31, 2020, Ron Jeremy was back in court to face 20 additional sexual assault charges involving 13 women ages 15 to 56. The oldest alleged crime took place in 2004.

     The new charges included six counts of sexual battery by restraint, five counts of forcible rape, three counts of forcible oral copulation and two counts of forcible penetration by a foreign object. Ron Jeremy also stood accused of one count each of sodomy assault with intent to commit rape, penetration by a foreign object on an unconscious or sleeping victim and lewd conduct with a 15-year-old girl.

     The most recent sexual allegation against Ron Jeremy took place on January 1, 2020 when he allegedly assaulted a 21-year-old woman outside a business in West Hollywood.

     Ron Jeremy pleaded not guilty to the August 31, 2020 sexual assault charges.

     In January 2023 a judge found Jeremy incompetent to stand trial due to "neurocognative decline." Nine months later the 70-year-old defendant, with dementia and declining health, was released from his jail cell in Los Angeles to a private residence. In November 2023, Ron Jeremy was found incompetent to stand trial.

Shane M. Piche: The Sex Offender Who Got Off Light

     In 2018 Shane M. Piche drove a school bus for the Watertown City School District in upstate New York. For a year the 25-year-old driver had his eye on one of his passengers, a 14-year-girl he had been communicating with on social media. In June 2018 Mr. Piche invited the girl and her friends to his house outside of Watertown. It was there he provided his bus riders with alcohol, and it was there he and the 14-year-old engaged in sex. In New York a girl under 17 is incapable, by law, of consenting to sexual intercourse. In the eyes of the law, and anyone with a sense of decency, Shane M. Piche raped that 14-year-old girl.

     In September 2018 Watertown police officers took Shane Piche into custody and booked him into the Jefferson County Jail on charges of second-degree rape. He also faced the charge of endangering the welfare of a child. Second-degree rape in New York carried a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. The school district also fired him.

     In February 2019, pursuant to a plea agreement between Jefferson County Chief Assistant District Attorney Patricia Dzuiba and defense attorney Eric Swartz, Shane Piche was allowed to plead guilty to third-degree rape, an offense that could result in a sentence of four years in prison. The prosecutor, in justifying her decision to let Piche plea bargain down to the lesser felony said she wanted to spare the victim the ordeal of testifying before a grand jury and a rape trial.

     Two months after Piche's guilty plea, Judge James P. McClusky sentenced the former school bus driver to ten years probation. In addition, the judge fined him $1,375. As a Level One sex offender Mr. Piche would not be added to the Department of Criminal Justice Service's online sex offender registry. That meant when someone looked him up on the computer his name wouldn't show up on the site. Had Piche been convicted of second-degree rape as initially charged, his name would have been included on the sex offender registry.

     The 14-year-old rape victim's mother, in a victim impact statement she did not read in court, wrote: "I hope Shane Piche spends time in prison for the harm he caused my child. He took everything from my daughter... and has caused her to struggle with depression and anxiety."

     In responding to public outrage over the light sentence Judge McClusky said that because Shane Piche had no other known rape victims he did not believe there was a high risk that this rapist would re-offend. The judge, elected to a 14-year-term on the bench in 2011, insisted that his sentence was well within the guidelines for third-degree rape.

     Amid the public outrage over the outcome of this case Assistant District Attorney Patricia Dziuba came to Judge McClusky's defense with this statement: "The sexual contact occurred between the defendant and the victim was away from school property and a good point in time after they met on the school bus..." 

     Not long after Shane Piche's sentencing offended residents of Jefferson County circulated a petition calling for Judge McClusky's removal from the bench. While 70,000 residents of the county signed the petition the judge kept his job.

     Advocates for harsher sentences in rape cases make the argument that rapists should not be given one "free" rape before they become serial offenders. The Piche case is an example of how practitioners in our criminal justice are more concerned about the welfare of the criminal than the victim. Most people would agree that a 25-year-old school bus driver who takes sexual advantage of a 14-year-old student deserves at least some time behind bars.

The High-Profile Sanford Rubenstein Rape Allegation

     On October 1, 2014, prominent Manhattan, New York defense attorney Sanford A. Rubenstein attended civil rights activist Al Sharpton's 60th birthday party at the Four Seasons restaurant. Following the gala affair two female party attendees accompanied Mr. Rubenstein back to his penthouse apartment. One of these women, Iasha Rivers, sat on the board of Sharpton's civil rights organization The National Action Network.

     The 43-year-old board member's companion left the Rubenstein apartment sometime after midnight. Iasha Rivers, however, decided to spend the night with the rich lawyer. The next morning Mr. Rubenstein's driver took her home.

     Iasha Rivers, 36-hours after being driven home from Rubenstein's penthouse, went to a hospital with bruises on her arms and vaginal bleeding. To hospital personnel, and later the police, she claimed that Sanford Rubenstein had drugged and raped her that night.

     In her police complaint Iasha Rivers said that after her party companion left the penthouse she began to feel "foggy" then lost consciousness. According to her account of that night, when she awoke Mr. Rubenstein had her arms pinned and was raping her.

     The rape allegation against Mr. Rubenstein led to a three-month investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. On January 5, 2015 Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance announced that after his investigators questioned dozens of witnesses, reviewed medical records, looked at surveillance camera footage, and considered toxicology results, he didn't have enough evidence to support a criminal charge against Mr. Rubenstein.

     In justifying his decision not proceed with this case, prosecutor Vance said that a toxicology test of the alleged victim's blood failed to show the presence of anything other than traces of alcohol and marijuana.

     Benjamin Brafman, Mr. Rubenstein's attorney, said this following the district attorney's announcement: "What happened in this case was consensual sex between two adults who were fully alert and fully awake throughout."

     Kenneth J. Montgomery, Iasha River's attorney, in calling the district attorney's office investigation "incredibly inept" accused investigators of ignoring evidence such as his client's bruised arms and a bloody condom that had been recovered from Rubenstein's apartment. The attorney criticized the district attorney for not presenting the case to a grand jury.

     In questioning the results of the toxicology test Mr. Montgomery pointed out that his client did not use marijuana. "I think," he said, "they never wanted to pursue this case from the very beginning." The lawyer also announced he had filed a civil lawsuit against Mr. Rubenstein on behalf of his client.

     Mr. Brafman, speaking for his client Mr. Rubenstein, said, "Rape is undoubtedly a serious offense; to falsely accuse someone of rape, however, is equally offensive."

     On January 6, 2015, the day following District Attorney Vance's announcement The New York Daily News, citing a source within the NYPD, reported that officers found in Mr. Rubenstein's penthouse a prescription for Viagra issued in Al Sharpton's name.

     Al Sharpton responded quickly to the tabloid's Viagra story. "I don't know anything about that," he said. "No, I don't know anything about that." According to the civil rights leader, this Daily News reportage was nothing more than a New York City police conspiracy to embarrass him. "If the motive of the cop was to embarrass me, at sixty years old, I am unembarassable."

     Rank and file New York City police officers were offended by what they considered Al Sharpton's anti-cop rhetoric in the wake of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. Sharpton was considered by many to be an unrepentant race-baiter who used his clout in the black community to extort money from corporations afraid of being labeled as racist. It was not a stretch of the imagination to believe that New York City police officers would want nothing better than to embarrass this man. Al Sharpton's claim that he could not be embarrassed, based upon the history of his career, had the ring of truth.

     In March 2016 the attorney for Iasha Rivers and the attorney for Sanford Rubenstein quietly agreed to drop their clients' lawsuits against each other.

Blaming Victims of Rape: The Omar Best Case

     In 1996, 18-year-old Omar Best, a product of the mean streets of Philadelphia, pleaded guilty to indecent assault and attempted rape in return for a light sentence. Fourteen years later, after being linked to the 1999 abduction and rape of another Philadelphia woman, a judge sentenced Omar Best to 7 to 15 years in prison.

      Omar Best in 2011 pleaded guilty to raping yet another woman in Philadelphia. This conviction brought him a sentence of 15 years. A year later, while serving time at the State Correctional Institution called Grateford in southeast Pennsylvania, he sexually assaulted a female prison worker. Following that crime and breach of prison security state corrections authorities transferred him to Rockview, the State Correctional Institution near Bellefonte, Pennsylvania in the central part of the state not far from Penn State University. Best was later convicted of that crime.

     At Rockview, notwithstanding Best's history as a serial rapist, he had access to the prison's central office where a 24-year-old female employee performed clerical duties. On July 17, 2013 the young prison clerk complained to her supervisor that whenever the 36-year-old rapist came into the office on the pretext of emptying the trash can she felt threatened and endangered. The young woman's complaint fell on deaf ears. Best, who had no assigned duties in the central office, continued to have access to the premises.

     At eight-thirty in the morning of July 25, 2013, Omar Best entered the central office and grabbed the young clerk from behind preventing her from alerting security with her distress whistle. He choked her until she passed out then sexually assaulted her for 27 minutes before prison guards subdued him.

     In May 2014 a jury found Best guilty of rape. Four months later the judge sentenced the inmate to life in prison under the career criminal three strikes doctrine.

     Following an investigation into why this prison employee had been exposed to such danger, the head of the state corrections department fired Rockview superintendent Marirosa Lamas. Seventy Rockview corrections officers were transferred to other prisons. Rockview administrators moved the central office to a more secure location within the institution.

     The Rockview prison rape victim, in April 2014, filed a federal lawsuit against the State Department of Corrections, the victim's former supervisor, Omar Best's cellblock manager and former Superintendent Lamas. The civil action defendants were accused of administrative negligence that resulted directly in the plaintiff's prison rape.

     The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office had the responsibility of answering the suit on behalf of the state. In his written defense brief, a senior deputy attorney general claimed that the "plaintiff had acted in a manner which in whole or in part had contributed to the events." [Events?] In other words, the rape victim, through her contributory negligence was responsible for her life-threatening ordeal.

    The rape victim's attorney, Clifford Rieders, reacted sharply to the state's defense strategy. He said this to reporters: "It's victim shaming at its worst. It's total bunk. It's throwing something out there so they can have it on record. They have no evidence of that. It has no substance, but it's just the way some lawyers litigate. It's insulting to women generally who face rape cases only to be told it's their fault." The local district attorney who had prosecuted Best for the prison rape agreed with the plaintiff attorney's claim of victim bashing.

     Following a firestorm of criticism, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office responded with a written statement that in part read: "This initial filing should not necessarily be interpreted as meaning the [contributory negligence] defense will be pursued throughout the entire case." The attorney general's office spokesperson also said that Attorney General Kathleen Kane had not been aware her senior deputy had included that particular defense in his answer to the rape victim's suit. (The suit was later settled out of court.)

      In 2014, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was indicted for leaking confidential grand jury information pertaining to a 2009 criminal investigation. She was later charged with perjury. In August 2016 Kane was found guilty as charged and sentenced to 10 to 23 months in prison.

Removing Judge John F. Russo

     John F. Russo at age 34 was admitted to the New Jersey Bar Association in 1997. In 2009 he became an administrative law judge, a position he held until 2015 when he was sworn in as an Ocean County Superior Court Judge.

     In 2017, after Judge Russo asked a testifying rape victim if she knew how to prevent sexual intercourse by closing her legs, Assignment Judge Marlene Lynch suspended him from the bench. Once re-instated Judge Russo's professional behavior continued to draw criticism.

     In August 2018, based on several complaints, the Supreme Court of New Jersey Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct charged Judge Russo with four counts of misconduct. He stood accused of asking court staff members to do him personal favors; asking preferential scheduling treatment for his son's child custody case; and refusing to recuse himself from a high school classmate's child support case.

     The most serious misconduct allegation against Judge Russo pertained to his asking an alleged rape victim, during cross-examination, if she had tried to close her legs to prevent the assault. The fact he had asked this question to another rape victim a year earlier made this complaint all the more disturbing.

     At his November 2018 disciplinary hearing in Trenton, New Jersey regarding the question he had asked the rape victim, Judge Russo claimed he was simply trying to help a "demoralized witness get re-engaged in the hearing."

     On May 26, 2020 justices on the New Jersey Supreme Court voted unanimously to permanently remove the 57-year-old judge from the bench. Chief Justice Stuart Rabner in his rationale for the decision wrote that Russo's rape case question was "neither appropriate nor tasteful. No witness, alleged victim or litigant should be treated that way in a court of law. The question also shamed the alleged victim by intolerably suggesting she was to blame."

     Chief Justice Rabner, regarding Russo's judicial behavior in general, wrote: "His conduct breached the public trust. His pattern of misconduct and unethical behavior not only undermined several court proceedings but also impaired his integrity and the judiciary's. His overall behavior reflects a lack of probity [trustworthiness] and fitness to serve as a judge."

The Stephen Howells and Nicole Vaisey Kidnap/Rape Case

     At seven in the evening of August 13, 2014, 6-year-old Delila Miller and her 12-year-old sister Fannie, members of an old-order Amish clan consisting of Mose and Barb Miller and their thirteen children, were working on the family farm when a car drove up to the Miller roadside vegetable stand. The Miller family resided in Oswegatchie, New York, a farming community of 4,000 near the Canadian border 150 miles north of Albany. Because the land was relatively inexpensive and the soil fertile the Oswegatchie area had grown into the second largest Amish enclave in the state.

     When Delila and Fannie saw the 4-door white sedan pull up to the vegetable stand they walked the few hundred feet between the barn and the stand to greet the customers. The couple drove off, and when they did, the girls were gone. Someone ran to an English neighbor's house and called 911.

     The authorities issued an Amber Alert while scuba drivers prepared to search nearby rivers and helicopters flew over the area in search of the missing girls. Agents on the US/Canadian border reviewed surveillance camera footage in the event the abductors left the country.

     On Thursday evening at eight o'clock, 24 hours after the abduction, the kidnappers dropped the Amish girls off in Richville, New York, a town thirty miles from the Miller farm. The girls knocked on the first door they came to and asked for help. They were greeted by Jeff and Pam Stinson who recognized the older girl from having purchased corn from her at the Miller produce stand.

     It had been raining and the girls were cold and wet. They were also hungry so the Stinson fed them grape juice and servings of watermelon. The girls quickly consumed the food and were driven straight home where they were met by the police.

     Police officers working off clues provided by the kidnapped girls identified a pair of suspects and took them into custody Friday night, August 15, 2014. Charged with counts of first-degree kidnapping, officers booked 39-year-old Stephen Howells II and 25-year-old Nicole Vaisey into the St. Lawrence County Jail.

     Stephen Howells lived in nearby Hermon New York with Vaisey, his girlfriend. According to the St. Lawrence County sheriff the couple and their victims did not know each other. The district attorney told reporters that Howells and Vaisey sexually abused the girls during their period of captivity. The judge denied the suspects bond.

     Sheriff Kevin Wells at a press conference Saturday morning August 16, 2014, in speaking about the suspects, said there was "definite potential" of other kidnap victims associated with the couple. As a result addition charges could be filed against Howells and Vaisey. The sheriff said he believed the Amish kidnappings had been carefully planned.

     Howells, a father of three, worked as a registered nurse at Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center in Ogdenburg, a town adjacent to Oswegatchie.

     Nicole Vaisey graduated with honors in 2011 from Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania. During her senior year as a psychology major she received a $1,500 grant to do research about the effects of watching pornography on attitudes toward rape. She was president of the Mercyhurst chapter of Psi chi and a member of the Mercyhurst Psychology club and the school's Active Minds club.

     Upon graduation from Mercyhurst Nicole Vaisey worked as a substitute teacher at a day care center then took a job with an agency in St. Lawrence County that served developmentally disabled people. After moving in with Stephen Howell she worked twice a week as a dog groomer at Bows & Bandanas Pet Salon and Resort. The couple had met online.

      Nicole Vaisey's lawyer, Bradford C. Riendeau, told a reporter with The New York Times that he planned to argue in court that his client was in an abusive and submissive relationship with Howells. She was not, he said, the lead person in the kidnapping. "She appears to have been the slave and he was the master."

     St. Lawrence County district attorney Mary Rain, said, "We are confident that Vaisey was equally involved in the allegations as he was."

    In May 2015 Stephen Howells pleaded guilty to two counts of kidnapping and the sexual exploitation of children. He also pleaded guilty to five counts of child pornography.

     Nicole Vaisey pleaded guilty as well. 

     In January 2016 St. Lawrence County Judge Jerome Richards sentenced each defendant to 25 years in prison.

The Andrew Clarence Bullock Rape Case

     On Friday December 13, 2013 at eleven-thirty in the morning a nun in the Order of St. Joseph named Sister Mary Pellegrino encountered a young man in the parking lot behind St. Titus Church in Aliquippa, a western Pennsylvania town 25 miles north of Pittsburgh. The six-foot teenager, wearing a black-hooded sweatshirt, dark pants and work boots, came up behind the retired 85-year-old nun, tapped her on the shoulder and asked if he could be of help. When Sister Pellegrino declined the smiling youth's offer he exposed himself, choked her, punched her in the jaw and raped her as she lay injured in the snow.

     Rushed to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Sister Pellegrino underwent surgery to repair her dislocated lower jaw. Although the nun was unable speak to detectives she described the attack and her attacker in writing.

     At the scene of the crime investigators photographed a series of boot impressions in the snow. Detectives also questioned people who had seen a 18-year-old named Andrew Clarence Bullock near the church just before the assault. Bullock had been wearing clothing that matched the victim's description of  her attacker's sweatshirt, pants and shoes.

     A few hours after the assault behind St. Titus Church, Aliquippa police officers questioned Andrew Bullock. The suspect after initially denying the assault, confessed. Officers noticed that Bullock wore work boots that matched in size and tread pattern the shoe impressions in the snow behind the church.

     Police officers booked Bullock into the Beaver County Jail on charges of rape, aggravated assault and several lesser offenses. The District Judge set his bail at $50,000.

     On Sunday December 15, 2013 doctors released Sister Mary from the hospital in Pittsburgh. It was hard to believe she survived such a vicious attack. Had she not, Mr. Bullock would have faced charges of first-degree murder.

     In November 2014, following his guilty plea, Beaver County Judge Harry Knafelc sentenced Andrew Bullock to 19 to 37 years in prison. The judge also designated Bullock a sexually violent predator. That meant that once out of prison he would have to register his address with the Megan's Law website.

Dr. Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley: Prosecutorial Politics in a High Profile Rape Case

     In 2007 26-year-old Grant Robicheaux graduated from the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans. He did his residency as an orthopedic surgeon at the University of California at Irvine Medical Center. Dr. Robicheaux in 2008 resided in Newport Beach, California, an Orange County city 45 miles south of Los Angeles. He practiced medicine at the Chapman Spine and Orthopedic Institute in Orange, California and at the Newport Care Medical Group in Newport Beach.

     In 2008 Dr. Robicheaux's girlfriend, a 19-year-old dance instructor named Cerissa Laura Riley, moved in with the doctor at his Newport Beach home.

     In September 2009 detectives with the Newport Beach Police Department questioned a woman who reported she had been raped. She claimed to have met Dr. Robicheaux at a bar in the city after which he took her to his house and sexually assaulted her. The alleged victim said the doctor owned a lot of guns and that she was afraid of him. The woman's rape complaint did not result in any charges against Dr. Robicheaux.

     Some publication in 2013 named Dr. Robicheaux Orange County's "Most Eligible Bachelor of the Year." In 2014 the doctor appeared on an episode of Bravo TV's short-lived series "Online Dating Rituals of the American Male." The low-brow show, typical of the network's offerings, featured the plight of a busy young doctor in search of the perfect woman. Doctor Robicheaux was quoted in the program as saying: "I am not looking for a party girl. I am looking for a wife to raise a family." While on television advertising for the perfect woman the doctor was still living with Cerissa Riley in Newport Beach.

     In 2016 two women in separate complaints informed detectives with the Newport Beach Police Department that at Dr. Robicheaux's house they had been drugged and raped. One of the alleged victims described the doctor and his girlfriend as a "Bonnie and Clyde" team who drugged and forced her to engage in sex acts.

     The second complainant said she met Dr. Robicheaux at a Newport Beach Halloween party. She went home with him and it was there he spiked her drink with the date rape drug GHB (Dopamine Beta-Hydroxylose, a substance that quickly metabolizes in the body and is therefore difficult to detect). The alleged victim said she awoke during the sexual assault.

     In April 2017 another woman reported being raped by the orthopedic surgeon at his Newport Beach house. The complainant told detectives she met Dr. Robicheaux on an Internet dating site. While having drinks with him at a Newport Beach bar they were joined by Cerissa Riley who held herself out as his friend. After getting the alleged victim drunk the couple took her to their house and raped her while she was out cold.

    In the summer of 2017 another one of Dr. Robicheaux's dates came forward alleging he raped her. This woman told the police she met the doctor at a Fourth of July party. A few days later she was spending an afternoon with Robicheaux and Rily on a boat. The couple, according to the woman's story, invited her back to the house where they drugged and raped her.

     In January 2018 officers with the Newport Beach Police Department showed up at Dr. Robicheaux's house armed with a search warrant. Officers seized the couple's cellphones and computers, and according to police documents, found cocaine, ecstasy and the date rape drug DBH. Searchers also seized two assault rifles and several other guns.

     Newport Beach police officers on September 2, 2018 arrested Dr. Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley at the doctor's house. Officers booked the couple into the Orange County Jail on charges of rape, illegal gun possession and possession of controlled substances. The magistrate set their bail at $100,000 each. Through their attorneys the suspects pleaded not guilty.

     The Robicheaux-Riley date rape investigation and arrests generated an enormous amount of media attention. The case had everything the true crime media loves--violent sex, drugs and prominent, glamorous suspects. Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, in the midst of a re-election campaign took full advantage of the publicity. He appeared frequently on local and national television, gave dozens of interviews in the print media and held regular well-attended press conferences. He essentially tried and convicted the doctor and his girlfriend in the media.

     Critics of the district attorney accused him of timing the suspects' arrest with an eye toward the upcoming November 2018 election. Rackauckas was being challenged by his old political rival Todd Spitzer who was ahead in the polls.

     At a press conference held on the day of the arrests District Attorney Rackauckas announced that the couple had been charged with 17 counts of rape covering the period 2009 to 2017. The suspects faced charges of rape by use of drugs; oral copulation by anesthesia or controlled substance; assault with the intent to commit a sexual offense; and possession of controlled substances for sale. Dr. Robicheaux had also been charged with several gun violations.

     A few days after the high profile arrests District Attorney Rackauckas, through his office spokesperson, announced that six more women had come forward with date rape accusations against Dr. Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley. Moreover, according to the district attorney's spokesperson, there could be many more victims--up to 1,000. And there was more: detectives had viewed more than 1,000 cellphone videos that depicted the suspects having sex with women who were either unconscious or semiconscious. The district attorney told reporters that Dr. Robicheaux and his girlfriend used their "good looks" to lure their victims to the Newport Beach house where they  drugged and sexually assaulted them.

     Dr. Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley, on September 12, 2018, posted bail and were released from custody. If convicted as charged they could both serve up to 30 years in prison. Dr. Robicheau was now 38 and Cerissa Riley 30.

     On November 2, 2018 voters in Orange County, notwithstanding all of the publicity generated by the Robicheaux-Riley case, voted District Attorney Tony Rackauckas out of office.

     The date rape defendants' attorneys in January 2019 accused the former district attorney of making false and reckless public misstatements regarding the videos allegedly depicting the defendants sexually assaulting drugged and intoxicated women. The attorneys hired a team of consultants who viewed more than 1,000 cellphone videos. According to the defense lawyers only a few of the videos showed any kind of sexual activity. None of the sex videos depicted women who were in any way unable to consent.

     Shortly after taking office Todd Spitzer, the new Orange County District Attorney, assigned a team of prosecutors to review the Robicheaux-Riley rape investigation. These prosecutors combed through a trove of evidence that included photographs, videos, text messages and alleged rape victim interview transcripts.

     In March 2019 one of the women who claimed to have been raped by the suspects in 2016 asked an Orange County judge to put a hold on her $12 million lawsuit against the couple until the criminal case against them played out.

     In early February 2020 District Attorney Todd Spitzer made a shocking press conference announcement: His investigators had not found "a single piece of evidence or video or photograph that shows an unconscious or incapacitated woman being sexually assaulted by Dr. Robicheaux or Cerissa Riley."

     At that press conference District Attorney Spitzer accused the former Orange County prosecutor of using the sensational rape case to help in his bid for re-election. In Spitzer's opinion there was not enough evidence against the couple to support a rape conviction. As a result the district attorney planned to ask a judge to dismiss all charges against Dr. Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley. "I didn't create this situation," he said, "but it is my responsibility to fix it. Doing justice is not always pretty. But these are important decisions that affect people's lives."

     At his own press conference former district attorney Tony Rackauckas said, "I feel terrible for the women who had the courage to come forward and give their evidence to the authorities in this case. Certainly, any prosecutor should think long and hard before dismissing such a case where multiple women have independently come forward and subjected themselves to the hard process of baring their souls to the authorities."

     Defense attorney Thomas M. Ferlauto, in publicly thanking District Attorney Spitzer, said, "He made a very courageous decision. It was the right decision, but one that might expose him to criticism. Grant and Cerissa's lives were destroyed by the prior administration's misuse of the justice system."

     In July 2023 a judge dismissed the sexual abuse charges against the doctor and Cerissa Riley. A few months later Dr. Robicheaux pleaded guilty to several gun and drug charges. In return for his plea and giving up his medical license, the judge sentenced the doctor to two years probation. 

The Esteban Manzanares Rape/Suicide Case

     Before becoming a U.S. Border Patrol agent in 2008, Esteban Manzanares, a resident of McAllen, Texas, a town on the Mexican border, worked as a jail guard and served in the Army National Guard. He had been married two years to his wife Susana, a woman he'd met online in 2000.

     In August 2013 Esteban and Susana separated. He moved from their home in Edinburg into an apartment in nearby Mission Texas. The couple's two children, a girl and a boy, one and six-years-old respectively, remained with their mother. The divorce became final in February 2014.

     After the separation the 32-year-old border patrol agent and his 30-year-old ex-wife remained on good terms. As far as she could tell he was mentally sound and remained devoted to his children who both suffered from cystic fibrosis.

      But at work agent Manzanares had gone rogue. Two women who crossed the Rio Grande into Texas illegally reported they were raped by a border patrol agent. The details of the crime and the victim's description of the rapist led FBI agents and border patrol personnel to suspect Manzanares. They did not, however, have enough evidence to charge him or place him on administrative leave.

     A few hours prior to the end of his daytime patrol shift on March 12, 2014 Manzanares encountered a young woman and two 14-year-old girls in a Hidalgo County park a few miles from Mexico. The woman immediately identified herself and the girls as Honduran nationals who had just entered the county illegally.

     Manzanares handcuffed the females and put them into his patrol truck, but instead of taking them to a border patrol station he drove them to a remote spot a few miles away. In this scrub-filled no-man's land Manzanares sexually assaulted the women and the girls, one of whom was the older victim's daughter.

     Following the assaults Manazanares put one of the girls back into his truck and drove off leaving the woman and her daughter in the wilderness. The border patrol agent drove to his apartment in Mission where  he left his victim tied up. Later that night he returned to his apartment and raped her.

     The mother and daughter were later picked up and taken to the McAllen Medical Center. Their description of the man who had assaulted them led to a search of Manazanares' patrol truck. Inside the vehicle searchers found blood stains and pieces of duct tape.

     During the early morning hours of March 13, 2014 two FBI agents showed up at Esteban Manzanares' apartment in Mission. They knocked on the door and heard from inside the dwelling a gunshot. The agents called for backup. Members of the Mission Police Department's SWAT team broke into the apartment. Inside officers found the 14-year-old Honduran girl. She was nude and bound but alive. Manzanares had committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

Delvin Barnes' War on Women

     Delvin Barnes, despite the fact his father was a minister and was raised by loving parents, turned into a predatory sex offender and an abusive husband. In 2005 the 26-year-old's wife kicked him out of their house in Philadelphia and acquired a protective order against him. As is often the case the protective order did not protect.

     Barnes' estranged wife, at ten-fifteen on the night of November 28, 2005, was getting ready for bed when he shocked her by jumping out of her bedroom closet. She threatened to call the police if he didn't leave. He said he had no intention of leaving. When she tried to dial 911 Barnes grabbed the phone, punched her in the face, kicked her and threatened to choke her to death.

     The husband-intruder ordered his wife to undress. He then spent the night sexually abusing her. The next morning she talked him into letting her call her mother, someone she spoke to every day. In speaking to her mother in earshot of her captor the battered wife managed to hint that not all was well at her house.

     Barnes' wife hoped that her mother would get the hint and call the police. Instead, her mother, accompanied by her father who was armed with a baseball bat, showed up at the house to check on her. Barnes expressed his rage over what he considered a betrayal by again assaulting his wife. When her father came to her aid Delvin Barnes wrestled the bat from him and headed for the kitchen to grab a knife. The victim and her parents used this opportunity to run to a neighbor's house where they called 911. By the time the Philadelphia police arrived at the scene Mr. Barnes was long gone.

     The next day police officers found Delvin Barnes in Philadelphia and took him into custody.

     A year after the home invasion, assault and rape, a jury found Barnes guilty of aggravated assault, criminal trespass, false imprisonment, simple assault and reckless endangerment. The jurors, however, acquitted him of two felonies: rape and burglary.

     The judge sentenced Barnes to three years behind bars. That meant he was back on the street in a matter of months.

     In Virginia, a young woman in July 2014 accused the 37-year-old Barnes of threatening to blow her up with a bomb. A prosecutor charged him with the lesser crime of trespassing, a misdemeanor. Eventually the prosecutor dropped that charge.

     On October 1, 2014, in Charles City County, Virginia, Delvin Barnes abducted off the street a 16-year-old girl who didn't know him. Two days later the victim showed up at a Charles City County business with third-degree burns. She told detectives that her abductor had doused her with bleach and gasoline and set her on fire. The victim walked two miles from the home where she had been held against her will and raped.

     Investigators in Virginia identified Delvin Barnes as the Virginia girl's rapist by finding a DNA match in a national databank. The victim also identified Barnes from a past mug shot. A local prosecutor charged the suspect with attempted capital murder, abduction, forcible rape and malicious wounding with a chemical. At the time these charges were leveled Barnes' whereabouts were unknown.

     After graduating from high school in California, Maryland, Carlesha Freeland-Gaither worked at a store called Factory Barn. In 2012 she moved to Philadelphia where she took up residence with her grandfather. Two years later the 22-year-old, a certified nursing assistant at Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia, moved in with her boyfriend.

     At 9:30 at night on Saturday November 2, 2014, while Freeland-Gaither walked home from a family party in the Germantown section of the city, Delvin Barnes came up behind her and pulled the screaming and kicking woman into his four-door Ford Taurus. A witness to the abduction called 911.

     At the scene of the kidnapping, detectives found the victim's eyeglasses and cellphone on the street next to shards of auto glass. Surveillance camera footage showed a man in a knit cap and dark coat abduct the victim off the street.

     Shortly after the kidnapping the FBI and the Philadelphia Citizen's Crime Commission raised a $42,000 reward for information leading to the identify of the abductor.

     On Tuesday November 4, 2014 the authorities published a photograph of a man using Freeland-Gaither's ATM card at six o'clock in the morning in Aberdeen, Maryland. The next day, around noon, U.S. Marshals, ATF and FBI agents pulled Delvin Barnes out of his car parked on the side of the road in Jessup, Maryland. Inside the vehicle they found the kidnapped woman who was shaken but alive.

     Following treatment at a local hospital for minor injuries, the agents transported Freeland-Gaither home to Philadelphia where she was greeted by family and friends.

     The suspect's uncle, Lamar Barnes, in speaking to reporters about his nephew said: "Some men grow up having problems with women. So they take it out on women. Apparently Delvin is one of them."

     In September 2015 Delvin Barnes pleaded guilty in a Philadelphia courtroom to abducting Carlesha Freeland-Gaither the previous fall. He informed the judge he kidnapped the victim to raise money to travel back to Virginia. "It was an act of robbery in the beginning, and it turned into other things," he said. 

     In January 2016 the judge sentenced the 37-year-old Barnes to 35 years in prison. 

England's Pakistani Men Child Sex Scandal

     In Rotherham, a city of 250,000 in northern England, five men from the Pakistani community were convicted in 2010 of grooming teenage girls for rape. The victims were trafficked across northern England by crews made up of Asian men. The high-profile trials brought to light other child sex exploitation rings run by Pakistani men in the cities of Rochdale, Derby and Oxford.

     English authorities, responding to public pressure in the wake of the trials and accusations, asked Alexis Jay, the former chief social worker for the Scottish government, to investigate the scandal and publish a report on the depth and scope of the criminal operation. She released her report on August 25, 2014.

     Ms. Jay and her investigators determined that from 1997 to 2013, 1,400 girls, some as young as eleven, were sexually assaulted in the massive criminal enterprise. They were gang-raped, beaten and threatened. The author of the report wrote: "There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told someone."

     How could so many girls be exploited by so many men for so long? According to Alexis Jay, "Police regarded these child victims with contempt." Moreover, a good number of these children were known to child protection agencies. Police chiefs, detectives and council members chose to believe the sex was either consensual or the allegations of rape were false. These crime were, according to the report, "effectively suppressed."

     In some instances, parents who tried to rescue their children from the exploitation operators were themselves arrested. (Police bribery was rampant.) In the report, Alexis Jay wrote: "The collective failures of political and police leadership were blatant. From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual abuse exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham."

     Following the publication of Ms. Jay's shocking report, Roger Stone, the head of the Rotherham City Council resigned. Outraged parents and others called for the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire to step down as well. The commissioner told reporters he had no intention of resigning. No one else in the public sector took responsibility for the scandal, and not one law enforcement official was disciplined. 

     In May 2017, BBC One aired a three-part drama called "Three Girls" that featured three girls from the town of Rochdale who were repeatedly abused by nine Pakistani men who were tried and convicted on rape and related offenses. Their sentences ranged from 16 to 19 years in prison. Later in 2017, "Three Girls" was followed by a BBC documentary on the Rochdale case called "The Betrayed Girls."

     In January 2025 one of the Pakistani sex ring leaders was released from prison before serving his full sentence.