AN IRISHMAN whose teenage daughter was gang-raped at a party in suburban Maryland two years ago has obtained the public reprimand of a judge who seemed to blame the victim.
The Gaithersburg Gazette newspaper reported in a front-page story this week that Judge Steven Salant has received a “dismissal with warning” from the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities in the case involving Erin T, who was dragged into a bathroom during an unsupervised teenage party and raped by three youths from her high school on January 3rd, 2009.
This means the case has been dismissed, but that the judge has been warned. “It is significant,” said Séamus T, the victim’s father, whose complaint against Judge Salant was joined by 14 friends and neighbours.
“I found only one previous case of such a rebuke, against a judge who said, ‘It takes two to tango’ when he sentenced a man in his 30s for assaulting an 11-year-old girl.”
The victim had been given “jungle juice” – 100 per cent grain alcohol – and lost consciousness. Her father was called to fetch her and found her lying semi-conscious by the roadside, moaning, “Daddy, Daddy, get them off me.”
In court nine months later, Judge Salant focused on Erin’s behaviour. He said she had “engaged in risky and provocative behaviour” such as sitting on boys’ laps and talking about “hooking up”.
“This was a disaster waiting to happen,” the judge said at the hearing. “It doesn’t make the respondents any less worthy of blame, but what it does mean is I have to determine whether what we have here is sexual predators or respondents who acted horribly . . .
“They did not get that when a girl is intoxicated and presents herself in that manner, you do not take advantage.”
The rapists were aged 16 and 17 at the time. In an adult court, they would have risked life in prison. Judge Salant sentenced them to probation, with electronic monitoring for a period and a few days of community service.
One is now in prison, after being caught with a concealed weapon and marijuana and trying to escape when police stopped him last September.
Erin moved to Nevada for one year. She is still receiving psychological counselling and was so upset after encountering one of her assailants in a shopping centre over the holidays that she had to be hospitalised briefly.
Séamus, a business executive, has spent much of the past two years trying to ensure that other girls do not endure what his daughter did. He has been strongly supported by Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who was inaugurated for a second term this week, and by his local state senator, Roger Manno.
At the instigation of Séamus, the Maryland state legislature passed two laws last April. The State Schools Act prohibits sexual offenders from attending the same school or taking the same school bus as their victim. The Criminal Procedures/Sexual Offenders Act enables juvenile court to place offenders under lifetime supervision.
Séamus is now campaigning for three measures: a notification system like one that exists for adult criminals, which would tell victims where their attackers live, work and study; uniform sentencing guidelines for juvenile criminals and mandatory rehabilitation programmes for violent juveniles.
“The entire system challenged us and we challenged the entire system,” Séamus said. When he took his daughter to hospital, doctors did not believe she had been raped, because she was wearing tight jeans and was menstruating.
They did not do a toxicology test to see if her drink had been spiked or she had taken drugs. These are now standard procedure.
At the police station, an officer made Erin leading statements such as: “I bet you guys were playing ‘spin the bottle’ and taking clothes off, the way we did when I was young.” Police are now given sensitivity training.
When two of the three rapists were readmitted to the same school nine months after their crime, Séamus fought to have them transferred elsewhere.
“It was a matter of being revictimised continuously,” he said.
“Who would ever believe this could happen in America? I’d have thought twice if I had known what Erin would be put through, but . . . I don’t want to discourage other rape victims from coming forward.”