Former high school teacher Stacey Dean Rambold served only a month long sentence for raping his student. On Sep. 26 Rambold was released from jail after serving a month-long sentence for raping Cherice Moralez, his 14-year-old student, in 2007, according to CNN. Moralez, however, did not live to see the day her assailer came out of jail since she committed suicide in 2010 weeks before she turned 17 and before the case could even go to trial. Moralez’s mother Auliea Hanlon considers the rape a “major factor” in her daughter’s suicide, according to Reuters.
Judge G. Todd Baugh justified his order for releasing Rambold by claiming that Cherice was “older than her chronological age” and “as much in control of the situation,” as reported by Reuters. This comment didn’t take the edge off his order. In fact, it irritated people who denounced the order even more. It is puzzling how a judge can base his order on the victim’s looks and assume her troubled youth gave her control over the situation, especially since he didn’t even get to meet her. Baugh later apologized for his comment saying, “What I said is demeaning of all women, not what I believe and irrelevant to the sentencing… my apologies to all my fellow citizens.” This apology, however, didn’t make his order more just nor pacified the the victim’s mother. Rambold’s defense lawyer Jay Lansing also supported the judge’s order by claiming that his client had been punished enough by losing his job, teaching license, house, wife and becoming the “scarlet letter of the Internet” because of the crime, the Billings Gazette reported. Furthermore, Rambold is on probation until August 2028 and is registered as a sex offender. According to his probation conditions, he is not allowed to go to places where children are present or have a cell phone with photo, video or Internet capabilities. The question now is: is this punishment enough for disrupting a 14-year-old girl’s innocence and being among the reasons she decided to end her life?
The judge’s order and comments outraged Hanlon. “She wasn’t even old enough to get a driver’s license,” she said in a statement released by her attorney. “But Judge Baugh, who never met our daughter, justified the paltry sentence saying she was older than her chronological age.” She said that she has not seen justice yet, hoping Rambold will end up behind bars again. Judge Baugh did not only receive severe criticism from Hanlon but from hundreds of other demonstrators who sympathized with Moralez and expressed their disapproval of the order by gathering on August 29 outside his office. Kate Olp, co-organizer of the Billings protest, said that demonstrators observed two minutes of silence for Moralez and her mother, according to Reuters. The judge made an appearance at the protest but did not speak, said Marian Bradley, president of the Montana chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and co-organizer of the rally.
State prosecutors are appealing the sentence, according to huffingtonpost.com. Prosecutors said Rambold should have received a minimum of two years under state law, and Baugh relied on a different section of the same statute when he gave the defendant 15 years with all but 31 days suspended and a one-day credit for time served. Prosecutors earlier requested that Rambold receive 20 years with 10 years suspended. However, it’s uncertain whether the appeal process would offer the chance to increase the sentence beyond the mandatory minimum. Prosecutors said the appeal could take six to 18 months to work its way through the Montana Supreme Court. This appeal restores the faith that we will see justice in this case eventually
Among the people who condemned the judge’s order were people who believe the judge was biased to Rambold according to racial and gender matters.The Montana and Pennsylvania chapters of NOW filed a complaint with the Montana Judicial Standards Commission against Baugh, requesting his ouster. They also collected signatures from online petitions to support their complaint.”Judge Baugh’s bias is clearly rooted in the child victim’s lower-income minor, Hispanic female (status) and the rapist’s middle-class adult, white male socioeconomic status, age, race and gender,” NOW members wrote in the filing.
Regardless of whether the order was affected by the judge’s bias or not, it did not bring justice to the victim nor commit the rapist to the punishment he deserves. The judge did not provide any logical justification to his order other than his provocative comment about the victim’s age which he later apologized for. This leaves many people not comprehending how the law can be this lenient to a rapist and unjust to a 14-year-old girl. The victim’s mother is also left feeling that her daughter’s rights have been violated. How can a mother have closure regarding the loss of her own daughter knowing that the man who was one of the reasons she decided to end her life is now free?
This incident is not only going to affect the victim’s mother or family, but it is going to have an impact on society as a whole. This is not the first incident in which a rapist has not received a severe punishment. Last year 86 rapists served less than 50 percent of their sentence, according to Ministry of Justice statistics. The fact that a rapist can only get a month of jail instead of four years conveys that the law can be lenient towards rape cases and belittles how serious rape incidents are. This would decrease the rate of rape reports since the victims would think that after reporting their incident, their offenders will not receive their punishment anyway, making reporting the incident seem inconsequential and aimless. Furthermore, Olp, who also helped organize an online petition demanding that Baugh step down, said Baugh’s comments may lead victims of sexual assault to avoid reporting it for fear of mistreatment by the legal system.
There is no way to undo the incident or its impact on the victim and her family, but laws and court orders exist to bring justice to society, and a court order that leaves the victim or their family in lack of closure and feeling of safety is by no means a just order.
Rawan Elzayat can be reached at Rawan.Elzayat@spartans.ut.edu