UPDATE:: Thousands Call For Judge's Removal After Blind Man Who Raped 13-Year-Old Gets No Jail TimeI believe the victim shaming is what the state was trying to avoid at Petty's criminal trial, As noted,
A judge served Petty to 15 years probation and two years with an ankle monitor. He will also be forced to register as a sex offender.
The reason for the leniency, according to Judge Wallace Coppedge, is because Petty is legally blind.
Public reaction to the sentencing was so intense that a prosecutor connected to the case, David Pyle, resigned shortly after the news broke. Now, an online petition to have Judge Coppedge removed has garnered 102,000, according to The Washington Post. The calls for Coppedge's firing were echoed by an Oklahoma lawmaker who filed a resolution in the House seeking to penalize Coppedge. (The proposal has yet to be voted on. The Oklahoma defense bar has opposed the resolution.)
The petition, which continues to gain traction, is a harsh indictment of Coppedge's decisions pertaining to Petty.
UPDATE:: Thousands sign petition to remove judge who sentenced blind child rapist to probationA Southern Baptist church sued in connection with the rape of a 13-year-old girl at a church camp in Oklahoma is asking a judge for permission to question the victim about her sexual history prior to the attack.
",,,[I]t's rare for a judge to go against a plea deal when all parties are in agreement.
"In a sense, he was just doing his job," she sad. "He was going along with what the state and defense agreed upon. However, I think people are upset about the sentence itself. And, he didn't determine that sentence. That was the state of Oklahoma."
The Country Estate Baptist Church of Midwest City, Okla., asked a state judge Jan. 18 to reconsider a decision to exclude all testimony about the unnamed teen’s “prior history of voluntary sexual activity” before she attended camp in 2016 at the Falls Creek camp owned by the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.
Attorneys for the church — accused in a lawsuit filed last March of liability for recruiting a 35-year-old cook who during church camp tied up and raped the girl inside a camp cabin — says the girl told fellow campers she was sexually active and feared she might be pregnant by her then-boyfriend.
The church says her prior sexual history “is directly relevant to her claim for physical, emotional and psychological damages, including PTSD and depression.”
District Court Judge Alicia Haynes Timmons rejected that argument in a hearing Jan. 4, saying the information does not have “even a scintilla of any relevance to anything.”
The girl’s attorneys accuse the Midwest City congregation and another church named in the lawsuit of victim shaming.
Church seeks information about sexual history of teen rape victim – Baptist News Global
See also:: Rapist gets probation for attack on 13-year-old at Baptist church camp in Oklahoma
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