Though the original case was heard back in 2009, it is now in the headlines because of a civil suit filed by the victims’ mother, and the details have a lot of people understandably and rightfully outraged.
Robert H. Richards IV, a DuPont heir, was convicted in a plea agreement for the rape of his 3-year-old daughter, and he received only probation with a suspended prison term. No jail time unless he violates his probation.
The sentence was given by Judge Jan Jurden, and was recently said to be based on recommendations by the prosecuting attorney. In a recent article, Richard D. Kirk, the Chair of the Delaware State Bar said, “Looking at this matter solely from the 2009 perspective, before the private damages lawsuit was filed, virtually everyone would have considered this an appropriate sentence. It was not an unusual sentence under the circumstances presented and would have been available to comparably situated defendants sentenced by this judge and other judges of the Superior Court. Mischaracterizing the 2009 court record as the article did to portray the sentence as somehow inappropriate was unfair to Judge Jurden and the Superior Court.” (Emphasis is mine.)
I do not know what kind of court system they are running in Delaware, but nobody I have ever known would consider this an appropriate sentence. And, if we take a look at the tens of thousands of signatures from all over the world on just one of the several petitions to remove Judge Jurden from the bench, I feel confident in saying to Mr. Kirk… “NO, MOST OF US WOULD NOT CONSIDER THE SENTENCE APPROPRIATE!! And furthermore… What the hell is wrong with you??”
I find it disturbing that this decision is being defended at such high levels. It makes me (and many others) wonder how deep the corruption/dysfunction goes in Delaware’s legal system.
As a survivor of similar abuse, I know firsthand how devastating and long term the impact can be, not just to the survivors, but to the people around them too. These children will carry the scars for a lifetime, and my heart breaks for them and for their mother, because they have all been forced to carry this unfair burden, imposed on them by someone unfit to be called “father”, who might never see the inside of a prison cell for his actions. Their father did not protect them, and neither did the legal system. Who will these children be able to trust when they are older?
However, there are thousands upon thousands of us who have been standing up for those kids. Someday, these children will be old enough to find all this information online. I hope what they see is that there are so many of us, even from so far away, who know they deserve better. I also hope they ignore the comments people make about how this has “ruined their lives” or “killed their souls”. While the scars and baggage of this will create very different lives than they might have otherwise had, and while the burden might seem exceeding heavy at times, their souls are still alive and are still theirs. Though it is true they will never be the same, they will survive, like so many of us do, with no thanks to the monsters in our lives who would try to destroy us. I hope those kids see that, in spite of all the wrong lessons they learned at such an early age, the world isn’t all bad and there are a lot of kind, caring people. And, I hope they quickly unlearn all those wrong lessons their “father” taught them.
While Richards may have escaped prison, he can now bear the stigma of the “pedophile” label for the rest of his life. But it isn’t enough. I hope his ex-wife wins big in the civil suit. While the money will not return what was taken from those children, it will at least be some acknowledgement that they were terribly wronged by this animal. Ideally, they will get everything he owns and he will have to get off his ass and work for a living– and good luck finding a job, now that he’s on the sex offenders’ registry.
As for the judge, if it is true that she was only going on the recommendation of the prosecuting attorney, then they should both be fired. They obviously have no concept of the lifelong struggle of surviving early childhood abuse, and do not take the protection of the most helpless in society seriously enough. And, the individual who called this sentence “appropriate” should probably be ousted, too.
When our public servants are no longer protecting us as they should, it is time to get new public servants.
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