1401 IN THE NEWS

I can't watch or read the news without feeling fragile, helpless and angry, all at once.

Why?

A Montana judge gave a man 60 days for raping his own 12-year-old daughter. How can we say we take sexual assault seriously?

There's a victim you won't hear from ... in Montana. She was raped — prosecutors say repeatedly — by her own father, who this month received a grossly lenient sentence of 60 days in jail. 

You will not hear from her because she's a child. As a 12-year-old rape victim, she had no voice in the courtroom. No one spoke about the aftereffects of this staggering violation of her body, her trust, her confidence in the adults in her world to protect her. 

Instead, the victim's mother and grandmother begged the judge to keep the defendant out of prison, characterizing the incestuous rape of his child as "a horrible mistake." They said his two other children, boys, "will be devastated if Dad is no longer part of their lives." In a pre-sentencing report, a psychologist said the man is contrite, low-risk, attends church and would fare better under community supervision than in prison. 

Perhaps this is so. The judge certainly thought so: He overrode a prior plea agreement under which the man would do 25 years' prison time, and instead sentenced him to 60 days in the county pokey — minus the 17 he had already spent there. 

"He did spend 17 days in jail, and he did lose his job," the man's defense lawyer told local reporters. What more do you want? 

Like the ripples from a stone thrown in a small-town Montana pond, the story has spread, gathering fury. Since the Oct. 4 sentencing, thousands of people have petitioned for Judge John McKeon's removal. This won't happen, since the judge is already scheduled to retire next month. 

For his part, the judge has blamed — well, everybody, including the media, the prosecution, everybody except himself, for the fury over his decision. We just don't get it, he says: He followed the law, which requires him to seek rehabilitation for the offender. He followed the wishes of the defendant's family. He seems to agree that putting dad in prison would just be another hardship on these poor folks. 

But it's the silence on behalf of the victim that speaks so loudly — that screams out — in this case. The prosecutor, apparently blindsided after thinking he had already closed a plea deal, has had little to say. Family members circled the tribal wagons in support of the father, their message clear: He's a good guy who made a terrible mistake, so mind your own business. 

The reality that he is an incestuous child rapist is not something this girl can speak publicly about. She's a minor, and her family clearly wants her quiet.

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