When the 11-year-old girl in Stevensville, Mont., didn’t want to have sex with her grandfather, he would sit on the couch and sulk.
“He would … pout if he didn’t get what he wanted. … He’d wait to see if I could come out and look at him and feel sorry for him, but I wouldn’t,” the girl told Val Widmer, director of the children’s advocacy facility, Emma’s House.
Mikeal Shane Pruett got his way often enough, though, that his granddaughter ended up pregnant.
Right-to-lifers will be pleased to know the little girl gave birth last August. What was childbirth like for her? What happened to the baby? Who’s raising the grandfather’s child/great grandchild?
These questions were not asked and answered in the court records, and I’m sure Child Protective Services in Montana – like CPS offices everywhere – prefer it that way. (Not to protect the child, but to protect the adults who were supposed to protect the child. In this case, the grandfather was also the guardian.)
Initially, the girl tried to tell Widmer she’d had sex with a boy she met at a county fair the summer before. When that didn’t add up, given how far along the pregnancy was, the girl admitted her grandfather told her what to say. It also turned out he was molesting her 9-year-old sister.
Unfortunately for Pruett, Montana now has mandatory-minimum sentences of 25 years for child molesting. In his case, because he had a history of sexually abusing young females (for which he successfully avoided punishment), the judge went above and beyond the minimum. Pruett received two, 100-year sentences for crimes against each granddaughter, to be served consecutively. He will be eligible for parole in 50 years.
The long sentence brought Pruett a bit of national attention. It’s a sordid story, but the details will fade with time. Associated Press went easy on him by not using his name – allegedly to protect the victims. Again, the anonymity serves Pruett and suggests the victims should feel embarrassed.
Montana news coverage was more honest.
Look at the face of Mikeal Shane Pruett: Grey hair, sagging jowls, fearful eyes. With time, he will get older and whither into presumed harmlessness. This is a face that Rep. Jennifer Williamson (D-Portland) could feel sorry for.
All Pruett has to do is start babbling to himself and forget what day it is and, well, maybe the poor, old guy is senile and deserves an early release.
In a recent interview with Willamette Week, Williamson suggested that given the high costs of medical care for prisoners, Oregon needs to reconsider keeping elderly inmates incarcerated – even if those choices are politically difficult.
“An inmate may be completely incapacitated by dementia,” Williamson said. “But people in the community are going to be looking at their records. That doesn’t work well in a political sound bite.”
Williamson is reaching for her own sound bite. She is trying to portray Oregon as a tough-on-crime state going broke locking up offenders who don’t belong in prison. This view is increasingly promoted by academicians and think-tanks that produce studies and reports, which are then cited as evidence by politicians and the media.
Willamette Week did its part by quoting from a Pew Charitable Trusts report stating that Oregon houses the highest percentage of elderly inmates in the nation, as if that were something to be ashamed of. It isn’t.
As Clackamas County District Attorney John Foote pointed out in a comment posted on the Willamette Week story, Pew is an advocacy organization. Its reports are not fact-based but are a manipulation of data:
“The reason why Oregon’s prison population is older is that Oregon has one of the lowest, if not the lowest, rate of incarceration of property crimes in the country. So, the inmates in our prisons are overwhelmingly in for violent person crimes. And those sentences, by virtue of their seriousness, carry longer sentences. These same crimes also carry longer sentences in other states, but other states also lock up many more property and drug offenders than Oregon does, and those skew their prison populations to a lower overall age.”
Had Pruett committed his crimes in Oregon, the mandatory minimum he could have received would’ve been roughly eight years each for both victims – 16 years if served consecutively. He’d be 71 when released. He could get out in time to attend the high school graduation of his child/great grandchild, whom he fathered with his granddaughter.
It’s not hard to imagine sympathizers urging a reconciliation between him and his granddaughter, all in the interest of preserving the family. Sound absurd? Then you haven’t spent much time studying what’s going on in America’s criminal justice system.
“In a system run by human beings, how can we be sure the people who are punished deserve it and those not punished deserve not to be punished? If the punishments meted out by the courts were not so harsh – if there were no death penalty, for example, and if nobody served long prison sentences, and if lives were not ruined and families not destroyed as a result of severe punishments – the flaws in the criminal justice system would not matter so much. We would shrug and say, ‘People make mistakes. To err, after all, is human.’ ”
The above paragraph is from “Guilty?” by Teri Kanefield, a San Francisco attorney who represents criminal defendants on appeal. Her book is written for teens and is used in schools. She also offers lesson plans on her Website. I spotted the book at the Multnomah County Library where it was given prominent display. (The book’s index doesn’t even include the word, “victim.”)
Kanefield’s lessons should sound familiar to anyone who’s spent time in legislative hearings — in Oregon’s case, the House and Senate Interim Committees on Judiciary.
In preparation for the 2015 legislative session, these two committees met jointly in December to hear several reports, including a request by three young women and their mothers seeking a change in the law governing the secret videotaping of people in stages of nudity. Currently, this activity is only a misdemeanor.
These young women had all been secretly videotaped by the stepfather of one of the teenagers.
Among the legislators listening to their testimony was Williamson. Politics isn’t just driven by sound bites. There are also small, but meaningful gestures. She made hers.
As one of the young women grew tearful, Williamson reached for a box of Kleenex from the dais and walked it over to an assistant to give to the young woman.
What these young women and their mothers probably did not realize was that this committee is looking for ways to keep men out of prison, or shortening their sentences once they’re in prison.
What Williamson didn’t know was that there was already a box of tissues tucked under a shelf on the table where the young women sat.
Kleenex wasn’t what they needed.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
Williamson and the defense attorney (a job Williamson once held and clearly drives her) think raping a child is a “mistake” like taking the wrong bus.
They are drunk with a temporary supermajority and eventually voters will respond to their allegiance to criminals over victims
Yes, the Oregon Legislature now has solid Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, as well as a Democratic governor. It’s temporary, but how temporary? Prison inmate sympathizers like Williamson could eventually get their way, particularly if Oregon’s Republican Party refuses to change its priorities and offer voters more choice.
Eric Fruits, who is chair of the Multnomah County Republican Party, made a comment on OPB’s “Think Out Loud” a couple of weeks ago about misplaced priorities. He was referring to the national Republican Party pushing bills in several state legislatures to restrict abortion. Some bills are based on the premise that a fetus can feel pain; others restrict doctors on what instruments they can use. Oregon has nothing to fear from those bills, but appealing to the extreme right hurts centrist voters. Do you vote for the party that thinks zygotes are sacred, or do you vote for the party that thinks Death Row inmates are sacred?
To go a little bit afield: recently our nation swapped one US Army deserter who may well have collaborated with our enemies for 5 terrorists.
Part of the problem was a discomfiture with housing aging fanatics whom experience suggests have recidivist tendencies at about at the same level as child rapist/molesters.
Like Kanefield who does and Williamson who would, the word “victim” is the omit. On the reverse of the coin our national supervisor cannot name these man-burning chappies.
The above para that begins, “In a system run by human beings …” is pretty scary. The graph demonstrates the thinking of the self-exterminating. A generation of happy kapos.
As a by-the-by an old Alec Guinness film merits remark here and in this context of misbegotten leniency, Tunes of Glory.
Moreover,
“Misbegotten leniency.” Nicely put, Larry.
What is especially disturbing about Kanefield’s book is that it’s written for teens and is designed to be used in school. It even meets common core standards! If I were a parent trying to teach some values to my child, I wouldn’t appreciate a school giving him or her reasons to think anything goes; there’s no wrong or right, it all depends.
George Fox University had billboards around town (it might still) that said “Teach the Change You Want to See,” and I think that is happening in many schools and colleges. When I took a transportation course Fall Term at Portland State University, I noticed flyers for some of the criminal justice classes offered there. The brief descriptions sounded like something out of Kanefield’s book.
I am in Kotek’s district and once became a Republican committeeman. The gatherings I attended were focused on the anti-gay marriage fight.
Disinclined towards its legitimation myself, but if my brother were to marry his fellow I’d happily attend the nuptials.They’re great guys. Anyway, it really where I was wanting to put my energy and so I ended my participation.
Anyway, it was really not where I was wanting to put my energy and so I ended my participation.
That’s another example of misplaced priorities. The Republicans should shut up about same-sex marriage.
What anti-gay Republicans don’t appreciate is that there are some members of the gay community who desperately need their condemnation to give them a sense of importance and specialness. The worst thing you can do to these gays is ignore their gayness; it’s like ignoring someone who’s walking around naked.
It’s hard to have a problem with same-sex marriage when so many heterosexuals have disrespected marriage.
I thought your dig at Right to Lifers was unfair. If this girl had gotten an abortion, her grandfather could’ve kept what he was going to her a secret.
BTW, I witnessed my two girls’ birth. I don’t like to think about an 11-year-old having a baby. Abortion would’ve been OK except she was too far along.
I would like to think that an 11-year-old girl receiving a legal abortion would arouse suspicions on the part of the medical professionals involved. Someone would likely raise the question of who had sex with the girl.
Right-to-Life followers wouldn’t focus on that question. They fixate on the product of conception as if it were sacred. They have helped encourage single motherhood by treating pregnancy as a major accomplishment (girls, you’re carrying a sacred fetus!) even though the male half of this accomplishment may not be interested in being a father.