And it happens again....rapist awarded custody of child he fathered through rape

[Bettie]

This guy was convicted of raping a 12 year old girl, who had a child. Now, nine years later, he gets joint custody and can victimize her over and over.

This enrages me.

It also point out that penalties for rape are laughably light. Losing reproductive choice means more of this will happen.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-raped-12-old-awarded-114904992.html

[DURHAM D]

1. this is just so Republican.....................

[Bettie]

3. It really is

a twelve year old has a baby after a rape and she has to share custody with the guy who raped her.

What kind of country is this?

[KS Toronado]

22. We're sailing towards shithole with repugs in control of the rudder.

[Achilleaze]

26. OUT FROM THE BASEMENT: real republican "values"

Pay no attention to what Republicans say. Through their black-money electronic fog and lies, they have earned zero trust from anyone, excepting perhaps the heinous, execrable Putin and his murderous raping troops.

Pay attention to what Republicans do. That's the real deal.

[LoisB]

2. This is insane. This guy is not going to stop.

[Lochloosa]

4. He reversed his decision. Claims he was not notified about the rape.

https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/2017/10/judge_reverses_decision_granti.html

"I want to emphasize, at the time I signed the (initial order) on Sept. 22, 2017, I did not know that the defendant had raped the plaintiff," Ross told the courtroom.

It wasn't until the mother's attorney, Rebecca Kiessling, filed objections citing the rape that Ross found out about it, he said.

The Sanilac County Prosecutor's Office never presented that information to the judge, he said. The office gave him a "routine" joint custody order consented to by both the mother and Mirasolo, he said.

[Bettie]

6. Well, that's something at least

but you'd think that someone would have taken a look at his record. He was convicted.

Thanks for the update.

[Sanity Claws]

11. What bullshit

If the mother was only 12 yoa, then she was raped as a matter of law. A 12 yoa is incapable of consent. A judge should know that.

[Hugin]

24. +1

If you didn’t say it I was going to.

The Judge got caught being Republican is what happened.

[uponit7771]

30. "A judge should know that." at one time I thought most judges in the US had their crap together ...

... and I was dead on wrong.

[Horse with no Name]

18. Our criminal process says that you can't admit past bad acts

However, there is generally leniency in Family Court. What a nightmare. I’m glad that it was overturned.

[kcr]

32. I don't buy his claim he didn't know

She was 12 years old.

[Phoenix61]

7. If you'd read this you'd know the offender was 19 at the time

of the offense. There is no indication he was related to his victim.

[Totally Tunsie]

9. What's wrong with this picture?

The "father" didn't particularly want custody, nor did he file for it. He got on the hook when the mother filed for State benefits.

The mother didn't particularly want the "father" in their lives, but she consented to joint custody? WHY?

What idiot judge would put these two parties together again?

[localroger]

12. Benefits requirements are probably structured to encourage 'family values'

...you know, like keeping the father present in the kid's life. That's usually considered a good thing. Fortunately the judge found out the actual circumstances and had the latitude to fix it in this case.

[haele]

15. Did she consent to joint custody, or did the judge decide it?

Family court is different state to state - in some states, custody is awarded per wishes of the first parent that files and goes before unless there's some legal or safety issue that comes up during the hearing.
The mother may not have even gotten a summons to appear for the custody hearing until right before, depending on how the custody was filed and hearing scheduled.

The sad thing is that because she filled for child support -which she may have had do to continue to get state benefits for her son, he found out about the boy.

Haele

[Totally Tunsie]

17. It says here:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=16890727

The Sanilac County Prosecutor's Office never presented that information to the judge, he said. The office gave him a "routine" joint custody order consented to by both the mother and Mirasolo, he said.

That's all I have to go by.

[cherish44]

10. Any 12 year old who gets pregnant was raped

That is a child well below the age of consent in probably all states. Any judge would surely see notice the age of the mother and the child in the case.

[Orrex]

13. No doubt the child "seduced him" and was "asking for it."

Spin the globe and throw a dart, and you'll almost certainly hit a better country than the one we're in.

[Totally Tunsie]

14. Yeah. What was she wearing, anyway?

[Hamlette]

16. these two articles raise more questions than they answer and seem to be old news.

The 2017 article says she consented to joint custody. WTF? Maybe she had to to get state assistance?

The article in the OP is dated July 7 2021 so one year ago and seems to be unaware of the 2017 article wherein it was reported the judge reversed himself days after granting joint custody and took away all of the father's rights.

Muck reporting. Would be interesting to know the real story. the article linked in the OP seems to be purposefully failing to report the true story (that the custody order was corrected days later in 2017, 4 years before the article was written).

[IronLionZion]

19. Which shithole country did this child rapist come from?

Oh wait, just Michigan

[musette_sf]

20. The "attorney" in this case

is notorious gestational slavery and rapists’ rights advocate Rebecca Kiessling. This vile misogynistic POS is beyond abusive and cruel. Her rapists’ rights forced-birth organizations are ALL ABOUT stripping innocent impregnated sex crime victims of the right of self-protection in getting the criminal’s tainted and unwanted DNA removed. The fact that this depraved mental case then becomes an “attorney” to… “advocate” FOR the same innocent impregnated sex crime victims that SHE wants sentenced to gestational slavery with tainted mentally ill criminal DNA????

I hate Kiessling and everything she stands for. She rakes in HUGE tax-free piles of dough from her gestational slavery and rapists’ rights scams, and then, in one of the most baldly hypocritical moves I have ever seen in my lifetime, rakes in even MORE dough from the rapists’ innocent victims WHOSE TORTURE SHE WAS 100% COMPLICIT IN. Mental illness is hereditary in many cases, so it seems than the criminal mental illness of Kiessling’s mother’s rapist has been genetically perpetuated.

Facts about the vile Kiessling from the reproductive justice site Rewire:

(Kiessling is) a well-known anti-abortion activist and speaker who calls herself an abortion survivor because she was conceived in rape and her mother unsuccessfully sought an abortion twice. She thinks that women who are raped should be forced to carry those pregnancies to term, and she advocates for that using her personal circumstance as a jumping-off point. She presupposes that her personal circumstances and her mother’s decision should inform the decision of every pregnant rape survivor.

https://rewirenewsgroup.com/ablc/2017/10/17/beware-anti-agenda-michigan-case/

[CloudWatcher]

21. This crappy clickbait is not helpful

This is (a) very old and (b) misleading. It has no place getting front-page exposure on DU.

The timeline as far as I can tell:

9/22/2017 Original order giving custody

10/10/2017 The shit hits the fan
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/10/06/rape-victim-attacker-joint-child-custody/106374256/

10/17/2017 Decision was REVERSED! https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/2017/10/judge_reverses_decision_granti.html

7/7/2021. Clickbait hits yahoo!news again, with OLD version of the story.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-raped-12-old-awarded-114904992.html

The 2021 story on Yahoo!News did not include pointers to the reversal.

This story is crap, it did not "Happen Again".

There are enough actual horror stories around that we don't have to repeat bogus news.

[Joinfortmill]

23. This is painful to the heart and soul. As a mother, I would make a plan.

[Martin68]

25. Disgusting.

[jmowreader]

27. There's a worse problem here

According to the article, Michigan law states that rape of someone under 13 years old - the mother was 12 - is punishable by life in prison, but the defendant was allowed to plead down to Attempted Criminal Sexual Conduct in the Third Degree. He served one year in jail.

[Bettie]

31. And only four when he got out

and did it again.

Well, he was sentenced to four, not sure how much time he served.

In most states in the US, keeping rapists from seeking custody of children conceived through rape requires a conviction. In a few it requires "clear and convincing evidence".

There's a map in this link that shows that. https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/08/rapist-custody-abortion/

Someone complained about the story being "old".

Well, it is still happening, in Louisiana, a judge granted full custody of a child conceived by rape to the guy who raped her mother. After public pressure the judge reversed the decision TEMPORARILY, there will be a hearing on July 15th to determine if the man who raped the mother when she was 16 gets full custody (with child support) of the now-16 year old girl. Oh, and he has had partial custody for years and the mother had no recourse. The courts allowed him to continue to victimize her.

Now, we're looking at women who are raped being denied abortion, which will leave the door open for much more of this kind of fuckery.

Link to this story, yes it's People magazine, but there's no paywall: https://people.com/crime/judge-revokes-decision-give-dad-full-custody-after-mom-rape-accusation/

All of this will accelerate in the new "no abortion, women have no rights" right wing climate of state legislatures, the supreme court, and general republicanism.

Apparently, in republican world rape is a family value.

[jmowreader]

33. You know what it really is

For Republicans, all their values go out the window when a baby enters the picture.

If these guys had committed rapes that didn’t result in pregnancy, Republicans would be all for cutting off their dicks and making them eat them. But when a baby enters the equation… “ooh, he’s a daddy, it’s not fair he can’t take part in his child’s life! And you can’t let the victim get an abortion because it’ll take the father’s rights to his child away!”

Democrats, on the other hand, are perfectly fine with a criminal not having rights to the baby he conceived through rape.

[live love laugh]

28. But R Kelly is serving 30 years for less. nt

[LisaL]

34. But it took a really long time to get to these 30 years.

NT

[pfitz59]

29. I'm thinking he may wind up missing

if he tries to exercise his 'parental rights'. He would if she were my daughter.

[LisaL]

35. He doesn't want custody.

It's an old article.
But this guy never wanted custody.