Disabled Teen attack - not labelled a hate crime, and suspect given probation..
An Idaho prosecutor’s declaration that an alleged rape of a black, mentally disabled football player with a coat hanger by his white team-mate was not a sex crime and was not racially motivated has sparked mounting criticism among campaigners against sexual assault.
John RK Howard was initially charged with felony forcible sexual penetration by use of a foreign object, but on Friday, the 19-year-old reached a plea bargain that allowed him to plead guilty to a felony count of injury to a child. The deal will allow Howard to avoid prison time unless he violates his probation, the Twin Falls Times-News reported.The October 2015 assault drew national headlines after the victim told the court that he had been attacked by three football team-mates and sodomized with a coat hanger in the locker room.
The victim’s family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the high school and school officials, claiming that the school had failed to protect the student from a campaign of racial harassment by other students that culminated in the sexual assault.The victim was called racial epithets such as “watermelon”, “chicken-eater”, and “nigger”, and Howard taunted the victim with a “Ku Klux Klan” song, the lawsuit alleged.
But during Friday’s hearing, the prosecutor, deputy attorney general Casey Hemmer, played down both the racial and sexual aspects of the crime, according to the Twin Falls Times-News.Hemmer told the judge that the crime was not a sex crime and that Howard should not be treated as a sex offender, the paper reported. He also stated that his office did not believe that the crime was racially motivated “Deputy Attorney General Hemmer’s actions and statements dehumanizes the young man who was heinously penetrated and fuels and sanctions our culture of sexism, racism, able-ism, domination, aggression, and violence, and in turn, the Office of the Idaho Attorney General is complicit in state-sanctioned sexism, racism, able-ism and violence,” the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence wrote on Facebook.
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“To say that this has nothing to do with the fact that he’s one of only one or two black children in the school, and he’s mentally disabled, and he’s the only one that had this happen to him – to say that this doesn’t have to do with race is just incomprehensible,” Schlender said. A former Idaho high school football player originally charged with sexually assaulting his mentally disabled teammate will avoid jail time and escape classification as a sex offender after pleading guilty to a lesser felony.John R.K. Howard, 19, of Keller, Tex., pleaded guilty to a felony count of injury to a child and will be sentenced to two to three years of probation and up to 300 hours of community service, the Idaho Statesmen reported. A judge will decide the final sentence on Feb. 24.
Deputy Attorney General Casey Hemmer said if the case had gone to trial, prosecutors would have been able to prove Howard kicked a coat hanger into his teammate’s rectum during the October 2015 attack — but a modified guilty plea submitted by the teen allows him to maintain his innocence while still acknowledging he would have otherwise been convicted.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/20/idaho-football-coat-hanger-rape-teammate-john-rk-howard
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