The 16-year-old girl was visibly intoxicated, her speech slurred, when a drunk 16-year-old boy sexually assaulted her in a dark basement during an alcohol-fueled pajama party in New Jersey, prosecutors said.<\/span>
<\/span>The boy filmed himself penetrating her from behind, her torso exposed, her head hanging down, prosecutors said. He later shared the cellphone video among friends, investigators said, and sent a text that said, \u201cWhen your first time having sex was rape.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>But a family court judge said it wasn\u2019t rape. Instead, he wondered aloud if it was sexual assault, defining rape as something reserved for an attack at gunpoint by strangers.<\/span>
<\/span>He also said the young man came from a good family, attended an excellent school, had terrific grades and was an Eagle scout. Prosecutors, the judge said, should have explained to the girl and her family that pressing charges would destroy the boy\u2019s life.<\/span>
<\/span>So he denied prosecutors\u2019 motion to try the 16-year-old as an adult. \u201cHe is clearly a candidate for not just college but probably for a good college,\u201d Judge James Troiano of Superior Court said last year in a two-hour decision while sitting in Monmouth County.<\/span>
<\/span>Now the judge has been sharply rebuked by an appeals court in a scathing 14-page ruling that warned the judge against showing bias toward privileged teenagers.<\/span>
<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>
<\/span>In recent years, judges across the country have come under fire for the way they have handled sexual abuse cases. One of the most notorious was in 2016, when a judge in California sentenced a Stanford University student to six months in jail after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. After an intense public backlash, California voters recalled the judge.<\/span>
<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026
<\/span>The judge in Monmouth County, Mr. Troiano, was scolded by the appellate court, according to the panel\u2019s decision. \u201cThat the juvenile came from a good family and had good test scores we assume would not condemn the juveniles who do not come from good families and do not have good test scores from withstanding waiver application,\u201d the panel wrote in its decision.<\/span>
<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>
<\/span>Family court cases are typically closed to the public, but the judges\u2019 comments surfaced in June when the appeals court decisions were made public, joining a series of contentious sexual assault cases that have ignited outrage over a legal system that advocates for victims say is warped by bias and privilege.<\/span>
<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>
<\/span>In September 2017, the Monmouth County prosecutor\u2019s office recommended that the case be tried in adult criminal court in part because the boy\u2019s actions were \u201csophisticated and predatory.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026
<\/span>The appellate decision criticized the judge, writing that rather than focusing on whether prosecutors met the necessary standards for a waiver, \u201cthe judge decided the case for himself.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026
<\/span>In 2004, Judge Troiano imposed a gag order to prohibit people in a courtroom from discussing the high-profile case of two Montclair High School football players accused of sexually assaulting a schoolmate. The charges were eventually dropped.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThink about all the times that this does not get press, and some self-entitled rich kid gets off while some black kid gets tried as an adult for having a joint in his pocket.<\/p>\n
Sometimes our society makes me sick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 16 year raped a drunk 16 year old girl, filmed it, and shared the film. The judge at his trial said that he deserved leniency because he came from a good family. This sort of crap is getting really old: The 16-year-old girl was visibly intoxicated, her speech slurred, when a drunk 16-year-old boy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,364,597,407,448,582],"class_list":["post-177712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-inequality","tag-justice","tag-sex","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}