19-year-old white teenager known
as John R.K. Howard, accused of raping his mentally disabled black fellow
student with help of a coat hanger has been saved from jail term.
The teenager was initially
charged with forceful s3xual penetration using a foreign object, was to be sentenced to
life imprisonment if found guilty and convicted in an Idaho court.
Hitherto subsequent to an
agreement reached between the defence counsel and the State Attorney General’s
office, the attack was found not to be racially stirred and didn’t constitute a
sex crime, therefore the rape charge was dropped and replaced by the lesser
charge of injury to a child in December.
Howard was finally sentenced on
Friday to three years’ probation and 300 hours of community service for the
attack in October 2015.
The victim, who was 17 at the
time of the attack, had just finished football practice and was in Dietrich
High School’s locker room, when one of his ‘friends’ called him over.
According to a record acquired by
the Guardian, the victim described the assault and said: ‘He told me to give
him a hug. He had his hands out like he was going to give me a hug. And I gave
him a hug, and he signaled for one of my other friends to come over.’
The victim hen described how
Howard and two others then went on to rape him.
When asked how he felt during the
attack, he said: ‘Pain that I have never felt took over my body. I screamed,
but afterwards, I kept it to myself.’
The said attack has been making
the victim to commit suicide multiple times, according to court documents.
When sentencing Howard, Judge
Randy Stoker agreed to accept an Alford plea, which allows a defendant to
maintain their innocence while admitting there is sufficient evidence for a
jury to return a guilty verdict.
His sentence has since sparked
outcry among the public who have drawn comparisons to the Brock Turner case, in
which a former Stanford University student was found guilty of sexually
assaulting an unconscious woman but only served three months in jail.
Accordingly, petition has been
launched to remove Mr Stoke from the bench and has already attracted nearly
150,000 signatures.
The victim’s family say the
attack took place after months of racist abuse by the white football players.
In a lawsuit filed against the school,
they claim the victim was ‘taunted and called racist names by other members of
the team which names included “Kool-Aid” “chicken eater” “watermelon” and [the
N-word]’.
His attackers also reportedly
taught the victim a song, which he didn’t understand, that went: ‘Moon man,
moon man, can’t you see. Spics and n****** need to hang from trees.’
Also, during the trial, football
coaches tried to persuade the victim to change his story while recording the
conversation.
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