The defendant in a sexual assault case dating back to 2014 entered a guilty plea to sexual misconduct in the second degree and felonious restraint and was sentenced to four years of supervised probation at a trial on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016 at 2:30 p.m., according to Casenet.com.
On Dec. 14, 2014, one year, eight months, and 23 days earlier, this sexual assault occurred between two international Truman State students off campus.
Matt Wilson, Kirksville prosecuting attorney for the case, says a guilty plea is different than a court trial where a jury decides a verdict, which is what would have happened had the defendant pleaded not guilty. Wilson says when a guilty plea is entered it usually means the defendant is acknowledging they did commit the crimes they are charged with and accepts the sentencing. Wilson says both victims and defendants can benefit from entering a guilty plea.
“There is some benefit in guilty pleas being entered for victims,” Wilson says. “I don’t know any sober, consenting adults, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, who like to talk about what they do in their own bedroom with 12 strangers. In cases like this, we’re asking an individual who has been violated to come and talk with 12 strangers and maybe more, because it’s an open court, and explain what went on. That’s a pretty traumatic and difficult thing for people to do.”
Wilson says, especially in sexual assault cases, victims can find peace in hearing their perpetrators take responsibility for their actions.
“It gives them closure to hear their perpetrator say ‘I’m guilty. I did it,’” Wilson says.
Wilson says usually when defendants plead guilty they might get a lighter sentencing, but says it’s important to keep in mind while the defendant might get a lighter sentence, it doesn’t mean the case has not been pursued and investigated.
“People sometimes think that if you don’t go to trial and [the defendant] pled guilty it’s just a slap on the wrist,” Wilson says. “We file close to 1,300 cases a year. There’s 365 days in a year. A typical jury trial takes two days. There’s only five working days in a week. There’s no way you could possibly try every single case.”
Wilson also says shaming a victim for not pursuing a full court case to bring justice against their perpetrator is unfair.
“A lot of times people say sexual assault victims need to protect other women and other children,” Wilson says. “That’s not fair. That’s not their job to put themselves through a traumatic event to potentially protect other people. [People criticizing the victim] need to put themselves in the place of that victim.”
In regards to this specific case, Wilson says because the defendant was an international student, he runs the risk of facing deportation after his trial.
Wilson did not reveal much about the victim except to say she was a young adult and is now living and going to school in a different state.
Lieutenant Mark Wellman of The Kirksville Police Department says there are ethics that come along with releasing too much information about the victim of a sexual assault case.
Wellman says in every sexual assault investigation there are many things that can be used as evidence, including clothing, bedding materials, rape kits and forensics.
“We take sexual assaults very seriously, and we investigate them to the point where we’re confident we’ve got the correct case and it actually happened,” Wellman says. “[Evidence] helps to make sure if someone is innocent they don’t get punished for it.”
Wellman says sexual assault cases can take a while because a lot of DNA evidence has to be sent to the Missouri Highway Patrol lab, which is backed up with evidence from sexual assaults and various other types of cases from across the state. Wellman says this can be attributed to one of the reasons the investigation for this particular sexual assault case took almost two years.
Title IX Coordinator Jamie Ball says although she was not working for Truman when this sexual assault occurred, she could infer by reading documents about the case that it was somewhat different than other sexual assault cases she has seen.
“What is different about this case, from what I understand by looking at some of the public information, is there was a fairly significant threat and use of force that resulted in submission,” Ball says. “In a lot of [sexual assault] cases it’s a little less typical to see those kinds of explicit threats, using weapons, or some kind of physical restraint.”
Ball says there is no universal protocol when deciding the punishment of a student found guilty of sexually assaulting another student, but she says it is her personal belief the student should either be suspended or expelled — depending on how severe the aggravation and mitigation were in the case — to separate them from the victim.
Ball says sexaul assault cases are dealt with differently on a campus level than they are on a criminal court case level. Ball says the criminal process does not dictate the outcome of the campus process. Ball says it’s not unheard of for there to be a finding of responsibility in a campus process but a finding of not guilty for the same case in a criminal process.
Ball says she always tries to be aware that if a student has dealt with a trauma it might mean their memories are disjointed or some of their behaviors in response to the trauma might be counterintuitive.
“I have to put those things in context,” Ball says. “I have to be sensitive and make the best possible sense out of a mosaic of information that isn’t entirely complete.”
Ball says she has to be very sensitive to victims of sexual assault and make sure to speak to them in a way that acknowledges that the trauma they have experienced can influence their thoughts about what happened.
As read in the Sept. 8 Index.