Another rapist gets a slap on the wrist.
18-year-old David Becker, a former Massachusetts high school athlete, was charged with sexually assaulting two unconscious women at a house party last April: two counts of rape and one count of indecent assault and battery, according to MassLive.
Instead of sentencing Becker to serve jail time, the rape charges were set aside and
Palmer District Court Judge Thomas Estes sentenced Becker to two years of probation.
The former high school student was ordered to avoid drugs and alcohol, submit to an evaluation for sex offender treatment and stay clear from the two 18-year-old victims during the probation.
Becker will be allowed to serve probation in Ohio, where he’ll be attending college and will not be required to register as a s-x offender. As long as he complies with the terms of his probation, no conviction will appear on his record.
Becker’s attorney, Thomas Rooke, said, “He can now look forward to a productive life without being burdened with the stigma of having to register. The goal of this sentence was not to impede this individual from graduating high school and to go onto the next step of his life, which is a college experience.”
From MassLive: “Allegations came to light the following week when a[n] East Longmeadow High School student told school resource officer, Michael Ingalls, about a rumor circulating that a high school senior had s-xually assaulted two senior girls while they were intoxicated at a party the previous weekend.”
The female victims told the officer they were all drinking, and they stayed after the party to help Becker clean up. Police say that Becker and the two women fell asleep. The victims say that when they woke up, Becker was s-xually assaulting them. The following day, one of the women received a text from Becker apologizing for his actions.
Becker admitted s-xual contact with one of the women, saying it was acceptable because she didn’t stop him. He denied having physical contact with the other woman.
“Labeling him ‘David the Rapist’ is truly an unjust character assassination of what this individual has accomplished in the past,” Rooke said.
No evidence of previous s-xual assaults were found by police, and one of the victims told the court she didn’t believe jail time was necessary.
“We all made mistakes when we were 17, 18, 19 years old, and we shouldn’t be branded for life with a felony offense and branded a s-x offender,” Rooke said. “Putting this kid in jail for two years would have destroyed this kid’s life.”
This sentence comes on the heels of two other controversial sentences for students convicted of s-xual assault.
20-year-old former star swimmer at Stanford University, Brock Allen Turner, was convicted of raping an unconscious woman January 2015. Judge Aaron Persky was more concerned about Turner’s future and ignored prosecutors’ recommendations for a six-year prison term and issued only a six-month sentence with the possibility of three months off for good behavior.
Recently, 22-year-old former student at the University of Colorado, Austin Wilkerson, admitted to raping an intoxicated woman who had rejected his advances and was sentenced to two years in a jail work-release program that allows him to attend school and work during the day while returning in the evenings, as well as 20 years to life probation.
Video courtesy WWLP:
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