Vermont Reaping What Its Judges Have Sown?

It was heartbreaking this morning watching the statements made live by Vermont and federal law officials after having found Brooke Bennett yesterday. Brooke, just 12 years old, had gone missing June 25th. The state had issued a week-long Amber Alert, suspecting that she was in the company of her uncle Michael Jacques, a convicted sex offender. Sadly, she was found Wednesday in a makeshift, shallow grave about a mile from her uncle's house.

Jacques is married to the sister of Brooke's mother Cassandra Gagnon. He has a 1993 conviction for kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault. Jacques (pronounced "jakes") was taken into custody Sunday on charges of aggravated sexual assault against a different underage girl. He now faces federal kidnapping charges.

Today it seems that the story is growing increasingly shocking and disgusting. MSNBC continues:

Sex ring allegation In an affidavit unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Burlington, the FBI said an unidentified 14-year-old girl told investigators she was present on June 25 when Jacques tricked Bennett into thinking she was going to a party and took her to his Randolph home to be initiated into a sex ring.

The teenager said she was led to believe Bennett "would have sex with adult males" during the initiation. The 14-year-old said she herself had been having sex with Jacques since she was 9, as part of the sex ring.

The teen, who is related to Jacques, said she and Bennett watched television for a while before Jacques told her to leave and took his niece upstairs. The witness said she left the house with her boyfriend and didn't see Bennett again.

In another blow to the family, Bennett's former stepfather, Raymond Gagnon, was formally charged Wednesday with obstructing justice in the case.

He entered no plea at the federal hearing and was denied bail pending another hearing on Monday. The 40-year-old Gagnon, who lives in Texas, was on a regular visit to Vermont when he was arrested.

According to the affidavit, Gagnon told police he accessed his former stepdaughter's MySpace page from a computer at his San Antonio home after getting login information from Jacques.

Police said they have evidence that postings to the account were altered to make it appear that the 12-year-old had discussed a secret rendezvous shortly before she disappeared.

On that day, Jacques dropped Bennett off at a convenience store, and surveillance video shows they left in separate directions. She had told family members she was going to meet a friend and visit a hospitalized relative of the friend.

Sunday's federal charges against Jacques for aggravated sexual assault against a different, but related, underage girl are the result of his membership in a sex ring called "Breckenridge."

WCAX of Vermont provides some information regarding this:

According to court papers, Michael Jacques, 42, convinced a young relative that she was a part of an underground sex program called "Breckenridge" and repeatedly assaulted her over the last five years. Papers also state that Jacques told the girl that he would cut her throat if she did not go along with the program. But at this time, we do NOT know if Brooke Bennett was a victim of the same program.
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In the police affidavit, it says the victim was told the president of the United States had selected her for the sex program. The president assigns a trainer, and her trainer would be Michael Jacques. And then she was abused-- almost tortured-- on a weekly basis in many different ways for the next five years. The victim testified she had met three men as part of the "Breckenridge" ring who had told her what types of sexual activity she needed to work on to graduate.

As I wince at each creepy detail that is released, I can't help but think back on a recent court case in Vermont where a wacko judge let off a sex offender with light or near-to-nothing punishment. Is Vermont, and our society as a whole, now starting to see the results of these court decisions?

Take, for example, former Judge Edward Cashman, who finally retired after he sparked outrage when he sentenced a sex offender to two months in jail for abusing a six-year-old girl over a four-year period. Cashman's thinking was that this would be the best way for Hulett, the child rapist, to get help. Fortunately, Governor Jim Douglas and others decried Cashman's sentence, calling Cashman soft on child predators and demanding his resignation. State corrections officials later changed their policy for treating sex offenders, allowing Hulett to get treatment while in prison and prompting Cashman to increase the sentence to a three-year minimum.

As of May 2007, Vermont was one of 10 states that had rejected Jessica's Law, which imposes harsh prison terms on child predators and takes discretion away from judges. Instead, Vermont's House Judiciary Chairman Bill Lippert pushed through legislation that imposes a mandatory minimum of just five years for child rapists. [Source]

What in the world can we do to protect our children?!? This was a hotly debated topic here in the St. Louis area, as well as nationally, when miraculously Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby were found alive in January 2007, after having been kidnapped by Michael Devlin. These two boys, especially Hornbeck, will spend the rest of their lives trying to recover from that monster. What punishment should Devlin have gotten? (Devlin is currently serving multiple life sentences.)

Here's an interesting case I found: Today the AP is reporting that a Weatherford, Texas man was sentenced to more than 4,000 years in prison yesterday for sexually assaulting three teenage girls over two years. [Source] James Kevin Pope got 40 life terms -- one for each sex assault conviction -- and 20 years for each of the three sexual performance of a child convictions.

Coincidentally, last week the U.S. Supreme Court banned the death penalty for child rapists, saying that executions are too severe a punishment for raping children, despite the "years of long anguish" for victims. The ruling restricts the death penalty to murder and crimes against the state. [Source]

Now, I do realize that if Jacques did murder Brooke, he is eligible for the death penalty. But, let's say he did not murder her, instead keeping her psychologically intertwined in the sex ring. What kind of penalty could he get for something like that?!? I worry that he and other despicable beasts like him would get away with too light of a sentence for such a horrendous crime.

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For more information about Jessica's Law, go to the Jessica Marie Lunsford Foundation website. Here you can learn which of the 33 states have so passed this legislation. Jessica's father -- Mark Lunsford -- is one of those amazingly brave souls who can take a personal tragedy and turn it around to serve the common good.

The foundation's mission statement reads: "The Jessica Marie Lunsford Foundation has been established to help children in crisis. Our children are our last hope in this world. There is an evil that preys on the innocence of these precious souls and the Jessica Marie Lunsford Foundation is a result of one man's struggle with this evil which has claimed his daughter's life. We cannot get rid of this evil...but we can contain it, so that our children can be free."

I am happy to see that Missouri has passed Jessica's Law, but sad that Illinois has not.