By Alex Morgan
SACRAMENTO, CA – Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette sentenced a man here Friday to 12 years in state prison for child molestation, inflicted for years upon a child under his care.
And the judge wanted to know why the term for the defendant and others like him wasn’t more.
The defendant—the Vanguard has deleted the defendant’s name to avoid exposing the identity of the victim—was convicted of two felonies involving child molestation.
He had fled to Mexico in 2006 to avoid prosecution, but was apprehended and extradited back to the U.S.
Deputy District Attorney Dinah Mielke reported that the victim was watching the case over Zoom and asked Mielke to read an impact statement that she had provided.
In this statement, the victim wrote about the brokenness and the fear experienced from the time she was nine years old to now…sexually abused every single night from a person she depended on growing up, and how it has left her with brutal and awful mental scars.
In these 14 years, the victim had waited for closure because she said no one in her family supported her.
Judge Marlette indirectly spoke to the victim, stating that she is strong and should feel no guilt for the incidents that occurred when she was too young to defend herself.
Judge Marlette then stated that the defendant was not eligible for probation and that even if the defendant were, he would not grant it to him because of the facts of the case.
Judge Marlette stated that he hopes that the defendant can understand what he did was wrong, because to be in that position where young children “do not have the tools to defend themselves properly” and must rely and depend on their father figure—the defendant took advantage of that and preyed on that weakness.
Judge Marlette described this as a “remarkable depravity” that the defendant must have had, to take advantage of his position.
The defendant was sentenced to 12 years in state prison and must also register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
After the sentencing, Judge Marlette noted the difficulty of dealing with cases such as the one that was just heard.
“I just heard two cases that involved men who were in positions of trust who raped little girls, and they were charged with a whole lot of charges. In either case, the offers provided were not the maximum.”
Judge Marlette said he feels these offers should be more, maintaining, “Somebody, someday, needs to sit down and explain to me why that happens.”
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