White Male Privilege: Babysitter gets 30 days for child molestation
Babysitter gets 30 days for child molestation
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. A Springfield babysitter will spend a month in jail after pleading guilty to child molestation. Police say Joseph Presley admitted to molesting an eight-year-old boy on two separate occasions.
Greene County Judge Calvin Holden sentenced Presley last week, and now Presley is in the Greene County Jail. But he won’t be there for long. He was given a 30-day ‘shock’ sentence, and then he’ll be on probation for five years.
“That’s is simply not enough, that doesn’t deter people from doing this sort of crime against children,” said Child Advocacy Center Executive Director Barbara Brown-Johnson.
She says the sentencing took her by surprise.
Children are taken to the Child Advocacy Center after they become victims of a sex crime, and they speak with investigators about what happened.
“I just can’t help but think that the victim’s needs were not met with this outcome,” she said.
According to court documents, Presley molested the boy on two occasions while he was babysitting the child at his own house, once when the boy was 8 and again when he was 9. The boy told investigators that when he tried to call his mother on the home phone, Presley took the phone away and sent the child to bed.
Dee Wampler is Presley’s defense attorney. He says the 23-year-old is a first-time offender who is active in his church. Wampler says in this case, prison was not the answer.
“I’m sure a lot of the public is going to say, ‘Lock him up and throw away the key. And they’re in favor of strong law enforcement, as long as the law applies to the other fella. And not to their child,” said Wampler.
He says Presley will likely have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, which is a punishment in itself.
“Do we really want to take a boy that’s not institutionalized, that has not been in prison before, and put him in prison with some real sex molesters, and some real rapists? So that he can really learn the trade? Is that what we want?” asks Wampler.
He says Presley is remorseful and is in need of counselling, especially because Presley was molested when he was a child.
“It’s not to say it justifies it, but it’s an explanation probably as to why it happened,” Wampler said.
But Brown-Johnson says that’s no reason to go easy on a sex offender.
“You have to deal with the child victim in from of you, and saying that a perpetrator should get a lesser sentence because of their perpetration, when they’re an adult, that makes no sense whatsoever,” she said.
Presley pleaded guilty to a class B felony, that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Judge Holden originally sentenced Presley to ten years in prison, but now he will not go to prison at all, unless he violates his probation.
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KING: Brock Turner's not rare - white convicts often get off easy
In the fall of 1996, my mother and I purchased my first car. It was a maroon 1992 Mercury Topaz sedan with custom maroon carpet on the dashboard. I loved it. I was a high school senior in Versailles, Kentucky, and this would allow me to not only drive to school and take my girlfriend (who would eventually become my wife) on dates, but I would also eventually use it to drive back and forth to college in Atlanta the next year.
Until I owned a maroon Mercury Topaz for myself, I had never noticed another one like it. Then, as soon as I developed an eye for my own car, I saw the exact same make and model all over central Kentucky. When I finally drove it to Atlanta for college the next year, I saw the identical version of my car everywhere. It wasn't the least bit rare.
Such is the case with Brock Turner - the Stanford University swimmer who was caught sexually assaulting a semi-conscious woman behind a dumpster. Turner, as you have no doubt heard, will be released from jail on Friday after his judge, Aaron Persky, himself a Stanford grad, gave Turner an outrageous level of sympathy to go along with the slap-on-the-wrist sentence. Instead of serving the years in prison such a crime should warrant, Turner avoided prison altogether and spent a few weeks in the local jail this summer.
He sexually assaulted a woman. He was caught. There were eye witnesses. And he'll be free after only serving three months.
The nation responded with understandable outrage. California lawmakers have rushed to pass a law preventing any such thing from happening again. But what we have learned in the months since Brock Turner was given the break of his life is that Brock Turner is not rare. In the matters of sexual assault, particularly when the perpetrator is a young, privileged white man, such breaks are commonplace in this country. White privilege in the criminal justice system, like my Mercury Topaz from back in the day, is everywhere.
I don't like to play the game of comparative oppression - saying which story of injustice is worse than the other. In doing that, we run the risk of accidentally minimizing the pain and trauma of another circumstance to magnify the horrendous nature of another story. With that said, what I am about to tell you is outrageous.
In 2014, an 8-year-old Missouri boy told his family his male babysitter, then 21-year-old Joseph Presley, molested him on two different occasions. Presley, a YMCA employee and youth minister-in-training, was arrested and charged with child molestation. His mugshot could be an Abercrombie & Fitch photo, showing him in a plaid shirt, with a Mr. Rogers sweater over top and wavy blond hair combed to the side. After his arrest, Presley posted an affordable bond and was free for all of 2015, and most of 2016, while the judge ordered him to stay away from children.
Presley pleaded guilty to molesting the boy, now 9 years old, during a June court hearing.
The abuse reportedly happened on two occasions - once with the boy's clothes on and another time with his clothes off. The boy said he tried to call his mother after the second incident, but Presley took the phone away and prevented the call.
"Do not be fooled by Joseph Presley. He's the ultimate con man," the boy's mother said during sentencing last week.
Presley was a methodical predator. He waited until the boy's family was out of town for his grandmother's funeral to do such things. The boy's family testified that the acts changed everything for them and said the boy is simply not the same kid. He has nightmares, his grades have tanked, he has mood swings. The adults in the family have lost faith in people and struggle to trust anyone.
Prosecutors asked the judge, Calvin Holden, to sentence Presley to seven or eight years in prison.
But instead of sending Presley to prison, he did something that should have had him disbarred and removed from the bench - he suspended Presley's 10-year sentence, meaning Presley will only serve that time if his probation is revoked.
Instead, Presley was given a 30-day "shock" sentence and five years probation.
Holden explained the decision by pointing out Presley's efforts to seek counseling, according to the Springfield News-Leader.
The judge, it appears, was swayed by Presley's attorney, Dee Wampler, who said in an interview with ABC affiliate KSPR, "Do we really want to take a boy that's not institutionalized, that has not been in prison before, and put him in prison with some real sex molesters, and some real rapists? So that he can really learn the trade? Is that what we want?"
Yes, when Wampler was speaking about "a boy" he was speaking about the 23-year-old Presley and not the victim. The judge bought it - hook, line and sinker.
Even though Presley molested a young boy on multiple occasions, he could avoid spending a single day of his life in prison. The judge even admitted the sentence was "basically probation."
Thirty days. Thirty damn days in jail for molesting a little boy.
Last year, after being arrested for allegedly stealing a Snickers, a Zebra Cake, and a Mountain Dew from a local convenience store, 24-year-old Jamycheal Mitchell spent nearly 90 days in the local jail - where he died of starvation. His death remains under investigation.
Ferguson activist Josh Williams, 20, was sentenced to eight years in prison for arson. He didn't actually set anything on fire, but admitted he attempted to. The fire never materialized. He had never been arrested a day in his life, but is now required to serve at least 85% of his sentence. Nobody was injured and a negligible amount of damage was done, but prosecutors clearly made an example out of Williams.
Of course, Williams and Mitchell were young and black when they faced a judge and Presley and Turner were young and white. That white part made all the difference.
Cleveland Police said they believed 12-year-old Tamir Rice was a grown man when they shot and killed him on sight. He was a sixth grader with a toy.
Newark Police, looking for a 20-year-old man with dreadlocks with guns drawn, chased and cornered 10-year-old Legend Preston, who has closely cropped hair and was playing in his front yard at the time.
Little black boys are treated like men in America while grown white men such as Brock Turner and Joseph Presley are treated like little boys.
It's ugly. It's so damn ugly.
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This piece of shit and his lawyer and the judge can go die in a hole somewhere. We shouldn't "put him in prison with some real sex molesters, and some real rapists"? Excuse you, HE is a real molestor himself, he belongs there with all the other shitty people.