The Judgment of Judges
I’m getting kind of tired of having to point out things that those in mainstream media don’t ever report or comment on. The fact is they get paid a ton of money and I do this for free. It seems an additional burden to have to focus on things that are not pleasant simply because others don’t do the job.
The problem is that these things just pop out at me. They slap me in the face and then seem to scream in my ear until I do something about them.
Yesterday I saw a story on the TV news about a judge who sentenced a man who raped a completely defenseless paralyzed woman in a health care facility. Then I saw the story in the Seattle Times again this morning.
A former nursing assistant who raped a paralyzed stroke victim at a North Seattle long-term-care center last year was sentenced Friday to 8 ½ years to life in prison.
King County Superior Court Judge Julie Specter said if she had her way, she would sentence Lamin Darboe to life behind bars.
“I can’t think of anything more violative than raping a helpless, paralyzed woman,” Specter told Darboe. She said the case was one of the most shocking betrayals of trust she’s seen in her courtroom.
“If it were up to me, I would never release you into our community,” Specter said.
Darboe, 40, had entered a modified guilty plea, known as an Alford plea, to one count of second-degree rape in October. In an Alford plea, the defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges he likely would be convicted if the case went to trial.
According to charging papers, Darboe was working at Kindred Hospital in North Seattle in the summer of 2006 when he fondled and raped a now-33-year-old woman who was paralyzed and couldn’t speak as the result of a stroke. The woman used an alphabet board to tell authorities about the rape, according to charging documents.
Can’t think of anything more violative than raping a helpless, paralyzed woman?
That statement shows such an irrational bias, it would seem to me that it would serve as grounds for an appeal. Wouldn’t murder be more violative? Or how about sending an innocent man to jail for decades for a rape he didn’t commit? That has happened all too many times in our legal system, especially in cases where the defendant is black and the victim white as in this case.
What about child rape? The holocaust? Are they worse than the rape of an incapacitated woman?
Previous reports (also here) on this case state that Darboe has been accused of inappropriate sexual advances on female patients in other facilities. He had been previously accused of rape but not convicted. He was fired multiple times but for some reason this did not keep him from getting the job which provided another opportunity for an assault.
Is the state’s failure to protect patients from such attacks violative as well, especially when there are so many red flags? The woman’s trust was betrayed by the facilities that were supposed to care for her as well as the state agencies in charge of licensing.
I only had to flip a few pages to find the story of a woman who tortured a girl in her care by sticking hypodermic needles in her eyes, beating her and scorching her hands on a hot stove.
But Cayce said a report from Western State Hospital, where Kabbelliyaa was evaluated, indicated she knew what she was doing when she punished the child and then tried to hide her from authorities who came to her home to investigate.
“She’s manipulative and cruel,” said Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Corinn Bohn. “Her level of torture is incomprehensible.”
Kabbelliyaa, who also goes by the last name of Lewis, abused and tortured the girl she had cared for since the girl, who is her cousin, was 5. Police and prosecutors said Kabbelliyaa routinely punished the girl by burning her tongue with a heated fork, beating her feet with dumbbells and sticking a needle into the girl’s eye, telling her she would be blinded if she moved.
The girl suffered permanent vision loss.
According to charging documents filed in King County Superior Court, Kabbelliyaa had been the girl’s licensed foster mother since the girl was 5. She was arrested last year after Child Protective Services was called by someone acquainted with the family who reported seeing Kabbelliyaa punch the girl, hit her with an umbrella and lock her in an outside storage unit for hours.
The girl was 14 when police arrested Kabbelliyaa.
Physicians examining the foster girl found serious damage to the girl’s right eye, scarring, bruising and a severely burned tongue.
Charging documents also state that Kabbelliyaa would turn on the stove’s burner until it was red hot before pressing the girl’s palm onto the burner.
While these are both horrible crimes, torturing a child for nine years in such a brutal way tops raping a paralyzed woman in my book. But that’s not really my point. The point is that many of us can think of things we think are more violative crimes with more permanent damage than the rape of a paralyzed woman. But apparently Judge Specter can’t even think of obvious examples like murder or the brutal years-long torture of a child.
So how can we know that the defendant got a fair trial?
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