Daughter’s Confession Brings Accused-Rapist Father Out of Jail After 10 Years In 2001, Cassandra Ann Kennedy, then 11, accused her father, Thomas Kennedy, of multiple instances of rape. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Eleven years later, Cassandra, now 23, confessed that she had made up the entire story. “I did a horrible thing,” Kennedy told detectives. She said she wanted to “take vengeance” on her father, a drinker and partier who wasn’t around much during her childhood. But Kennedy won’t be prosecuted for lying, partly to avoid discouraging actual rape victims from coming forward. What’s startling about this case isn’t just the injustice of an undeserved 10-year prison stay — it’s also how successfully an 11-year-old girl was able to dupe a criminal justice system designed to weed out false accusations. Cowlitz County Prosecutor Sue Baur used a variety of evidence to convict Thomas Kennedy in 2001. Cassandra had written a series of journal entries mentioning the abuse, confided in her teachers and repeatedly delivered a detailed and consistent testimony. Baur consulted Cassandra’s doctor, who examined the girl and found “trauma in her groin area.” Police now believe it may have been caused by a previous incident. From TDN: In March of 2001, Cassandra was examined at a Vancouver clinic where she told a doctor about the alleged abuse. “She looked at me and said, ‘Are you telling the truth?” Cassandra said this year of her appointment with the doctor. “I lied to her and said, ‘Yes.’” Asked if there had been missteps in the initial investigation, Baur said she has recently reviewed a recording of the little girl’s testimony and has been rethinking every detail of the case. She noted that 12 jurors found enough evidence at the time to convict Kennedy and that the conduct of prosecutors, defense attorneys and Judge Warme was upheld by the appeals court. “There should be no indictment of the system,” she said. Instead, Baur said, it’s simply a case of a victim withdrawing her story. Should Cassandra be prosecuted? It would be a mistake to prosecute an adult for lying as a child, even if those lies led to a decade-long prison sentence for an innocent person. What’s done is done. But is justice served by viewing this case as an anomaly? This absolutely sucks beyond belief for Thomas Kennedy, but yes, it’s a total oddity, and given that Cassandra was (literally) probed for evidence until the defendants had a convincing case, the existence of a rare false rape accusation should not shake anyone’s faith in the legal system or contribute to some kind of rape-case policy change. What would be accomplished by putting more pressure on young victims and subjecting them to even more trauma? Baur’s motives for protecting the accuser’s rights are spot-on. Given the ubiquity of the crime and the startling statistics of rape victims who don’t — or can’t — come forward, it’s important to view this case as exactly what it is: a (completely awful) exception whose bizarre abnormality proves the rule. THE BEST STUFF OF THE DAY: • • WATCH THIS NOW: Dallas Tornado Makes 18-Wheelers Fly • Feds Outsmart Pedo MIT Researcher Looking for Sex With Mom and Tween Daughters • The Catholic Church Is Taking the Gay Porn Priest Scandal Very Seriously • Ashton Kutcher Will Rock as Steve Jobs, and We Say This Unironically Go on, go ’head and click and Follow Us for more updates straight to your news & nonsense feeds.
NJ45143112 03.04.12 @ 12:24 pm Excuse me?! “What’s done is done?!” This man just lost 10 years of his life, his career and a host of other traumas because this girl falsely accused him! I’m not the one to pass judgement or sentence on her but you can’t just sweep this under the rug and move on!
Guesty 03.04.12 @ 1:00 pm OK, Don’t “prosecute an adult for lying as a child”… then open your fucking checkbook and cut this dude a check for let’s say… $10mil??? Canadians’ are either the nicest people in the world… because they want to believe EVERYONE is good natured (even terrorists that come illegally into their country), or their the dumbest fucks known to mankind. Probably a little of both.
Parsa Dorbeigi 03.04.12 @ 6:58 pm This case is quite complicated. When a case gets involved with lies, you cannot become certain about it anymore. There are few points here: 1- What if the girl is lying today and she was telling the truth a decade ago? There can be tons of reasons for her to withdraw her story. 2- What if the girl is telling the truth today and she was lying a decade ago? This seems very unfair to me. 3- If the girl is telling the truth today, her father has lost 10 years of his precious life in jail for no good reason. 10 years is not nothing. It’s a huge portion of life. The government should give him some money and facilities, so that he can enjoy his life a bit and get along with the 10 years loss he had. 4- If we do not prosecute the girl, it may become a trend for the families. They make their children lie to put the father 10 years in jail and after that get tons of money. 5- She was just a kid at that time and we cannot really prosecute her for lying; besides that, as mentioned in the article, prosecuting her would scare the rape victims. Too much to think of about this case!
Feelgood26 05.04.12 @ 2:27 am this type of child behavior of accusing a parent of a wrong is omnipresent in our society.The state feeds off of cases like this because it empowers them
Epcot50-mail 16.04.12 @ 12:41 am What do you mean scare the Rape Victims from testifying. Any person that accuses another of a crime especially of one this serious should have the conviction of what they say is true and should be under pressure to have to prove it. The problem with this type of crime the Burden of Proof is almost non-existant.. Accusations are made and then proofs must be presented by the accused that they did not commit the crime. Every other crime must be proven against the accused. When you set such lenient rule for proof in sex crimes you can almost gaurantee repeats of this situation. This burden of proof does let some guilty go free but are we to sacrifice a fair trial with proven guilt in the interest of making sure that this particular dispicable crime is punished at any cost. I shudder to see that this is the case in todays society.