If you’re a particularly vicious child rapist Ohio will apparently reward you for any extra trauma you inflict on your victims. In this outrageous story I first saw covered over at Lost in Lima, Ohio two career pedophiles will go free because prosecutors have determined that the children are too terrified of their abusers to confront them in court. The court, despite a wealth of forensic evidence set the monsters free.

From WhioTV:

DAYTON, Ohio — Two men accused of raping children walked free without a trial.

Prosecutors said the victims are young and too emotionally traumatized to testify against the men. The charges will dropped against Ronald Pruiett, 31, and 47-year-old Larry Joe Smith on Friday.

Both suspects in the case have previously been convicted of sex crimes. The men were neighbors of the children’s grandmother.

The mother of the children said one of them contracted a sexually transmitted disease from the men.

Officials said charges could be brought against the men in the future when the children are stable enough to testify.

Prosecutors said the case remains open, and the children are undergoing counseling.

With their abusers free these children will never be “stable enough” to testify. These two monsters raped and tortured those children until the victims were so traumatized that they were terrified of the men even with police around. These men no doubt threatened to kill them, no doubt told them they’d never be punished for their vile crimes. Now the system sets them free and we should expect that the children will at some point feel safe enough to testify.

And frankly men this evil will gladly kill those children if given the chance. Their cases are still open, and will be until the statute of limitations runs out. Does anyone really think it’s rational to take the chance that these to fiends will simply wait out the statute fingers crossed hoping the children will never testify?

One of the men has given a victim an STD, is that not evidence? I’ve heard of trials where victims this young were allowed to testify on video tape, why isn’t that good enough for Ohio? I’ve seen criminals prosecuted with less evidence than this, what the hell’s going on in Ohio?

At Dreamin’ Demon a couple of good points about this travesty were raised:

The children’s mother states that she feels the men should have been held in jail until her children could testify, and I wish that was possible. I think there’s got to be a better answer than “if you can’t testify, they walk.” If the little girl has herpes, for example, some labs are able to get DNA on the strain of the virus. That could be compared to the accused men to see who transmitted the disease. Granted, it may not be enough for a conviction, but it’s something. Combined with therapist testimony, it might get the job done.

This is a case where the abuse was horrific, the children have been terrorized, and now Ohio is telling these kids that they will not be safe or protected. This kind of system failure is why vigilante crimes happen. Someone’s gonna take care of these guys before they hurt another child (or go back for the same kids). And that person will do jail time for doing what the state of Ohio should have already done.

One-strike child sexual abuse legislation would have kept these children safe in the first place. Now they have to go to sleep every night afraid that these monsters will come back and hurt or kill them, as they probably threatened to do during the abuse. And you know what? Now Pruiett and Smith are out walking around free, with nothing stopping them from doing just that.

I would think a forensic case would hold up pretty well on top of some testimony from the parents on how terrified the children are of these two. They could have at least tried, and by not doing so they are exposing the children and their families to an inordinate amount of danger. As long as the threat of this case hangs over these two degenerates heads, they have motive to murder these kids and their families.

And the above author is right, this sort of situation breeds vigilantism. The sad part will be that someone acting to protect (or avenge) these children will be locked up whether their are victims to testify or not.

So is this a case of a bad prosecutor or a broken system?