Fathers’ fates on rape charge vary
Case in Montana brought 60 days; in Calif., 1,503 years.
This month a Montana man who repeatedly raped his 12-year-old daughter was sentenced to 60 days in jail.
On Friday, a California man who repeatedly raped his daughter when she was a teenager was sentenced to 1,503 years in prison.
Comparisons of the t wo cases were quickly drawn. Brock Turner’s six-month sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman outside a Stanford University frat house was also thrown into the mix.
Just as Judge Aaron Persky, of Santa Clara County, Calif., found himself besieged by critics over Turner’s light sentence, so did Judge John McKeon, of Valley County, Mont., after he handed down a two-month jail sentence to the 40-year-old man who pleaded guilty to incest.
“The victim only had the justice system on her side, and it failed her,” reads an online petition calling for McKeon’s impeachment.
Compare that to the reaction to the gargantuan sente nc e i mposed by Ju d ge E dward S a r k i s i a n J r. , o f Fresno Count y, Calif., on the 41-year- old man who raped his daughter for years.
Several factors could explain t h e s e n t e n c i n g d i s p a r i t y between the two rape cases.
For one, the father from Glasgow in eastern Montana pleaded guilty to only one count of incest to receive a lighter sentence. Two other counts were dismissed as part of the plea deal.
Rene Lopez, of Fresno, was found guilty by a jury of 186 felony charges, including 22 counts of rape of a minor and 163 counts of rape. The trial lasted 11 days, court records show.
Lopez could have received a much lighter sentence.
Prosecutors offered him a plea deal twice, the Fresno B e e r e p o r t e d . T h e f i r s t offer could have secured him a prison sentence of 13 years, at most; the second, 22 years. But Lopez rejected both offers and chose to go to trial instead.
According to the Fresno Bee, Lopez raped his then-teenage daughter from May 2009 to May 2013. She was raped two to three times a week, on Christmas and other holidays.
The horrific crimes ended when the girl, who is now 23, moved out. Lopez was arrested in November 2013, after she reported the abuse to police, the Bee reported.
During the trial, jurors were read entries from a diary in which the victim chronicled the crimes against her.
The Post also is not naming the convicted man from Montana, as it could expose the identit y of his victim, who is still a minor.
Testimony given at the sentencing hearings for the two men likely played a significant role in how they were punished.
In a statement explaining his decision, McKeon, the Montana judge, said the victim’s mother and grandmother wrote letters asking for the defendant to not be sent to prison, the Associated Press reported. While his actions were horrible, the man has two sons who love and need him, the women wrote.