Reform needed, but not at expense of crime victims

As progressive ideology gains ground, victims of violent crime are increasingly thrown under the bus in the name of compassion.

Compassion for the criminal, that is.

The latest shove came from Judge William Young, the Boston federal judge who freed Nicholas Rovinksi, an ISIS-supporter held at FCI-Danbury in Connecticut.

He was sentenced to 15 years on terrorism charges, which included plotting to kill conservative blogger Pamela Geller for her anti-ISIS views. Rovinski served five years before being sprung by

Young.

The grounds — coronavirus, of course. Rovinski’s lawyers argued that the 29-year-old’s cerebral palsy and hypertension made him vulnerable to COVID19. The fact that virus is sweeping the non-incarcerated population would seem to make him no less vulnerable on the outside, but that argument would fall on deaf ears. He is remanded to home confinement.

And so a woman who was threatened with beheading can try to sleep at night knowing that the man who wanted to kill her is free.

“The ‘compassion’ in Rovinski’s ‘compassionate release’ is all for the perpetrator, not for his intended victim or others he might have killed in his jihad as well,” Geller wrote on Facebook.

We’re sure there are many who understand all too well the injustice of which Geller speaks — for example, the woman who was allegedly raped recently by Shawn McClinton.

McClinton had been held on bail for the alleged rape of a woman in a McDonald’s bathroom. His bail was set at $15,000, which the Mass Bail Fund helped him pay, according to authorities. He was released, and as Boston Police claim, then raped and strangled a woman in a Boston apartment.

McClinton was a Level 3 Sex Offender, a designation that didn’t deter the Mass Bail Fund.

“We post bail for people regardless of charge or court history,” the bail fund wrote in a statement.

The question “should a Level 3 Sex Offender accused of yet another rape be back on the street?” doesn’t need to be asked. The group notes in their statement, “We do this work because pretrial detention is harmful and racist.”

Rape, murder, threats of violence — these are all harmful, if not devastating. The victims of these crimes can certainly attest to that. And while victim advocacy groups can help those who have been harmed find necessary resources and navigate the justice process, they can’t do anything about those who deliberately run interference on behalf of the perpetrators.

Crime victims can live with physical and emotional scars from assaults for years — as can their families. That their suffering, and the responsibility to keep them and the rest of society safe from those who would inflict such pain is deemed by some of little to no importance is shameful.

Yes, there is need for prison reform in this country, for punishments to fit the crime. There is an October parole hearing set for a Black man sentenced to life after stealing hedge clippers in a 1997 burglary. The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the sentence despite its chief justice’s insistence that the punishment was excessive and rooted in racist law. Such egregious wrongs must be righted.

But there is a chasm of difference between onerous, horrific sentences doled out for minor theft and letting alleged rapists and convicted terrorists back on the street in the name of “compassion.”

We can only hope that the actions of those with power and fundraising ability who show little regard for victims doesn’t result in future attacks on the innocent — or worse.