Boston Criminal Attorney Blog

As readers of this blog are well aware from my previous posts on the subject of the school bullying death by suicide of Phoebe Prince in January (as well as the suicide death of Carl Joseph Walker Hoover last April 2009, I feel that there should be much stronger anti-bullying laws on the books in Massachusetts – stronger than the one recently passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives. That proposed law would require school staff members to report suspected incidents and require principals to investigate those incidents. It would also require that schools teach about the dangers of bullying – but it would not make bullying a crime.

There should be a law making bullying in schools a criminal offense- and one can only hope that on the civil side of the law, that courts in this sate and elsewhere will soon issue clear and unequivocal decisions holding school districts, teachers, and school administrators liable for failing to take reasonable measures to stop such vicious assault and battery. Teachers unions and school districts howl in protest at this idea. They and similarly-minded people say that it’s too difficult to adequately “define” bullying on a legal level – that proposed definitions of bullying are “too vague”, and a “threat to free speech.” If the tragic cases of Phoebe Prince and Carl Jospeh Walker Hoover can’t convince these Neanderthals, they should read the case of Nicholas Parsons of Tewksbury.

Finally, today, a Massachusetts District Attorney stood up and took the courageous step that a lot of people watching the cases of Phoebe Price and Carl Joseph Walker Hoover were waiting for: Yesterday, March 29 2010, Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth D. Scheibel announced that nine separate felony indictments have been issued against nine teenagers attending South Hadley High School, all involved in the brutal bullying campaign waged against Phoebe Prince. The felony indictments range from stalking to statutory rape. The most serious of these charges carry lengthy state prison sentences, though I doubt any of these defendants will serve time in state prison. Even though as a Boston criminal defense lawyer I practice on the other side of the legal aisle than District Attorney Scheibel, I applaud her for this unequivocal action.

Charged in connection with the death of Phoebe Prince are the following South Hadley High School students:

• Football player Sean Mulveyhill, 17, of South Hadley: charged with statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury, harassment and disturbance of a school assembly.
• Austin Renaud, 18, of Springfield was charged with statutory rape.
• Kayla Narey, 17, of South Hadley was charged with violation of civil rights with bodily injury, criminal harassment, and disturbance of a school assembly.
• Ashley Longe, 16, of South Hadley was charged with violation of civil rights with bodily injury as a youthful offender. (A “Youthful Offender” is a legal term used to describe a criminal defendant who is younger than 17, but older than 14.)
• Flannery Mullins, 16, of South Hadley was charged with violation of civil rights with bodily injury, and stalking as a youthful offender.
• Sharon Chanon Velazquez, 16, of South Hadley was charged with violation of civil rights with bodily injury, and stalking as a youthful offender.
• Additionally, three female juveniles, (aged 14 or younger,) who were not named but are all from South Hadley, are also being charged.

Other teenagers could still also be charged, according to Scheibel.

The “stalking” charges refer to these students following and harassing young Phoebe, throughout the school building as well as off school property. The “Disturbance of a school assembly” charges relate to attacks these students made upon the Prince girl, in public areas of the school such as the library where one attack occurred. The civil rights charges refer to Massachusetts as well as federal civil rights offenses these students committed against Prince. The statutory rape charges refer to allegations that the two male students engaged in sex with Prince, whether with her consent or not.

The evidence that the District Attorney’s office uncovered in this case is truly sickening. These twisted students – particularly (whether certain "feminists" groups like it or not,) the seven female students charged here – acted like a pack of wolves, out to kill their prey. And psychologically, they slowly tore her to shreds. When they weren’t physically threatening her and inflicting assault and battery upon her at and near school, they used social networking sites to take her apart, calling her, among several other lies, and "Irish slut." What did 15 year-old Phoebe Prince do to deserve this brutality? She went on a couple of dates with a senior. These girls, ugly to their core, didn't like that.

On the final day of all this physical and mental torture, after this pack of wild, twisted animals had attacked Phoebe in the school library right in front of a teacher (who did nothing,) in the lunchroom and the hallways, and threw a canned drink at her as she walked home, she reached her limit of endurance. Her sister found her hanging from a stairwell at home, still in her school clothes, at 4:30 p.m. I truly hope these nine twisted kids serve time. I really do. I know that may sound unusual coming from a Norfolk County criminal defense attorney, but I really do hope this results. The reason? Because if these charges are proven to be true - after a fair trial - then those found guilty deserve to be punished –and severely.

There is a gravestone with this girl’s name on it. There is a family, brought to this country by hope and optimism, that is now and will be forever more devastated by this tragedy. Those found guilty should serve time. Because I’m a defense lawyer, doesn’t preclude my desire for justice.

And while the primary actors here were these students, what’s going to happen to all the adults that were part of this tragedy – the school administrators who Phoebe Prince’s mother pleaded with to intervene and protect her daughter; the teachers who knew what was going on, but failed to act aggressively in stopping this carnage? It seems nothing. District Attorney Scheibel’s investigation found this evidence of inaction by school administrators particularly disturbing. Her official statement of yesterday reads as follows: “Contrary to previously published reports, Phoebe’s harassment was common knowledge to most of the South Hadley High School student body. The investigation has revealed that certain faculty, staff and administrators of the high school also were alerted to the harassment of Phoebe Prince before her death. Prior to Phoebe’s death, her mother spoke with at least two school staff members about the harassment Phoebe had reported to her." Yet, despite the District Attorney’s conclusion that South Hadley High School staffers appear to have left 15-year-old Prince to fend for herself in a teenage jungle surrounded by a pack of bloodthirsty predators, it appears they broke no laws. Notwithstanding this legal technicality, the district attorney commented that “The actions or inactions of some adults at the school are troublesome.” She said Prince’s mother spoke to “at least two school staff members” about the bullying and the harassment was “common knowledge” around the school. Yet nothing was done.

So it seems these “adults” who did little to nothing to prevent this brutal bullying will walk away scot-free, and many parents in South Hadley are justifiably disgusted. They ought to be. But perhaps they shouldn’t be surprised: These “teachers” are probably of the same type that produce students unable to spell common, everyday words or do simple math. They have little regard for what goes on in their classrooms, and look the other way when it comes to poor teaching, or just about anything else. You know the type. A lot of responsible, respected journalists in the media are equally disgusted. Margery Eagen of the Boston Herald yesterday summed up: "Now we know: The adults knew, and did nothing."

I hope these “adults” never know another night’s restful sleep. And I hope those charged who are either found guilty after a fair trial, or who plead to guilty through a plea deal, are punished to the full extent of the law (hopefully, with jail time.) That’s what’s called “justice” under the law. Phoebe Prince and her grieving family deserve no less.

Forcible rape or sexual asaault, when it actually occurs, is a crime that is despicable. I wanted that to be my opening sentence in this post, for a good reason. When rape actually occurs, it should be investigated and prosecuted thoroughly. But in almost all rape and sexual assault cases, the central problem is that no one else was around during the alleged rape, other than the alleged assailant and the alleged victim, to offer any corroborative testimony as to the allegations made, or to the consensual or non-consensual nature of the event.

Increasingly, the problem of false rape accusations is coming more and more to the media’s, and the public’s, attention. Recent high-profile cases such as the Duke University Lacrosse case, in which three white players on the Duke University Lacrosse team were accused by a black erotic dancer of raping her, only to be later vindicated, and the Hofstra University rape case where a student accused four male students of rape, only to later recant her story, are becoming more common. The problem in all these cases is, “Who is telling the truth?” Substantively, a legal defense to a rape case consists of one of two approaches: 1) That sex between the accuser and the accused never occurred; or 2) That sex did take place between the accuser and the accused, but it was consensual. It may come as a surprise to a good number of people, but false accusations of rape can take either form of these two scenarios.

Let’s examine two questions: 1) Why would anyone falsely accuse another person of rape?; and 2) How common is the incidence of false rape accusations? The most common answer to the first question, usually reveals some element of revenge, for something done to the accuser that she (or he, believe it or not,) is angry or enraged over. A study conducted on this subject in the Journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, (Vol. 23, No. 1, 1994,) reported that false accusers were commonly motivated by a need for an alibi or a desire for revenge. In the Journal Forensic Science Digest, (Vol. 11. No. 4, December 1985,) equally common reasons given by women who falsely accused somone of rape were "spite or revenge," and to compensate for feelings of guilt or shame (for having willingly engaged in the prior sex.) Alleged rape victims have admitted in the past that they had made the false rape charges for three reasons: 1) To create an alibi about some other event; 2) To exact revenge; and 3) To generate attention or sympathy. The need for attention is not uncommon, as was revealed in the case of the Detroit woman who gave police details about her alleged rapist and his truck, then admitted she had lied: it never happened. (Source: Detroit Free Press, April 21, 2004.) More recent has been the case of Dallas Cowboys football player Michael Irvin, who was falsey accused of sexually assaulting a woman in July of 2007. That woman later recanted her story, and the District Attorney involved dropped all charges against him.

Also, lest anyone think that only unintelligent or uneducated women might falsely accuse someone of rape, it should be known that educated women lie, too, and several reports compiled from college and university police departments corroborate this fact. A study conducted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Purdue University, made clear that university women were just as likely to file a false rape charge as a valid charge.

A new statistic has emerged on the topic of false rape accusations, increasingly known as the “1 In 4 Figure.” No, it doesn’t mean that one in four rapes are never reported to police; it refers to increasingly solid statistical evidence that indicates that 1 in every 4 reported rapes, never actually occurred; that “1 in 4 accusations of rape are false.” Lending credence to the growing acceptance of this figure, is nothing less than a study published in 1996 by the U.S. Department of Justice, entitled “Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science: Case Studies in the Use of DNA Evidence to Establish .” This study documented 28 cases of rape which, "with the exception of one young man of limited mental capacity who pleaded guilty," consisted of defendants who were convicted of rape by juries, only to be later exonerated by DNA tests. Each of those defendants - innocent men – had served an average of 7 years in prison by the time they were released.

There is a section of that report that quoted two prominent criminal defense attorneys, Peter Neufeld and Barry C. Scheck, co-founders of The Innocence Project, a legal organization whose goal is to seek the release of defendants who have been falsely imprisoned. Neufield and Scheck reported that "Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained, the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing. Specifically, FBI officials report that out of roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases since 1989, about 2,000 tests have been inconclusive, about 2,000 tests have excluded the primary suspect, and about 6,000 have "matched" or included the primary suspect." This FBI data on false rape accusations is striking indeed.

As I said in the opening of this post, the increasing recognition of the “1 In 4” incidence of false rape accusations does not in any way minimize the tragedy of forced rape and sexual assault, when it actually does occur. But what this statistic's growing recognition does do and should do, is remind everyone of the importance of the presumption of innocence, and of the value of DNA-based evidentiary testing in these cases.

At our practice, we know from firsthand experience that not all rape cases are clean-cut, easy-to-answer stories. We know how to effectively investigate and defend accusations of rape. If you or someone you know has been accused of sexual asaault or rape, call us for a free consultation.