Justice?

Over the weekend we learned that our neighbor had recently been released from spending the past 10 months in jail. What an uncomforting feeling seeing him outside his house. I truley have been dreading this day for the past 10 months, but unfortunately we knew it was coming.

Let me rewind a bit and tell you the story. When our neighbor was fired from his job at the post office last summer we started to suspect something wasn't right. He told everyone it was for sexual harrasement, but it wasn't long before we found out the real story. Over the Holiday Season last year he dissappeared and his wife proceeded to tell all of us neighbors he had taken a job driving long haul truck. That didn't seem odd because he had done delivery driving in the past, but she also told us he wasn't able to call his kids at all, excpet on Sunday. We all thought that seemed a bit odd. I mean since when did truck drivers get cell phone restrictions? So we did some research.

First we decided to try the Utah Sex Offender Registry. To our dismay we found his record on-line. His offense "Sexual Abuse of a Child", his registered address, the Utah County Jail. Joy. Unfortunatley I wasn't satisfied with just this amount of information because my children have been to his house, my children play with his children...and I wanted to know more. I had Nick go to the court and pull all of the public proceedings. We found out that he had sexually abused his neice over a 2 year period multiple times.

Now, what is unbelievable to me is that his wife denys he did anything wrong, and she has decided to stay with him. That is not the worse part. Her children have no idea that their dad spent the last 10 months in jail, nor do they know what he did to this little girl. I'm sorry, but the first thing I would have done when I found out was sit all of my kids down and find out what they knew or if anything had happened to them. Then I would explain what was going on so they don't learn about it through other resources and wonder why they had never been told by their own mother. Then I would divorce the guy and move on with my life.

It gets even better, during the trial the family decided that they would go easy on him because he is the sole provider for his family and so they requested that the judge put him in jail for 1 year. Yes, that's right, 1 YEAR...that's it. So, here we are 10 months later and he is a free man. I don't understand. Someone can write a few bad checks and spend their life in federal prison, but another can hurt an innocent child over and over and get out in 10 months so he can spend the Holidays with his family? Where is the justice in that? It truley makes me sick.