Casandra Kennedy bumped into her grandmother, Wilma Cripe, at the Fred Meyer parking lot in Longview, Wash., a few months back. The two hadn’t seen each other in at least eight years. Not since Kennedy was 11 years old, when she accused her father, Cripe’s son, of rape. Not since Thomas Edward Kennedy went to prison for that crime, with a 15-year-sentence.
Cowlitz County Prosecutor Sue Baur said she cannot charge Cassandra Kennedy with a crime because the statute of limitations has expired; also, she says, “I have no idea what to believe.”
This reunion was bound to be awkward.
“Grandma,” Cripe heard someone say, and her eyes focused on Kennedy, now 22. She barely recognized her granddaughter.
“We talked for a little bit,” Cripe later told the Longview Police. “She said she was ‘up on the mountain (Mountain Ministries, a faith-based addiction-treatment center in Kelso), clean and walking with the Lord.’ I could tell there was something she wanted to talk about.”
Cripe cut the conversation short, mindful of a no-contact order. But the two bumped into each other again not much later, in a different parking lot, at the Dollar Tree. This time, Casandra was more direct. She had prayed, she said, that she would again cross paths with her grandma.
“There is something I have to tell you,” Kennedy told Cripe. “Grandma, do you love me, will you forgive me?”
Cripe knew what was coming, she told police. Then the girl came right out and said it: “I lied and I don’t know what to do about it.”
What she did, after nine years of silence, was go to the Longview Police Department and recant, which set into motion a chain of events that led to her father’s release from prison earlier this month, after nearly 10 years behind bars. It also led to Cowlitz County Prosecuting Attorney Susan Baur fending off a barrage of foul emails and phone calls for not charging Casandra Kennedy with a crime.
“Kids recant, and then they’ll recant the recantation,” Baur said. “It was enough to get him a new trial, but Thomas Kennedy has not been found innocent.”
Baur remembers the case well, as her deputy was the one who handled it at the time. An 11-year-old girl told her school counselor in 2001 that her father was sexually abusing her, according to the brief Baur filed this year with the court. The counselor told Kennedy’s mother, and the police opened a child-abuse investigation, knowing that such charges are among the most difficult to prove.
Thomas Kennedy virulently maintained his innocence. But his daughter’s descriptions of the abuse itself were graphic and detailed, and it seemed unlikely to investigators that an 11-year-old would have been able to describe the abuse in this way without having experienced it. She wrote her diary that “my dad raped me and it really hurt.” She used stuffed animals and drawings to make her point. She came up with a code word―“peace”―for her teacher if the abuse happened again, and she called the teacher and used the word. She testified that she felt like screaming when it happened, but that she didn’t.
“Because you know how people say when this happens, scream?” she said on the witness stand. “Well, it’s not that easy to scream.”
There were some reasons to doubt the story. Tom Kennedy’s relatives testified that Casandra hated the relationship between him and his girlfriend, and that she was affectionate toward her father and seemed excited to see him when he showed up at a basketball game. The girlfriend, Tammy Bain, testified that during one visit, Casandra and her mother were “picking” on Tom. At one point, Casandra said, “We better be nice to him,” Bain testified. “Because he’s going to go away for a long time.” Bain asked what she meant by that, she said. Casandra said she was psychic.
But what was perhaps the most damning evidence in the case came with the report of a specialized nurse, who examined Casandra and found her hymen perforated, “consistent with genital contact with penetration.”
In July 2002, a jury found Thomas Kennedy guilty of three counts of rape, and he went away on a 15-year sentence. He was 32 years old.
Casandra Kennedy went on to have a troubled childhood. She dropped out of Kalama High School at age 16, got addicted to pills, then meth, worked at McDonald’s and Petco and got into trouble with the law, time and time again, according to police reports and affidavits from witnesses who knew her. At some point, she checked herself into Mountain Ministries, stayed for about a year and left. She’s back there now, according to the center’s director in an affidavit, and that’s where she decided it was time to change her story, after all these years.
Back in 2001, her dad wasn’t around a lot, she told police earlier this year. “I wanted him to love me and I didn’t think he did at the time.”
So she made up the rape story, she said. She’d heard about a friend whose stepdad went to prison for child molestation, and lifted some of the details from it, so she could sound like she knew what she was talking about. The perforated hymen? She’d had sex with a family friend back in the second grade, a boy about her age, she said.
“I took my own vengeance,” Casandra told police.
As soon as Baur got the phone call from police, she told The Daily Beast, she knew exactly what to do.
“Oh my god, let’s get this in front of a judge immediately,” she said. That resulted in a new trial, a judge overturning the verdict and Kennedy’s prompt release from jail.
But somehow the initial media reports (that went national) got a few key details wrong. Asked why she didn’t file any charges against Casandra Kennedy for lying to police and in court, Baur’s explanation offered in news reports was that she didn’t want to discourage other victims from coming forward.
In came the hate mail, the angry comments from website trolls. How dare this woman prosecutor lock an innocent man up for 10 years and then refuse to charge his lying accuser with a crime?
“Apparently, I hate men,” Baur said. “But I’m a duck, and like water, this stuff just rolls off my back.”
The news reports had it wrong, though (they’ve since run corrections to reflect this). Baur couldn’t have charged Kennedy with a crime even if she wanted to, because the statute of limitations had long expired. She also didn’t want to, because to this day, she says, “I have no idea what to believe.”
There were doubts about Casandra’s story in the beginning, and child abuse is indeed difficult to prove. But the physical evidence was there, and the girl’s modern-day story―that she had sex in second grade―doesn’t really track, Baur said. The nurse who examined Kennedy didn’t describe a 3-year-old scar. It was a recent trauma.
Still, the recantation required Baur to notify a judge and let the courts decide it credible or not. The legal standard isn’t proving that Casandra Kennedy lied. It’s whether these facts being revealed at trial would have likely changed the verdict, cast enough reasonable doubt to prevent a conviction. Clearly, a recantation would qualify as reasonable doubt.
“Kids recant, and then they’ll recant the recantation,” Baur said. “It was enough to get him a new trial, but Thomas Kennedy has not been found innocent.” His previous verdict was simply overturned.
The day after the verdict, back in 2002, Casandra Kennedy went for a walk on the beach with her mother. She confessed that she’d lied about the whole thing, she told her mom. But the next day, the girl changed her story again, mom said nothing, and dad went to prison for 10 years. Reached recently by a local newspaper, Tom Kennedy declined to comment, saying he just wanted to get on with his life.
When Wilma Cripe told her story to detectives, she said everything happens according to God’s will, that Thomas Kennedy is “a changed person,” and that he “would not be alive today if he stayed on the street.”
The last line of Casandra Kennedy’s written statement to the Longview police: “I’m sorry for all of the confusion I have caused.”
That’s putting it mildly.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/10/casandra-kennedy-recants-rape-charge-against-her-father-freed-after-9-years.html
SANTA ANA, California – After about two-and-a-half hours of deliberation, a jury found Michael Kevin Lallana guilty of 2 counts battery and 2 counts committing a crime for sexual gratification.
Lallana sat emotionless, as the alleged victim, "Tiffany," sat in a corner of the courtroom, out of view. A bailiff handed her a box of tissue.
Lallana briskly walked out of the building as his attorney Ed Madrid told media that they planned on appealing the battery verdict.
Tiffany declined to comment, but did admit the verdict was a victory. She would not confirm if she was still working with her civil attorney, Gloria Allred.
Defense lawyers for Lallana said the defendant’s race--and not sex--may have been a possible motive for his bizarre actions.
A psychologist serving as an expert witness for the defense said that as a Filipino man, Lallana claimed that he was often disturbed by the thought that Asian women would choose Caucasian men over Filipinos. Lallana also claimed that his own mother preferred--she herself married--a Caucasian.
“If he’s doing this as retaliation for some great wrong done to him, for the reason of his race, why is she the only victim?” asked Zimmon during his rebuttal this morning, argued Brock Zimmon of the Orange County District Attorney’s office.
Lallana has confessed to masturbating in his office, including twice into his co-worker Tiffany’s water bottle.
He claims he did not intend for Tiffany to drink his semen. The two had no personal or working relationship.
Prosecutors closed their argument Thursday afternoon by saying his recorded confession, and the alleged sequence of events, show there was sexual motivation when he ejaculated into Tiffany’s water bottle.
“He knows she drinks from that bottle there was zero reason to put it back on her desk. It could’ve been thrown out. It could’ve been dumped. It could’ve been left somewhere else in the office. It could’ve been put back in the exact same place as she left it so nothing supposedly looked out of place. In reality, he was setting up a trap for her,” explained Zimmon.
In his final argument this morning, Lallana’s defense lawyer raised doubts as to whether the alleged victim even really drank the tainted water.
“Was her conduct consistent with someone that’s drank a foreign substance especially if they believe it’s semen? She then does take a civil attorney, then files a claim against her employer, not Mr. Lallana,” said Madrid.
Lallana’s sentencing is scheduled for April 22. Under these charges, he could spend up to one year in prison, and may have to register as a sex offender. At this time, Lallana remains out on bail.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/global-filipino/02/25/11/pinoy-ejaculator-found-guilty-sexual-crime
RELAXING: Abdelkarim Serhani, inset, and at a resort in Indonesia after fleeing AustraliaA FRENCHMAN who posed as a member of a Saudi Arabian royal family and left Australia as a fugitive has written a tell-all book on how he scammed $42,000 from Hamilton Island.
Self-confessed impostor Abdelkarim Serhani, 28, writes in his yet-to-be released L'imposteur how he staked out the Whitsundays for two days before talking his way into free accommodation, meals, drinks - including $20,000 worth of champagne - and helicopter flights at Hamilton Island in May, 2009.
He says the risk of becoming a false Arab prince was "huge, even reckless" but admits he has no regrets and hopes his story does not encourage "copycats".
Mr Serhani spent 16 days on Hamilton Island living a life of luxury filled with booze, women and resort activities after he found a flyer advertising the Whitsundays' white sandy beaches, coconut trees and coral reef while he was at Hyde Park in Sydney, holed up in a backpacker hostel.
"Without hesitation I spend the rest of my savings to buy the plane ticket that will take me right to an extraordinary adventure," he writes in a French to English translation. "I took a water taxi from the port to which Airlie Beach leads on Hamilton Island, a paradise on Earth, the perfect island, which has a payment system that allows you to eat in restaurants, do all the activities of the island by paying at the end of your stay, and on top of that the hotel do not ask for ID, the dream.
"Good deception is 80 per cent preparation and 20 per cent performance."
His explanations seem to be something plucked out of a James Bond movie in which it took him two days to "study all the solutions" in case he was exposed, such as water taxi times to the locations of the heliport and police station as well as "places to hide".
When Mr Serhani's exploits were discovered by staff, police charged him with fraud and his passport was confiscated by local police but he skipped Proserpine court after claiming he had "broken legs" which he admits "bought him time" to make his way to Darwin and escape by yacht to Bali.
The Frenchman is notorious in his country for his infamous antics since 2007 and allegedly continued that lifestyle when he arrived in North Queensland.
He taunted Queensland police with his "catch me if you can" phrase and sent photos from various locations showing himself drinking champagne, partying, in sports cars, helicopters, on jet-skis and boats, relaxing at hotels and resorts and teaching students in a classroom.
In an interview via Skype with the Townsville Bulletin, he said he made up the fake Arab prince disguise because he was "tired of discrimination".
"In France and in Belgium, to get in to a party if you are Arabic and don't have money, you are not welcomed. So I played with that," he said.
The French version of the book will be released in Europe in December and the English translation may be up for grabs by February.
KABUL, Afghanistan — When the Afghan government announced Thursday that it would pardon a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after she reported that she had been raped, the decision seemed a clear victory for the many women here whose lives have been ground down by the Afghan justice system.
But when the announcement also made it clear that there was an expectation that the woman, Gulnaz, would agree to marry the man who raped her, the moment instead revealed the ways in which even efforts guided by the best intentions to redress violence against women here run up against the limits of change in a society where cultural practices are so powerful that few can resist them, not even the president.
The solution holds grave risks for Gulnaz, who uses one name, since the man could be so humiliated that he might kill his accuser, despite the risk of prosecution, or abuse her again.
The decision from the government of President Hamid Karzai is all the more poignant coming as Western forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, underscoring the unfinished business of advancing women’s rights here, and raising questions of what will happen in the future to other women like Gulnaz.
Indeed, what prompted the government to act at all was a grass-roots movement that began after Gulnaz was featured in a recent documentary film commissioned by the European Union, which then blocked the film’s release.
Supporters of the filmmakers charged that European officials were shying away from exposing the sort of abuses Afghan women routinely suffer for fear of offending their host government.
While Gulnaz’s pardon is a victory for both Clementine Malpas, a filmmaker who spent nearly six months on the documentary, and for Kimberley Motley, an American lawyer here who took Gulnaz’s case on a pro bono basis, it also shows that for women in the justice system, the odds are stacked against them.
The banned film, “In-Justice: The Story of Afghan Women in Jail,” which was seen by The New York Times, profiles three Afghan women who were in prison. One was Gulnaz, then about 19, who gave birth to the child of her rapist in prison, after initially being sentenced to three years. In a second trial, her sentence was increased to 12 years, but a judge on camera offered her a way out: marry her rapist.
A second woman in the film was abused by her husband and ran away with a man she fell in love with; both are now in prison for adultery. The third woman was a child of 14, who appeared to have been kidnapped but was held as a runaway and has since been returned to her family.
After the film was completed, the European Union banned its release, effectively silencing the women who were willing to tell their stories. The reason given for the ban was that the publicity could harm the women, because an Afghan woman who has had sex out of wedlock can easily become the victim of a so-called honor killing. The women had not given their written consent to be in the film, said Vygaudas Usackas, the European Union’s ambassador to Afghanistan.
But an e-mail obtained by The Times from someone supportive of the filmmakers suggested that the European Union also had political reasons for the ban.
The e-mail addressed to the filmmakers by the European Union attaché for justice, the rule of law and human rights, Zoe Leffler, said the European Union “also has to consider its relations with the justice institutions in connection with the other work that it is doing in the sector.”
Even if the women in the film “were to give their full consent,” the European Union would not be “ willing to take responsibility for the events that could ensue and that could threaten the lives of the documentary’s subjects,” the e-mail said.
Mr. Usackas said that concern for the women was central in the European Union’s decision. “Not only does the E.U. care about women, but we have spent over 45 million euros,” about $60 million, “in support of different programs for women,” he said, adding that the European Union also finances shelters for women.
But relax, not all football fans are that scary-looking. Some of the world's most popular - and of course, hottest - celebrities are avid fans of the beautiful game too.
With Paraguay's most famous fan Larissa Riquelme in mind, I list down 15 of the hottest and most popular football fans in the world. They sure put beautiful in the 'beautiful game'.
CAROLINE WOZNIACKI
CAT DEELEY
SHANIA TWAIN
NADINE COYLE
KATE WINSLET
LAURA ESPOSTO
CHERYL COLE
CAMERON DIAZ
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY
ADRIANA LIMA
LARISSA RIQUELME
SHAKIRA
CATHERINE ZETA-JONES
EVA LONGORIA
