A New Jersey judge claimed that a teen boy who allegedly admitted in a text message to raping a 16-year-old girl deserved leniency because he is from a good family.
The news station obtained court documents showing that the boy, identified only as G.M.C, allegedly led the visibly intoxicated girl, “Mary,” to a basement couch at a residence where a “pajama-themed party” was underway.
“While on the sofa, a group of boys sprayed Febreze on Mary’s bottom and slapped it with such force that the following day she had hand marks on her buttocks,” the court documents state, according to the report.
The suspect then allegedly took the girl to another part of the basement where prosecutors say he penetrating her from behind and took a video of the assault. He then allegedly sent the video to seven friends, with the message: “[w]hen your first time having sex was rape.”
One of the friends who received the video reportedly said that the girl’s head was hanging forward and that it repeatedly hit against the wall.
Other partygoers later found the 16-year-old girl on the floor, vomiting. According to court documents, the alleged victim told her mother the next day she worried “sexual things had happened at the party.”
“She did not understand how she could have gotten bruise marks on her body or how her clothing had torn,” the documents state.
In his denial of the request to try the suspect as an adult, a decision issued on July 30, 2018, Judge James Troiano reportedly cited the teen boy’s family background and future prospects.
The “young man comes from a good family who put him into an excellent school where he was doing extremely well. He is clearly a candidate for not just college but probably for a good college. His scores for college entry were very high,” the judge reportedly said, additionally criticizing prosecutors for declining to explain to the accuser the “devastating” effect the case would have on the teen boy’s life.
The judge also questioned whether reportedly questioned whether the alleged assault qualified as rape:
“In my mind where there were generally two or more generally males involved, either at gunpoint or weapon, clearly manhandling a person into … an area where … there was nobody around, sometime in an abandon[ed] house, sometimes in an abandon[ed] shed, shack, and just simply taking advantage of the person as well as beating the person, threatening the person.”
A state appeals court has since overturned Judge Troiano’s decision, reportedly writing in the decision, “the delinquent act in question, if committed by an adult in this case, would have been aggravated sexual assault and sexual assault,.”
“Rather than focusing on whether the prosecutor’s consideration of the statutory factors supported the application, the judge decided the case for himself.”
Multiple reports indicate that the appeals court documents do not reveal the current status of the case, and it is not known at this time what charges the suspect is expected to face.
