Sexual assault survivors have spoken out after an Upstate New York man wasn’t sentenced to prison for raping a 14-year-old girl.
Shane Piche, a former school bus driver, was sentenced to 10 years of probation by Jefferson County Supreme Court Judge James McClusky in late April, according to reports. He will also have to register as a Level 1 sex offender, which is the lowest designation, according to local reports.
The 26-year-old pleaded guilty earlier in 2019 after he was accused of assaulting the girl at his Watertown home.
A number of groups, however, have spoken out about his sentencing.
Several petitions have also have been circulated online, with more than 100,000 people signing them.
State court spokesperson Lucian Chalfen, however, stated that McClusky has received thousands of calls, threats, and emails from people “who have no understanding and know nothing about the facts and circumstances of the case, thanks to social media.”
“Arbitrarily removing judges for handing down sentences that some may disagree with cuts both ways, leaving us with no process of accountability,” Chalfen told the Daily News, adding that his sentence was “an issue of judicial discretion, not an administrative one.”
“He took something from my daughter she will never get back and has caused her to struggle with depression and anxiety,” the news outlet quoted her as saying as part of a victim impact statement.
“He’ll be a felon for the rest of his life. He’s on the sex offender registry for a long time. Maybe not the rest of his life because of the level but this isn’t something that didn’t cause him pain and this isn’t something that didn’t have consequences,” stated Eric Swartz, who served as Piche’s defense attorney, according to the report.
Chelsea Miller of the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault told the Daily News that the judge or other officials may not have understood what that 14-year-old girl experienced.
“Unfortunately, this can discourage survivors who see jail or prison time as a form of accountability,” Miller said.
Facts About Crime in the United States
Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).Both studies are based on data up to and including 2017, the most recent year for which complete figures are available.