Although the district attorney was legally obliged to prosecute the father of a sex-abuse victim on a battery charge – after he was accused of assaulting his daughter’s suspected perpetrator outside the courthouse – prosecutors should use a practical approach and apply what amounts to a slap on the wrist.
District Attorney Candice Hooper’s office charged the abuse victim’s father with misdemeanor battery after a February altercation outside the courthouse involving the suspected molester, 52-year-old Arnaldo M. Hernandez.
The victim’s father, his wife and their daughter – age 5 at the time of the reported molestation incident in February 2012 – were arriving to a court hearing in the case. They were told there would be no hearing but, rather, a mental examination, as agreed upon in a plea deal in which Hernandez admitted to the lewd and lascivious acts charge, which would help determine a sentence ranging from probation to eight years in prison.
Hernandez didn’t show for the hearing last month and is now a fugitive – there are other problems in the case allowing him to be free without bail considerations in the first place – but the victim’s father still faces a serious charge that could result in jail time.
It is understandable that deputies had to arrest the father and that the D.A. had to prosecute him – if, of course, the battery allegation is true – because there is no place in the justice system for vigilante retribution, even if the allegations toward a particular suspect are as egregious as sex abuse against a child.
Everyone is, after all, innocent until proven guilty, while it is up to the system to determine harshness of consequences.
In the case of the assault, though, the district attorney’s office should lean toward using relatively broad discretion. The courthouse assault was a special circumstance largely caused by inadequate security protocol on the part of law enforcement authorities – so the very agencies that enforced the law were partially responsible for the mishap to begin with.
By charging the father, prosecutors have sent the appropriate message that local authorities will not accept such assaults to happen without consequences.
But for all intensive purposes, it should end there. This abuse victim’s family has suffered enough. The district attorney’s office should settle the battery issue with a light penalty – no worse than probation or a work alternative – and turn its attention toward resolving the much more pressing sex abuse case.
