© Indianapolis Metropolitan Police DepartmentJeremy Schwer pleaded guilty to felony child molesting.
The response was immediate, emotional and filled with disgust.
A Marion County judge's
decision not to send a convicted child molester to prison drew public ire last week on social media.
Jeremy Schwer was not just another defendant; he is the father of the victim, a then-6-year-old girl diagnosed with cancer. And he is not just her father; he was her caregiver when the crime was committed, when she was sick from chemotherapy."I am sickened how this young girl has been failed twice by our judicial system," one IndyStar reader said. The girl was failed not only by her father, she said, but also by the court. Another said Schwer's sentence, which includes 12 years of probation, sends the wrong message to child predators.
But
the judge's decision was not all that uncommon, legal experts say, and it demonstrates the difficulties in sentencing someone when punishing the offender also could punish the victim.Friends and family members argued in letters to the judge that imprisonment of the 41-year-old Indianapolis man could have detrimental economic consequences, not only on the defendant, but more importantly, on his family.
"It's certainly a heinous offense, there's no question about that," said David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. "There are three elements that are involved in punishment.
There is the protection of the community. There is the deterrence of other possible offenders. And there is the justice for the victim. The question is, 'Does justice for the victim outweigh the other needs?'"In Schwer's case, the financial consequences to his family outweighed everything else. His now-estranged wife asked the court not to send him to prison so that he could work to support their two young children — an obligation that Schwer's attorney said he will fulfill.
Comment: If the state doesn't have enough drugs to administer death by lethal injection, maybe they should just let the prisoner live instead of finding another, more cruel way to kill people.