Posted on 8/9/2005, 11:18:35 PM by Former Military Chick
A judge has sentenced a former Eudora man to nearly 18 years in prison for sexual assaults involving three young children.
Mark A. VanAnne, 41, was originally charged with 14 counts of sexual abuse, ranging from rape to indecent solicitation of a child. But VanAnne reached an agreement with prosecutors last month. As part of the deal, he pleaded no contest to rape and aggravated indecent liberties of a child. In exchange, the district attorney’s office dropped the remaining charges.
Douglas County District Judge Jack Murphy on Monday sentenced VanAnne to 155 months for the rape conviction and 59 months for the indecent liberties conviction.
Murphy ordered the sentences to run consecutively. VanAnne also must register as a sex offender upon release from prison.
Yes, it is a strong sentence but seems he would have gone to prison no matter what, so lets not deal with these guys.
They should have given him life. Or death, which would have been better.
18 years is virtually a life sentence.
He's 41 and he's going to prison as a child molestor, pretty low on the penitentiary food chain.
I'd say its better than even odds that he'll die in custody.
eighteen years and one day from now he will be rearrested for sexual abuse
JMHO
A trial always has risk.
A certain 18 years is often a better risk than an 80% chance of life --- and a 20% chance of him walking.
That's a formula for turing rapists into murderers since the penalty is the same.
If you've been following the news lately this trend is already starting to occur. Rapists and child molesters have realized that no live victim = no witnesses.
I firmly believe that the only way to put an end to child molestation is to put an end to child molesters.
Let's see, with good time he'll be out on the streets in what, 6 years?
If it were up to me, a conviction of rape/murder would be a recipe for a slow, painful agonizing death, none of this needle go to sleep stuff.
We need a deep pit to start with...
18 years isn't terrible. As long as the parole board doesn't go soft, he'll be almost 60 when he hits the streets again.
Virginia passed a law last year that enables the state to often times civilly commit a sex offender to a high security mental institution at the end of their prison sentence.
There should be no plea deals for child rapist.
BTW they didn't say when he was eligible for parole. One third serve is the average time.
As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, the DA might have wanted to spare the children from testifying in trial. Or maybe the sentance if he was convicted of all the crimes might not have been much more than 18 years. And of course he might have been worried that the Michael Jackson jury might have been seated.
Children can and do testify on tape to lessen the trauma. IF the victims families agreed to the pleas then I can see them taking place. So often they aren't even asked.
This is in Kansas (I think), where maximum good-time credit is 15% of the sentence. So this guy will do at least 15 years (85% of 214 months).
15 yrs
Then he will be right back preying on children. They can't be 'fixed' no matter what the shrinks or libs think.
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