Posted on 12/11/2007 7:30:41 PM PST by Coleus
Terry Lee Vangorp, 58, a grandfather and former minister from Carmel, was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in the Indiana Department of Correction for molesting a 3-year-old girl. Vangorp made a last-minute plea agreement Nov. 14 while a pool of potential jurors waited for what was to have been the first day of his trial. In exchange for his pleading guilty to a Class B felony, two other charges in connection with the Feb. 8, 2006, incident were dismissed.
Hamilton Superior Court 1 Judge Steven Nation also gave Vangorp five years on probation and ordered him to pay $2,900 to the victim’s family for counseling expenses. The victim’s mother read a letter to the judge from her daughter, saying “(He) touched me in bad spots. My mom told me to hug him and they didn’t know what he did. … I want (him) to go to jail and prison for a very long time.”
The mother spoke to Vangorp and said pleading guilty to only one count was a “cowardly way to get out of it.” “You will not begin to pay for it with your prison time,” she told him. The victim’s father also made a statement, telling Vangorp, “My prayer is that you will finally tell the truth for everything that has happened. I think you should be completely ashamed.”
Vangorp, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, stood, turned around and faced the courtroom’s gallery when Nation gave him an opportunity to speak. He made a brief apology to the victim and her family for his actions. Nation said he was concerned that Vangorp did not think his viewing one to two hours of child pornography per week since 1998 was harmful.
“Sir you have violated the trust, not only of the child but of the family,” Nation told him. “There is a concern that you do not view young children as victims … but for your pleasure.”
Well I think that POS judge should spend half of that time in jail with him. Pervert should spend the rest of his life in jail.
You have a pretty sick church there.
You do understand, don’t you, that plea agreements are made between the defendant and the DA, not between the defendant and the judge?
He ought to rot in jail & be tossed into general prison population. I hate the fact most sex offenders are in protected custody.
If only ministers could marry...
I believe the OJ trial really set a bad precedent for the US justice system, as even the most ill-informed defendants seem to be eager to "see what serendipitous opportunities" may arise out of the jury selection process. Perhaps it's their lawyers, who apprise their clients of this clever "trick card" and in so doing might hope to raise their perceived value in the client's eyes.
When yesterday's (FedEx attired--not coincidentally, I'm sure) African-American defendant saw that there were 48 prospective jurors, only two of whom were of similar ethnicity, and even they were anything but jive-talkin' homies, he quickly took the State's plea bargain offered months ago.
Being nearly acosted by inappropriately-smiling witnesses, as if they were trying to befriend--or even seduce--jurors within a ten-second span outside the courtroom showed yet another side of how some think they can sway the judicial process. It's sickening.
HF
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