Imagine for a second that you are a father and you have a son. One day, you find out that your son is the victim of child sexual abuse at the hands of a school teacher. It is discovered that the school teacher has been taking your son to a school supply closet and forcing him to have sex with him. Other times, the teacher would call in sick for work, take your son to his house for sex and drop him off at school near the end of the day.
All of this comes out in court. All of this is entered into the record. The school teacher is convicted of 13 counts, which include lewd battery, molestation and child abuse. He is sentenced to 43 years in prison.
Now imagine this: two years after the conviction, this monster hasn’t served a single day behind bars.
You may feel a fraction of what this father feels:
Weeks after the trial, Broward Circuit Judge Marc Gold, who presided over the trial and sentenced Mohanlal, granted the teacher a rare bond that allows him to remain free while his case is tried on appeal, a process that could take years.
During the two months CNN has investigated this story, Mohanlal has been working a construction job in Broward County and spending time at a house in Sunrise, Florida, 15 miles from where the boy and his family live, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
He resigned from his teaching job in 2005 after his arrest.
“The idea of that monster being that close to my family again is outrageous,” said the boy’s father, who is often so overwhelmed with rage and sadness that he drives to a park, leans against a tree and sobs.
“What did we go through a trial for?” he said.
Indeed. The trial must have been terrible. To have to sit there and recount what happened to your son, to be the victim and have to relive the abuse, only to have Judge Marc Gold listen to all the evidence, listen to the testimony, accept the conviction, then turn around and give the abuser the freedom to roam around while on appeal.
Legal experts are baffled:
“For a judge to delay jail is highly unusual, but it’s especially unusual when you have someone convicted of a serious crime like sexual molestation of a child,” said CNN legal analyst and criminal attorney B.J. Bernstein. “One of the concerns is that you have someone who commits a sex offense who, by their employment, seeks to be around children. They have abused that trust between a student and teacher.”
A dozen legal experts, including criminal attorneys based in Florida, said they agree with Bernstein. None could recall a single case of a violent offender receiving the same kind of treatment.
The only thing you can get out of Judge Marc Gold is this statement: “The simple truth is that I had to rule based on what was presented to me during that hearing. And I took everything into consideration and felt a bond was appropriate.”
He listened to the testimony and thought setting a man convicted and sentenced to 43 years free to live just 15 miles from his victim and his family was “appropriate.” Here’s a bit of that testimony:
Other students in Mohanlal’s class testified that their teacher handed them fliers, with the boy’s picture and phone number, that falsely accused the teen of having sex with animals. Caught on surveillance camera at a grocery store copying the fliers, prosecutors say Mohanlal had become a disturbed lover scorned when the boy entered high school and began rejecting his advances.
Disgusting.
There were two hard and fast rules I used when I worked with adolescent sex offenders. Without fail, each would all tell me the crime they were convicted for was the only time they did anything like this, even if they told another staff member a different story. The first rule was: sex offenders lie. The second rule was: no one gets caught the first time.
My point is simple. This kid wasn’t the first victim of this guy. There are others out there who need justice also.
This monster was convicted of terrible crimes, and the fact these crimes go unpunished just forces the victims to relive them. There is no closure on this crime.
Judge Marc Gold, shame on you. You are a disgrace.
