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Patrisha McLean is the president and founder of Finding Our Voices, a grassroots, survivor-powered nonprofit breaking the silence of domestic abuse. Her photo portraits of 43 Maine survivors of domestic abuse are at the University of Maine’s Hutchinson Center in Belfast through October.
Back home to Maine after a week on Prince Edward Island, cherry tomatoes in my garden that were green when I set out now were bright orange, and sunflowers that had been just stalks were now topped by huge spiky buds.
But one thing in Maine hadn’t changed, and that never does change, summer, fall, winter or spring: Domestic violence perpetrators getting away, it seems, with everything short of murder.
It was Raymond Lester in the news when I left Maine. Crossing back in, it was Harry D. Every.
Lester, charged with murdering Nicole Mokeme in Winter Harbor in June, had just been caught by police.
But why was he behind the wheel of a car this summer, and not behind bars?
According to news reports, a crime spree from 2008 to 2011 included allegedly striking his girlfriend in the face with a hammer and strangling her, and fracturing the skulls of their twin infants. Six months was his longest sentence for five domestic violence-related convictions, with one judge deeming five days appropriate punishment for violating a protection order just months after pleading guilty to his third violent domestic assault.
Last year, for an assault charge in Lincoln County, Lester got that sweetest of sweetheart deals, a deferred disposition, whereby a defendant pleads guilty and if he behaves himself for a while, the conviction is dismissed— poof!—disappearing from his record. “My prosecutor had a good faith belief,” District Attorney Natasha Irving told the Boston Globe, “that mental health treatment and no contact with the victim were the best bet for public safety.”
Now let’s turn to Harry Every of Dixfield.
According to news reports, he broke into the home of a woman and a 14-year-old girl, pushed the woman’s head into a pillow and held a gun to her temple, saying he was going to kill her. He pulled the trigger, the pistol misfired, he reloaded and pointed the gun at her again. As the woman tried to escape, he fired again, and also threatened to kill the girl.
He faced 45 years in prison. Fifteen years was the sentence handed down by Oxford County Superior Court Justice Julia M. Lipez. But wait! The judge suspended nine of these years. With credit for 20 months served, Every’s court-ordered confinement is now about four years.
“This is not a matter of if he will attack me again,” the victim told the judge. “It’s a matter of when.”
The cases of Lester and Every involve criminal trials and, in Lester’s case, murder.
But look at your local media to see the run-of-the-mill mayhem, and free Get Out Of Jail passes given out, day after day in your backyard.
The July 22 Court Report of the Lincoln County News lists nine domestic violence criminal cases resolved with plea deals, including:
Man, 28, from Boothbay, domestic violence aggravated assault, five years in prison with all but nine months suspended.
Man, 45, from Nobleboro, domestic violence assault with priors, dismissed.
Man, 20, from Warren, two counts of domestic violence plus domestic violence criminal threatening, all dismissed.
Man, 47, from Edgecomb and Boothbay, domestic violence criminal threatening plus violation of protection from abuse order with priors, dismissed.
Over in Knox County, from the same time period, nine of the 23 criminal cases are domestic violence-related, including a 20-year-old man from Appleton, charged with domestic violence assault, sentenced to 364 days in jail all suspended, with previous assault, criminal mischief and violating condition of release resulting in a $300 fine.
With domestic violence offenders, why does it seem that the bulk of their prison sentence is suspended, with perpetrators never (that I have seen) sentenced to the maximum time allowed under our criminal statute?
Why are the jail/prison sentences for their various domestic violence-related crimes ordered to be served concurrently, not consecutively?
The only way victims of domestic violence will feel safe and be safe is for the perpetrators to be behind bars. Puffball sentencing sends the message, to abuser and abused alike, that domestic violence does not matter.
To Maine district attorneys and judges: For those who are among the most dangerous people in Maine — those who terrorize family members — hand out time that fits the crime!