Women in Adams County should be angry and afraid after Adrian ruling

The Quincy Area Network Against Domestic Abuse (QUANADA) is outraged over Judge Robert Adrian’s change of mind in the sexual assault case involving Drew Clinton and a local high school student.

After finding Clinton guilty in October for criminal sexual assault, Judge Adrian changed the verdict to not guilty last week.

“Mr. Clinton has served almost five months in the county jail …” said the judge, according to the court transcript obtained by Muddy River News. “For what happened in this case, that is plenty of punishment,” he said.

The judge apparently felt sorry for Clinton and not the victim. “By law,” he said, “this court is supposed to sentence this young man to the Department of Corrections. This court will not do that. That is not just.”

The minimum sentence in Illinois for criminal sexual assault is four years.

The 16-year old girl attended a graduation party. She drank alcohol. She swam in a pool. She fell asleep on a friend’s couch.

She reported Clinton raped her after she fell asleep on the couch. He put a pillow over her face so she couldn’t be heard, and that is apparently OK with Judge Adrian, who reversed his earlier decision, then blamed the parents of the house where the party took place, the girl for drinking and swimming in her underwear and her parents whom he said “did not exercise their parental control.”

He blamed everyone except Clinton.

The verdict and Adrian’s comments send a chilling message to other sexual assault victims that their behavior, not the perpetrator’s, will be judged. Shame the victims, free the perpetrator.

This judgment reinforces the fact that standards for women have always been impossibly high while they are impossibly low for men.

Remember the case of the Stanford swimmer who raped an unconscious woman in 2015? Brock Allen Turner, an Olympic trialist, was found guilty, sentenced to six months but walked after three months.

“I think he will not be a danger to others,” California Judge Aaron Persky said. (Voters later ousted Persky as a result of this sentence.)

In the Quincy case, the girl now wishes she hadn’t come forward, according to her father. For this high school student, justice was not done.

Justice was not done for any of us.

Women in Adams County should be angry and afraid. One message is clear: If you are sexually assaulted, avoid Judge Adrian’s courtroom.

The QUANADA Board of Directors

Megan Duesterhaus, executive director
Kathy Entrup, president
Kettisha Hodges, vice president
Nikki Doyle, secretary
Ariel Prost
Michelle Thompson
Melissa Sullivan
Christine Ledbetter
Sara Deters
Katie Cernea
Sandy Fluent
Barbe Vahle
Minerava Cruz
Debbie Markert