DuPont Heir Given Probation for Raping 3 Year old Daughter
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April 1, 2014Smelling Pot From a Moving Car with Closed Windows
April 2, 2014DuPont Heir Given Probation for Raping 3 Year Daughter
Depending upon your perspective, he either had a great legal team or this is just another example of the wealthy not being held to the same standards as the poor.
Richards, who is unemployed and supported by a trust fund, owns a 5,800-square-foot mansion in Greenville he bought for $1.8 million in 2005. He also has a home in the exclusive North Shores neighborhood near Rehoboth Beach. His great-grandfather is DuPont family patriarch Irenee DuPont, and his father Robert H. Richards III, is a retired partner from the Richards Layton & Finger law firm.
He was charged with raping his own 3-year-old daughter over the course of two years. The girl said her father molested her in her mother and brother´s bedrooms in the mansion. The child said her father told her it was “our little secret” but she didn’t want “my daddy touching me anymore.”
Richards hired one of the state’s top law firms and received a plea to one count of fourth-degree rape– which carries no mandatory minimum prison sentencing.
The judge who sentenced the wealthy DuPont heir to probation for raping his 3-year-old daughter noted that he “will not fare well” in prison and needed treatment instead of time behind bars.
Judge Jan Jurden’s, a strict “law and order” jurist, suggested that she considered his “unique circumstances.” She observed as the basis for sentencing him to probation that prison life would adversely affect Richards. Jurden said he would benefit from participating in a sex offender´s rehabilitation program rather than serving prison time.
Delaware Public Defender Brendan J. O’Neill told The News Journal that it was “extremely rare” for an individual to fare well in prison. “Prison is to punish, to segregate the offender from society, and the notion that prison serves people well hasn’t proven to be true in most circumstances,” he said, adding that the light sentence for the member of the one percent raised questions about “how a person with great wealth may be treated by the system.”
Reported at Delaware online
