Rape Victim DEVASTATED After Judge Sets Rapist Free

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

iHeartPodcasts and CrimeOnline

News, True Crime

4.2 • 8.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An Illinois judge reverses an 18-year-old man’s sexual assault conviction — saying that the 148 days he spent in jail was “plenty of punishment.” Cameron Vaughan, 16, went to a graduation party on May 30, 2021. Vaughan, who waived her anonymity, says that she woke up at a friend’s home with a pillow over her face and 18-year-old Drew Clinton raping her. After the assault, the girl told her father, who called the police. Clinton has claimed the encounter was consensual. Clinton had a bench trial in October, which resulted in Adams County Judge Robert Adrian convicting him of sexual assault. The charge carries a minimum sentence of four years in prison. During Clinton’s sentencing hearing on January 3, Judge Adrian announced that the teen would not be sent to prison as he is changing his verdict to not guilty. The judge said that Clinton has already spent 148 days behind bars — which he asserted was “plenty of punishment,” according to WGEM. The judge not only noted that Clinton had no prior criminal history, but he criticized the parents at the graduation party for allowing minors to drink alcohol and swim in the pool in their underwear. Judge Adrian has faced mounting backlash for not only reversing Clinton’s conviction but for the victim-blaming comments he made during his sentencing hearing. He has been reassigned.

Joining Nancy Grace today:

Megan Duesterhaus, Ph.D. - Executive Director, Quincy Area Network Against Domestic Abuse (QUANADA), Quincy Illinois www.quanada.org, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/quanada/
Darryl Cohen - Former Assistant District Attorney, Fulton County, Georgia, Defense Attorney, Cohen, Cooper, Estep, & Allen, LLC, www.ccealaw.com
Dr. Angela Arnold - Psychiatrist, (Atlanta GA) www.angelaarnoldmd.com, Former Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Obstetrics and Gynecology: Emory University, Former Medical Director of The Psychiatric Ob-Gyn Clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital
Sheryl McCollum - Forensic Expert & Cold Case Investigative Research Institute Founder, ColdCaseCrimes.org, Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
Dr. Ron Elfenbein - Emergency room physician Founder and Medical Director FirstCall Medical Center Gambrills, Maryland. Author, Surviving Coronavirus: An ER Doc's perspective (Free- Barnes and Noble)
Matt Hopf - Executive Editor, The Herald-Whig, Quincy Illinois, WHIG.COM, Instagram/Twitter: @MHopfWHIG

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Crime Stories with Nancy Grace
0:14.0	Well, a system for rape case all over again.
0:19.1	Remember the name Brock?
0:21.7	Because I sure do.
0:23.6	And a woman is sex assaulted out by the dumpster and the star tennis player walks free
0:31.8	because the judge was involved at tennis and Stanford before he took the bench.
0:38.5	That caused an outcry like no other and you think something like that would never
0:44.7	happen again.
0:46.5	Why do we always think it will quote never happen again?
0:50.4	Because guess what, every single time it does happen again.
0:54.8	And now another rape victim is left in tears being deflated by a single judge.
1:04.0	That's why I hate bench trials.
1:06.9	When you don't have a jury and you let the judge make the decision, you know what, I
1:10.6	put in the cart before the horse.
1:12.4	First of all, take a listen to my old friend Tom Roberts, a Daily Mail Listen.
1:17.6	On May 30th, 2021, 16-year-old Cameron Vaughan attended a graduation party.
1:22.8	By her own admission, she had too much to drink, so her friends let her fall asleep on a couch.
1:28.3	When she regained consciousness, she realized she was being sexually assaulted.
1:32.2	The next day, she went to the hospital for a rape kit test.
1:35.6	Armed with evidence, the Vaughan family took 18-year-old Drew Clinton to court.
1:40.2	In October, he was found guilty of criminal sexual assault by Judge Robert Adrian in
1:44.4	an bench trial.
	...

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