Concerns Arise Over Lenient Sentences For Sex Crimes

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 15 new felony complaints this week, which is one more than last week and right around the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, five of those were violent crimes against persons.   

“Three of them were family violence, including a kidnapping that actually happened while the victim was trying to report a partner or family member assault to law enforcement,” Jennings said. “The defendant grabbed her, put her in a car, threatened her, and took her against her will. She was very clever and said she was going to recant. She got him drive back to the police station where she was able to get help and he got arrested.”  

There was another case where a male threatened to kill his partner and then push her down the stairs. Luckily, Jennings said all of those victims are safe now.  

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Over the past decade, Jennings said his office has spent a lot of time pouring resources into supporting survivors and victims of sexual violence. He said they have really reformed the way they approach things from 15 years ago. 

“We have a whole special victims unit prosecution unit where 7 attorneys have a reduced caseload to focus on that victim input and getting the right results,” Jennings said. “We also have victim witness coordinators that are constantly updating victims and getting their feedback on the cases. We've been going to a lot more trials and we've been having a lot of success on convictions.” 

Jennings said there were two things to celebrate this week that were also bittersweet. 

“We had an individual who had been convicted after a trial of a very violent sexual intercourse without consent,” Jennings said. “We asked for a very significant period in prison, 20 years with 10 of those years suspended. That's been about average for what people have been getting for a rape like that. He was only sentenced to five years in prison and he had a lot of credit for time served.” 

In Montana, Jennings said a person can be parole eligible after only serving a quarter of their time. That means when someone gets five years of prison, they can be on the street again in 15 months. 

There was another case where a person raped his fourteen-year-old stepsister. Jennings said that person also only received five years in prison when they were asking for 15. 

READ MORE: Missoula News - Crime Reports

“We are going to spend a lot of time reflecting in our office on what we can do to support victims better and to make sure that these violent and sexual offenders are removed from the streets. We're doing what we can to communicate with the judges about the ongoing dangerousness of their behavior. We want folks in the community to know that the efforts that we've gone through to support victims have been a really profound change in the Missoula community. I am really proud of the work we do and we're going to keep working to improve those final outcomes and get some of these really violent offenders put away.” 

The Missoula County Attorney’s Office provides a weekly crime report every Friday morning at 9:00 on Talk Back.