Activists in San Angelo, Texas this week were protesting after a local prosecutor’s plea deal sent an alleged rapist home without jail time or requiring him to register as a sex offender.
In a Facebook post last week, Brittany Lynn Rosser explained that she called 911 in January because her boyfriend, 29-year-old Thomas Boden, was drunk and tried to force her to crash the car she was driving, telling her that they both needed to die.
Rosser said that by the time officers showed up at her home, her daughter was screaming, “My butt, my butt!”
“So I laid her down and opened her diaper to find an enormous amount of blood and a clear vaginal tear,” Rosser wrote. “I asked Annabelle what happened and she said, ‘Tom hurt me with his hand.’ I ran outside screaming and crying, pushed past several cops and asked Thomas if he touches my daughter. He didn’t say a word, but had a slight grin on his face.”
According to Rosser, the hospital confirmed that her daughter had been sexually assaulted, and her 4-year-old daughter said that she had seen the attack.
“She told me Tom held Annabelle down on the floor holding a shirt over her face while she was screaming and ‘cut’ her private area with his hands,” Rosser noted. “Later I searched the house and found another diaper and TONS of bloody wipes in the trash along with empty beer cans. All was taken into evidence with Thomas’ DNA all over it. He never even tried to hide the evidence.”
Although Boden was charged with Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child, he accepted a plea deal of 10 years probation, and was ordered not to have contact with the victim. As part of the deal, Boden will not be required to register as a sex offender.
In a statement on Monday, Assistant District Attorney Jason Ferguson insisted that prosecutors did what was best for the child.
“In this case, we were dealing with a child who was 2 years old at the time of the offense, no adult witnesses, but serious injuries,” Ferguson said. “When we were looking at our options, my primary concern was for the best interest of the child, including considering what going through the rigors of trial preparation and testimony in front of a jury would be like for a toddler.”
The statement added: “The only witnesses to this offense were both toddlers – one was 2 and one was 4. The possibility of one or both of these children being unable to testify was extremely high, if not a certainty. If that were to happen, we faced the very real possibility that the Defendant would be found Not Guilty and simply go home with no consequences. That was something we could not risk.”
