A seven-year-old boy has been charged with rape, the New York State Police led the all-out push to charge the suspect after the unidentified boy – who allegedly conducted a rape in Brasher Falls near the US-Canada border, as the police thoroughly investigated an incident that occurred on Thanksgiving in upstate New York.
However, given his age at the time of the event, the seven-year-old was released after being taken into custody and will be tried as a juvenile.
On March 23, 2021, Authorities finally charged the boy with third-degree rape after they conducted a thorough review of the case, nearly four months after the incident occurred. The Authorities said that they did not immediately apprehend the child when they first heard about the incident on November 26, 2020.
The case will be tried in a family court, the police said. The abuser and victim’s relationship or whether they were related was not, however, mentioned.
Anthony Martone, felony youth defense unit director with Queens Defenders, said that the case is “absurd”.
“Instinctually, it shouldn’t happen that a seven-year-old – I don’t think you even could really realize what you’re doing at seven years old. So I think it’s absurd to charge a seven-year-old with rape,” he said.
“They’d have to prove he actually physically committed this act, which to me it almost seems to be an impossibility.”
It appears the boy is being charged as a juvenile delinquent, he said.
Authorities may accuse and pursue juvenile delinquent prosecutions in New York State for minors aged seven and older under current law. Due to several contentious recent arrests of very young children, a law to increase this age limit to twelve is currently being introduced in the state capital of Albany.
However, Americans have been outraged by a video showing recent arrests of young toddlers in upstate New York.
The nine-year-old Black girl was pepper-poured by Rochester police in January; in the video, which became widely known in February, she begged the cops not to do it to her and complained that “it burns” after the chemicals were sprayed into her eyes.
Rochester police pepper-sprayed a nine-year-old Black girl in January despite the girl’s plea, “please don’t do this to me,” the girl begged as she complained that “it burns” after she had the chemicals sprayed into her eyes but the Police only responded, “You did it to yourself,” in footage that went viral in February.
With the question “why they were treating such young children as juvenile delinquents,” the incident caused uproar across the nation and forced New York’s legislature to consider it.
Hundreds of comments from readers then expressed outrage, with one person saying, “If this is true, then somebody’s abusing that seven-year-old. Police better figure it out.”
“Things have certainly changed. I’m in my 60’s. When I was seven, I didn’t even know what sex was and didn’t care about how babies got here. I was too busy having fun and being a child. He must have been exposed to something to even know about sex. Very sad,” one added.
Another wrote, “Okay if this actually happened, I hope investigators are looking into his home life and what goes on there because that is not normal.”
Watch the video below:
Sources: Awm, Dailymail, Patch
