David Becker, an 18-year-old former East Longmeadow High School student, was charged with two counts of rape after sexually assaulting two unconscious female classmates at a party on April 2. However, after his trial last week, Becker has received an extremely light sentence of two years probation and will not have to register as a sex offender, Cosmopolitan reports.
According to MassLive, during Becker’s probation sentence, he will be required to remain alcohol and drug free, submit to evaluation for sex offender treatment and may not have any form of contact with the two 18-year-old victims in the case. In addition, as long as Becker follows the terms of the probation agreement, no charges will appear on his criminal record.
Thomas Rooke, Becker’s attorney, stated that Becker “can now look forward to a productive life without being burdened with the stigma of having to register as a sex offender.” “The goal of this sentence was not to impede this individual from graduating high school and to go onto the next step of his life, which is a college experience,” Rooke said.
According to Cosmopolitan, while Becker posted on Facebook that he will be attending University of Dayton, the college released a statement that Becker will not be attending the university.
Throughout Becker’s trial, Rooke noted that Becker was a star athlete at his high school, playing three sports, and had the second-most hours of community service in his senior class, MassLive reports. Rooke also stated that the use of ‘David the Rapist’ to refer to Becker was an “unjust character assassination of what [Becker] has accomplished in [his] past.”
Many think that this repeated use of the athlete status and apparent good citizenship to mitigate the crimes committed is wrong—the tactic has gotten major backlash from the public in the similar cases of Brock Turner and Austin Wilkerson, both of whom avoided prison time after being convicted of rape. Kevin Fagan, a resident of Longmeadow, told MassLive that these sorts of things shouldn’t even come into play when considering punishment for sexual assault.
Rooke told MassLive that a harsher sentence would have destroyed Becker’s life for his “one mistake at one moment on one night which was clouded with alcohol.”
Well here’s an idea — maybe Becker should have thought about his actions and how they would destroy the lives of the girls he sexually assaulted.