Inset: Justin Metz (Atchison County Detention Center). Background: The Walmart store at 1920 U.S. 73 in Atchison, Kan., where Justin Metz’s alleged attack unfolded (Google Maps).

A Kansas man was arrested this week for allegedly posing as an employee for Walmart — telling a female shopper he was an “asset protection officer” and that she needed to come with him to the back of the store — where he attacked and raped her, cops say.

Justin Metz, 42, singled out the woman at a Walmart in Atchison on U.S. Route 73 earlier this month and kidnapped her under the guise of a security guard, according to the local Hays Post news website and Fox affiliates KCTV and WDAF.

Metz allegedly approached the 32-year-old shopper as she was leaving the store and told her he was an “asset protection officer” who needed to speak with her, the Atchison Police Department reports.

Left to right: Dustin Adlai Yates and Brad Michael McKinney (Smith County Sheriff’s Office).

Two Texas men are behind bars after meticulously planning the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a woman, Lone Star State police say.

In the end, whatever plan might have existed was not seen to fruition.

Dustin Adlai Yates and Brad Michael McKinney stand accused of stalking and murder, according to Smith County Jail records.

Edward Martinez (Greene County Jail).

He usually met the young kids through friends or significant others. Over a 25-year period, he groomed and sexually abused at least six girls — all under the age of 12.

On Thursday, a Missouri judge sentenced 53-year-old Edward Martinez to nine life sentences in prison. A jury in September convicted Martinez of a slew of charges, including child molestation, statutory rape and statutory sodomy. Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Patterson said in a press release that the abuse occurred between 1996 and 2021. The oldest victim was 12. The youngest: 4. Prosecutors called him a “serial child molester.”

More on Law&Crime: Teacher’s aide accused of raping teenage student with mental capacity of 9-year-old after boy’s mom catches her at their home on a snow day, cops say

“The evidence showed that Martinez was a manipulative predator who groomed the girls and their families with gifts and financial support in order to have access to the young girls,” the press release stated.

Martinez claimed the girls were lying and made up the stories because they knew he had been found not guilty of similar charges back in the 1990s. But this jury didn’t buy his story.

The panel took just two hours to convict him. After another 30 minutes of deliberation, they recommended the nine life sentences the judge would impose Thursday.

Van Henry Brisbon and Lauren Juma (Harris County District Attorney’s Office).

A Texas man was sentenced Thursday to an automatic punishment of life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing his then-girlfriend’s teenage daughter after a rape attempt.

Van Henry Brisbon, 62, will never see freedom after killing Lauren Juma, 16.

More Law&Crime coverage: Convicted child abuser locked up for ‘depraved’ hot bathtub murder of live-in girlfriend’s 2-year-old daughter

At the time of the murder in late April 2022, the teenager’s mother voiced shock and anger.

“He treated Lauren like she was his baby,” Lauren’s mother, Laurie Young, said, according to CBS affiliate KHOU. “I don’t understand. He can rot in jail. He had no reason to take my baby’s life.”

Background: Villanova University (YouTube). Inset: Mirvan Dinler (Delaware County (Penn.) District Attorney’s Office).

Police in Pennsylvania have arrested an Uber driver who allegedly followed a college student into her on-campus dorm room and raped her after bringing her home.

Mirvan Dinler, 26, was arrested on Friday, Philadelphia ABC affiliate WPVI reported. The assault allegedly occurred the night of Sept. 13, according to the station.

Background: Justin Avery is allegedly seen crawling past an officer at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Intake Transfer and Release Facility (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office/KNXV/YouTube). Inset: Justin Avery (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office).

An Arizona man facing assault charges is potentially in even more trouble after allegedly sneaking around jail guards in order to commit sexual assault.

Justin Avery had been detained in April for allegedly assaulting multiple women near the Tempe campus of Arizona State University, Phoenix ABC affiliate KNXV reported. Video released by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office appears to show Avery at the Intake Transfer and Release Facility days after his arrest, crawling backward along the edge of an official’s desk.

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Lawyer’s joint sex with boyfriend and his daughter was ‘tantamount to rape,’ despite plea deal, disbarment order says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 13, 2024, 11:51 am CDT

An Ohio lawyer has been permanently disbarred for repeatedly joining with her boyfriend to abuse his 13-year-old daughter.

The Ohio Supreme Court disbarred lawyer Amber Renee Goodman of Elida, Ohio, rejecting ethics officials’ recommendation for an indefinite suspension based on the lawyer’s plea to a lesser charge, report the Columbus Dispatch, Law360 and Court News Ohio (via the Legal Profession Blog).

“Looking to the misconduct underlying Goodman’s conviction shows that her actions were tantamount to rape,” the Ohio Supreme Court said in its March 12 decision. “Goodman encouraged and perpetuated the sexual molestation committed by the victim’s father, and at the very least, she was complicit in his crimes. But she was actually more than complicit—she actively engaged in the repeated rape of the child.”

The abuse involving Goodman and the teenager’s father happened over a period of four to six months. The boyfriend had sexual intercourse with Goodman and his daughter, while Goodman performed other sexual acts, the state supreme court said. The teen said, however, her father began sexually molesting her much earlier, when she was 9 years old.

“Goodman’s willingness, in the victim’s words, to ‘join in’ perpetuated and added to the abuse that the child suffered, and Goodman became just another ‘monster’ in the child’s life,” the Ohio Supreme Court said in an opinion by Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy. “And rather than report this abuse to authorities, Goodman told the victim not to tell anyone about it.”

After the teen reported the abuse in January 2019, Goodman continued a relationship with the teen’s father for two years.

Goodman had pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual contact with a minor, a third-degree felony, in May 2022. The law bars adults from engaging in sexual conduct with a person older than age 13 but less than age 16, when the offender knows the age of the victim or is reckless in that regard.

Goodman was placed on an interim suspension after her conviction. The Ohio Board of Professional Conduct had recommended an indefinite suspension with no credit for time spent under interim suspension. Generally, lawyers on indefinite suspension can apply for reinstatement after two years, according to Court News Ohio.

Goodman was sentenced to 30 months in prison. She was released after almost eight months of incarceration provided that she served 120 days in the county jail and five years on community control. She was also required to abstain from use of alcohol and illegal substances.

Goodman had claimed that past trauma had made her susceptible to manipulation by the boyfriend. Goodman said her father had left when she was 3 years old, and “nothing she ever did as a child was good enough for him.” She also said she had been mentally abused by one of her two ex-husbands and physically abused by both of them.

“At her disciplinary hearing, Goodman portrayed herself as the victim of manipulation and lies, but she failed to explain how that could possibly cause her to molest a child,” the state supreme court said.

Nor did she produce evidence showing how trauma that she suffered as a child and an adult contributed to her misconduct, the Ohio Supreme Court said.

In a concurrence, Justice Michael P. Donnelly said ethics officials would have been able to recommend a more appropriate sanction if “the criminal-justice system properly held Goodman to account for the criminal acts she committed.”

Donnelly said he thought that Goodman would have been convicted of rape if prosecutors had presented evidence available to the Ohio Supreme Court.

Donnelly criticized the Ohio Supreme Court for rejecting a rule change eight years ago that would have required felony charges in plea bargains to have a factual basis in the conduct actually committed.

“As a result,” Donnelly said, “Goodman managed to plead guilty to a crime that does not come close to accounting for the vile acts she committed.”

Goodman’s lawyer, George D. Jonson, did not immediately reply to an ABA Journal email and a voicemail seeking comment. Jonson’s voicemail message states that he is in a disciplinary hearing through Thursday.

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The Modern Law Library

‘When Rape Goes Viral’ looks at why cases like Steubenville happen

By Lee Rawles

March 6, 2024, 9:51 am CST

Three high-profile cases of sexual assault in 2012 followed a basic pattern: A teenage girl was sexually assaulted at a house party by one or more teenage boys while she was incapacitated by alcohol. The attacks were recorded, and the photos, videos and stories were shared on social media or via texts. The photos and videos were used to ridicule the victims among their peers. Those texts and posts later became evidence in criminal cases.

These incidents took place in Steubenville, Ohio; Maryville, Missouri; and Saratoga, California, and sparked national conversations about youths, technology and sexual assault in 2013.

“The question gnawing at everyone, myself included, was: What were these kids thinking?” writes Anna Gjika, a sociology professor who studies crime and gender issues.

More than 10 years later, Gjika has attempted to answer that question in her new book, When Rape Goes Viral: Youth and Sexual Assault in the Digital Age. She took a close look at the three attacks in 2012 but identifies a number of similar instances that have happened more recently.

One of the elements that the public found shocking about the cases was how many bystanders filmed or photographed the unconscious girls or the sexual assaults as they were occurring, without intervening.

In talking to people involved in the cases and to teens in general as part of her research, Gjika found that the young people did not think of their social media as archival so much as “of the moment.” They filmed and posted what was happening around themselves because they were used to doing that.

“Sharing an experience has become an integral part of the experience,” Gjika writes.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Gjika and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss her research into generational attitudes toward social media and sexual assault, the promises and pitfalls of digital evidence in sexual assault cases, how social media can be empowering or degrading for survivors, the social responsibility held by the legal community and the tech industry, and what interventions could be effective to prevent such assaults from taking place.

Digital evidence, such as cellphone videos and texts, can be extremely beneficial to prosecutors looking to prove incidents of sexual assault, particularly when victims are unable to recount their experience because they were unconscious or impaired during the attacks.

But Gjika explains that this kind of evidence is not uncomplicated. The way that juries perceive the evidence will still be filtered through societal expectations and prejudices. Defense attorneys do not have the same access to digital evidence from tech companies and usually lack capacity to process immense amounts of data.

The expertise, willingness and resources of police departments and prosecutors’ offices to seek out this evidence also vary widely. And the victims can be further traumatized by the use in court of images and video of their assaults and the knowledge that the images continue to be disseminated on the internet.

In closing, Rawles and Gjika discuss what actions can be taken by schools, the legal community and the tech industry to prevent such attacks or to assist victims whose assaults have been digitally documented. Gjika thinks that educational programs and trainings for teens have to focus on peer groups and norms, rather than emphasizing individual responsibility, and “must be grounded within adolescents’ lived experiences, rather than on adult fears and anxieties.”

She also argues that adults, as well as teens, would benefit from “ethical digital citizenship initiatives,” where concepts such as privacy and online decision-making could be discussed. And she suggests the creation of government-funded organizations to assist survivors with removing digital content from the internet.

In This Podcast:

Anna Gjika

Anna Gjika is an assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she teaches undergraduate courses on crime and society, the sociology of violence, and gender and crime. Her research explores the intersections of gendered violence and technology. She is the author of When Rape Goes Viral: Youth and Sexual Assault in the Digital Age.