Despite guilty plea and 50-year term, many in small town support child molester, not his victim
Corrected: Darren Paden pleaded guilty in August to sexually abusing a child for at least a decade, beginning when she was less than 5 years old.
However, the weight of public sympathy remains strongly on his side in the tiny Missouri town where both he and the victim, now a young woman, have been living, reports the Kansas City Star.
Last month, Paden was sentenced to a 50-year prison term, despite more than a dozen letters from relatives, church members and friends urging leniency.
“There are certainly a few good people in the community who have offered their support to this young victim,” said Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd in a written statement. “It is shocking, however, that many continue to support a defendant whose guilt was never truly in doubt. If it takes a village to raise a child, what is a child to do when the village turns its back and supports a confessed child molester?”
The 18-year-old victim told the newspaper that a landlord recently refused to rent to her after learning her name, and said a number of townspeople avoid her. During Paden’s sentencing hearing, she told the court in a quavering voice that she suffers from depression, flashbacks and nightmares as a result of the abuse.
Supporters of Paden routinely cite his Gulf War service in the Air National Guard and his work as a firefighter. Despite his guilty plea, a number question whether he committed any crime.
“My opinion is, most people don’t believe it happened,” Dixie Wilson, an elderly great-aunt of Paden’s, told the Star.
“Are you for a child molester? Absolutely not. But I don’t think we’re talking about a child molester.”
Zahnd called the community’s lack of support for the victim “deeply troubling” and said it “breaks my heart.”
Updated at 5:20 p.m. to correct the spelling of Paden’s last name.
