Micah Schoettle, 41, was convicted of rape, sodomy, and sexual abuse and had been sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2018. Photo / Supplied
Micah Schoettle, 41, was convicted of rape, sodomy, and sexual abuse and had been sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2018. Photo / Supplied
A mother in the US has slammed former Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin for pardoning the man convicted of raping her young daughter.
Micah Schoettle, 41, was convicted of rape, sodomy, and sexual abuse and had been sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2018. He had served just 18 months when Bevin pardoned him.
Bevin, who lost to Democrat Andy Beshear last month in a close race, issued a total of 428 pardons since the November 5 election and leaving office on December 9. One of them was for Schoettle.
Matt Bevin (R-Ky.) speaks at the National Rifle Association's NRA-ILA Leadership Forum during the NRA Convention at the Kentucky Exposition Centre in 2016. Photo / Getty Images
The girl's mother, who has not been named to protect her now teenage daughter, told The New York Times: "I just kept saying, 'How? How? How?' He spent less time in prison than he did molesting my child.
"What happened to my child's rights? To feel safe?"
In a radio interview with WCPO, the mother said: "We just got to the point where we felt safe leaving the house and not looking over our shoulders," adding that her daughter spent three years in therapy for post-traumatic stress. "Now that he got away with it, who's to say what he's going to do to another child?"
Rob Sanders, the prosecutor who jailed Schoettle, said: "This little girl was raped repeatedly over three years, and I'm not about to call her a liar just because she didn't call police as soon as it happened.
"I trust the collective wisdom of 12 citizens of Kenton County much more than I do the ignorant opinions of Matt Bevin."
Bevin defended his controversial pardon of Schoettle, saying there was no physical evidence of an assault.
In a radio interview last week Bevin said: "If you have been repeatedly sexually violated as a small child by an adult, there are going to be repercussions of that physically and medically. There was zero evidence of that."
Bevin also defended his pardon of convicted killer Patrick Brian Baker. Photo / Supplied
Bevin's comments sparked a flurry of harsh criticism from medical and law enforcement officials.
"He not only doesn't know the law, in my humble opinion, he clearly doesn't know medicine and anatomy," Kentucky's former chief medical examiner Dr George Nichols said.
Sanders added: "He obviously did not do any research on this matter or he would know that only 2 percent of sexual assault victims show any visible physical injury as a result of the rapes that they've suffered. This is the kind of foolish ignorance that prosecutors have been working for decades to overcome."
Schoettle served just 18 months when Bevin pardoned him. Photo / Supplied
Sanders has launched an investigation into Schoettle's pardon and whether his family's wealth and political connections played a role in it.
Bevin's pardon of Patrick Baker, a man convicted of homicide and other crimes and whose family held a fundraiser for Bevin last year, has also caused controversy.
Two other people charged alongside Baker in the slaying of Donald Mills remain in prison.
Baker's family raised US$21,500 at a political fundraiser at their home last year for Bevin to cover debt from his 2015 campaign for governor.
Bevin said that Baker wouldn't have called for a federal investigation into his case if he wasn't innocent.
Elizabeth Stakelbeck was a friend of Bevin's sister. Photo / Supplied
"These things will come out and the prosecutor and the law enforcement that was involved in that should be very nervous right now because, I'll tell you what, not everything is kosher with respect to how that all went down," Bevin said. "Not at all."
"I did not kill Donald Mills and my family did not pay for my release," Baker said in a statement.
Another man pardoned by Bevin was serving life in prison for killing his infant son.
The man, 35-year-old Kurt Robert Smith, was also charged in a prison riot while incarcerated, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.
Smith had admitted during testimony to violently shaking the baby in 2001. The infant died of blunt trauma to the head.
Other convicts pardoned included Delmar Partin, who was convicted of beheading an ex-lover and stuffing her body in a barrel; and Kathy Harless, who was sentenced to life in prison for throwing her newborn baby in a cesspool.
Elizabeth Stakelbeck, who convicted of trying to hire a hit man to kill her ex-husband and his new wife in a 2013 was also pardoned. She is a friend of Bevin's sister.
