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Roxbury middle-school dean charged with raping a student several times
By adamg on Mon, 12/14/2020 - 4:07pm
The dean of students at the Timilty Middle School, 205 Roxbury St. in Roxbury, was arrested Friday and arraigned today on four counts of aggravated rape of a child under 16, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.
Manuel Mendes, 38, of Hyde Park had bail set at $35,000 and was ordered to stay away from the school, the victim and other students and to surrender his passport and have a GPS ankle bracelet put on should he make bail, the DA's office reports.
Prosecutors had asked for $100,000 bail.
According to the DA's office:
ADA Paull told the court that Mr. Mendes knew the victim as a former student of the Timilty Middle School. The victim took part in a forensic interview last month and disclosed multiple assaults by Mr. Mendes beginning in February 2020 and continuing until the summer. Digital evidence, including text messages, related to the allegations were recovered during the course of investigation.
The DA's office said it would have preferred to ask that Mendes be held without bail as a danger to the community, but that state law does not allow for that in statutory-rape cases like this one. DA Rachael Rollins said she hopes to convince legislators to change that.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
Clarification—slight.
Several years back BPS has started calling disciplinarians and security paraprofessionals “deans” and “deans of students”. The title is somewhat misleading since deans in suburban districts and colleges are generally Middle or upper level management. This is awful whoever did it, but this was a lower level employee.
MA law doesn't allow for
MA law doesn't allow for people to be held without bail for statutory rape cases?? WTF!!
I'm not entirely sure what all "aggravated rape" covers.
Some of the examples given are things like rape in the context of a kidnapping, or involving the use of force, etc. But also "coercion" (including psychological), which makes me think that it would include cases where the offender has some sort of social power over the victim -- as a dean would have over a student.
Reading between the lines, this might be a case where the student willingly had sex with the dean. That's statutory rape since the younger-than-16 student is not "legally able" to consent in MA, and the aggravating factor might be the position of power the dean was in (which is a questionable circumstance even for consenting adults!)
It might be that "merely statutory" rape doesn't allow for no-bail lockup (since there's no evidence of imminent danger to the greater community) but something forcible would.
(This is all speculation plus a couple of dodgy web searches and I would love it if someone more knowledgeable could weigh in...)
"Aggravated"
Rape and abuse of child aggravated by age difference between defendant and victim or by when committed by mandated reporters; penalties
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIV/TitleI/Chapter265/Sect...
Ten years minimum, no parole?
I'd say Manny could be considered a flight risk.