Earlier this month, we shared a post about an out-of-state case that was being investigated as a homicide. The case is no longer being investigated, and the father at the center of it escaped criminal charges.
It's the controversial story of the father who claims that he walked in on his young daughter being sexually assaulted by a man. In response to what he believed to be sexual assault on a child being committed in front of him, the father responded by hitting the alleged attacker various times in the head. He died. The father is not charged with a crime related to his fatal attack.
The incident occurred in Texas, where there is a law that protects people from a homicide charge if they were protecting someone from a sexual assault. In order for that law to effectively protect the father in this case, authorities had to prove that it was truly a sexual assault that the father walked in on that day.
A witness helped confirm the father's story, claiming that he or she saw the now deceased man carrying the unwilling 5-year-old into the house where they were found. Also, a medical exam of the child reportedly proved that a sexual assault had taken place, therefore justifying the father's fatal attack against the offender.
While it sounds as though evidence and state law did support the father in this case, the general public must be careful not to take outcomes like this as support for violent, presumptuous vigilantism. Supposed criminal offenders deserve a chance for their sides to be heard in court.
Source: ABC News, "No Charges for Texas Father Who Beat to Death Daughter's Molester," Russell Goldman, June 20, 2012
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