Rapist is Granted Custody of Child Conceived During the Crime
27-year-old convicted rapist Christopher Mirasolo has been granted joint legal custody of the 8-year-old child who was conceived as a result of the act. Judge Gregory Ross of Sanilac County, Michigan, disclosed the victim’s home address to Mirasolo and ordered his name be put on the birth certificate.
The prosecutor’s office had pursued an order establishing Mirasolo as the father of the boy after the mother sought state assistance. According to the sex offender’s attorney, Barbara Yockey, her client won’t attempt to see the child just because he was granted parental rights.
“An assistant prosecutor on this, Eric Scott, told me she had granted her consent, which was a lie — she has never been asked to do this and certainly never signed anything,” Attorney Rebecca Kiessling said of the judge’s decision to disclose her client’s whereabouts. She went on to say, her client was notified she was “not allowed to move 100 miles from where she had been living when the case was filed, without court consent.”
Mirasolo was sentenced to one year in jail after pleading no contest to attempted third-degree criminal sexual conduct, a statutory rape, which occurred in September 2008. Kiessling recalls the story, explaining that her client and “her 13-year-old sister and a friend all slipped out of their house one night to meet a boy and the boy’s older friend, Mirasolo, showed up and asked if they wanted to go for a ride. They thought they were going to McDonald’s or somewhere. Instead, he tossed their cellphones away, drove to Detroit where he stole gas from a station and then drove back to Sanilac County, where he kept them captive for two days in a vacant house near a relative, finally releasing the older sister in a park. He threatened to kill them if they told anyone what happened.”
Kiessling continued, “To her credit, she said she didn’t want the baby to be a victim, too. She dropped out of school, went to live with relatives out of state and worked jobs to try and support herself.” The girl, now 21, only returned when the custody case was filed so she wouldn’t be held in contempt of court.
Mirasolo was charged in an unrelated sexual assault of a 15-year-old that took place in March 2010, pleaded no contest to third- and fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct and served four years in prison. He was paroled in July 2016.
The victim of the second alleged rape said “there is no way he should have custody” of the boy, and he shouldn’t be around children at all without adult supervision. Kiessling is seeking protection for her client under the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, a new federal law which offers grants to states to allow termination of parental rights to a rapist who conceives a child. Kiessling is also the co-founder of Hope After Rape Conception and President of Save The 1 and is representing the victim on a pro bono basis.
“This is insane,” said Kiessling, who filed objections Friday. “Nothing has been right about this since it was originally investigated. He was never properly charged and should still be sitting behind bars somewhere, but the system is victimizing my client, who was a child herself when this all happened.”
Sources:
Michigan rapist gets joint custody
Alleged rapist of 12-year-old girl is awarded joint custody of child who was conceived
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