Bad Babysitter

A small and beautiful Connecticut town was shocked to learn that a local 17 year old boy, Jeremy Barney, had been arrested. He was charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse of three young children, aged 6-13, while caring for them as a baby-sitter, over the period of almost two years.

Mr. Barney was accused of raping and sodomizing the three children.  The court documents also stated that he also violated them with various instruments, and that he cut their genitals with glass.

One of Mr. Barney's friends was interviewed by police,

Police reported they interviewed one of Barney’s friends,[MO], a former Sharon resident, who admitted Barney visited his house and used his computer to download child pornography. In a written statement to police, [MO] said Barney wanted to see photos of both boys and girls ages eight to 10 years old, and at times as young as five years old, and masturbated.

The children's father commented in a victim impact statement quoted in the press:

"He is a soulless, heartless psychopath, a master of manipulation," the father said following a tearful embrace with his wife. "He safety-pinned the paws of our cat to the carpet while he sexually assaulted the cat so as to preserve their silence. He used the same instrument of sexual assault on our dog as he used on my daughter. And the dog is still incontinent. We need to lock this monster up and lose the key."

Mr. Barney claimed the sex was consensual, but the judge fully disagreed when presented with the evidence and considering the children's ages.  Mr. Barney's attorney, Stephen Somerstein, is quoted as saying,

Barney was a troubled young boy who was himself the victim of sexual abuse as an 11-year-old. (By whom?  Has this person been brought to justice?) He needs help, Somerstein said, not a jail sentence that will leave him a hardened criminal unable to function in society.

The article goes on to talk about Mr. Barney's post conviction speech,

When asked to speak, Barney stuttered and was helped to his feet by marshals. He referred to one of his victims as a defendant, then apologized for the error. He began blaming the victim, but stopped speaking in mid-sentence when his attorney pulled him from a standing to a sitting position. To investigators, Barney said the sex was consensual.

According to an article in the New York Times, the abuse was revealed when Mr. Barney was undergoing treatment for depression at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington.  His mother is quoted as telling the police that Mr. Barney was ''glad someone found out about it.''

According to an arrest warrant unsealed this week, Mr. Barney's mother, [BB], first alerted the authorities to the abuse of the three children -- boys age 7 and 13 and an 8-year-old girl -- in October. Mr. Barney, who was being treated for depression at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington at the time, told his mother he was ''glad someone found out about it,'' Mrs. Barney told the police.

The youth had been abusing the children since the summer of 2002, when he began watching pornographic videos with the eldest child, a boy who was then 12, the warrant said. He eventually abused all three children, the state police charged. He intimidated the children by telling them he would assault other members of the family if they did not comply with his requests, and he tortured them with a knife, among other items, the warrant said.

These are statements in the arrest warrant and accepted by the court.  Another astonishing part to the story is that Mr. Barney's own probation officer recommended he be locked up for a long time.

Assistant State's Attorney James Fletcher said the case was the first in his 15 years as a prosecutor in which the probation officer who conducted a background investigation recommended a lengthy jail term without probation. "Any healing won't come for a very long time," Fletcher said. "This has left the children broken and struggling on a daily basis."

His uncle, Christian Peet, paints a remarkably different picture.  Unsurprisingly, he claims that Mr. Barney was wrongly convicted and falsely accused. He's changed his statements on his blog concerning his nephew quite a bit recently. It used to say that Barney was merely having a "consensual homosexual relationship" with the young 13 year old boy he was charged with caring for. Simply put, a 13 year old child is not capable of having consensual sexual relations with anyone. A babysitter is no different to a teacher or other caregiver with regards to a boundary that cannot be crossed. When you are given the responsibility to care for a child, you are there to keep them safe. You are not there to fulfill your own sexual desires. It does not have to be forcible rape to be wrong or illegal. It is also interesting to me that Mr. Peet somehow feels that his nephew's case is ALSO like the McMartin Preschool trials.

Oh, did I mention Mr. Peet has written a book, Jeremy Barney: No Evidence. No Jury. No Justice, about the subject that comes out soon?  I find the artwork Mr. Peet has used for his title page of his book quite disturbing.  It is a drawing that a 4 year-old Jeremy Barney made and I don't need to be a art therapist to see that a drawing of a very angry looking adult and a very frightened small child is quite concerning.  The adult figure looks like a monster, which ironically was what Mr. Barney was referred to publicly.  Mr. Peet's bibliography is also quite disturbing.  He lists books such as the German book of poetry Babyficker (I won't translate to English for you, I'm sure you can make an educated guess) by Urs Allemann.  One has to ask the question though, where was Mr. Peet during his nephew's trial?  Not one person spoke in Mr. Barney's defense.  I would think that if Mr. Peet had some evidence that exonerated his nephew he would bring it to authorities instead of writing a book about it.  How can he possibly claim to know the facts in this case, and many others, if he wasn't present when the children were abused?

Mr. Barney was convicted of his crimes and is currently serving a 20 year sentence in prison with 20 years of special parole.