Danford Grant, the high-powered Seattle attorney who preyed on immigrant women, pleaded guilty to raping five Asian massage therapists and is going to jail, but not for long enough.
Grant is expected to be sentenced to five years per rape, but could have 10 years shaved off for good behavior.
In addition, he gets credit for the 18 months he’s been on electronic-home detention while awaiting trial.
The only reason he got five years per rape is because he was allowed to plead to lesser charges, so the women wouldn’t have to go through the trauma of facing him in court.
The five women he raped were courageous to come forward. Who knows how many other victims are out there that didn’t press charges?
Grant apparently had a thing for committing violence against Asian women. Four of the five women are Chinese — at least two don’t speak English — and the fifth woman is Thai.
Grant chose as his targets the most vulnerable of women.
King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said Grant chose these women because he “counted on them being too afraid to call police.”
The Seattle Times quoted Grant’s defense attorney, Richard Hansen, saying, “I don’t want to disparage the women in this case,” but there was “no force, no weapon, they just didn’t want to do it, but did it anyway.”
They didn’t want to be raped, but did it anyway? What does that even mean?
Hansen seems to think that this makes his client not such a bad guy, because the women “did it anyway.”
This is the culture of rape that is pervasive in our country and around the world. There are too many stories of women having to leave college campuses because their rapists are allowed to stay. Rapists serve time in prison and then are released, and rape again. Women in some countries are lashed or killed because they were raped.
What a world for women.
Even the prosecutor, Dan Satterberg, despite fighting for the victims and being on their side, had this oddly weird thing to say, according to the Times: “Even somebody who works in a massage parlor can be raped.”
The message there is: “You are the kind of person who is probably more deserving of being raped than other people.”
Danford Grant will be free one day, and he will rape again. Our judicial system practically guarantees it. Between now and then, power up, Asian and immigrant women.
Learn self defense, and teach it to your daughters. Practice up your loudest “No!” and be prepared to back it up with force.
Most importantly, work to change the laws — five years for destroying women’s lives is not long enough — and elect more women judges.
Enjoy your prison stay, Mr. Grant. (end)