Saturday, February 23, 2013

Bus Driver Gets 160 Years in Autistic Rapes


CONCORD, N.H. — Former special needs school bus driver John Allen Wright will serve 160 years in federal prison for raping three “voiceless and vulnerable” autistic young boys on board his bus while videotaping his exploits, the state’s top federal prosecutor said Friday in asking for the maximum sentence.
“Rather than be their custodian, he was their predator. He was their pornographer and their tormentor,” U.S. Attorney for the District of New Hampshire John P. Kacavas said.
Wright, 47, formerly of Milton, N.H., parked his bus on the side of roads and in parking lots, then raped the boys — ages 4, 4½ and 8 — while wearing sunglasses equipped with a battery-operated digital camera, Kacavas said in U.S. District Court.
While the victims — who also are developmentally disabled — are seen on his videotapes “screaming, crying out and trying to resist” Wright’s assaults, their disabilities made them unable to communicate with their parents or teachers, Kacavas said.
These children were prisoners of their disabilities and the defendant knew it,” the prosecutor added of Wright, who he said drove a special needs school bus from 2008 until his arrest in 2011.
“I classify it as torture,” Kacavas said after the one-hour sentencing hearing.
Two boys were assaulted in New Hampshire between Nov. 1, 2010, and April 30, 2011. One was assaulted in New Hampshire and Maine between July 1 and July 31, 2011.
None of the victims or their families were in court, Kacavas said.
Defense attorney Harry N. Starbranch immediately appealed the sentence to the First Circuit Court in Boston.
Starbranch pressed Judge Steven J. McAuliffe to impose a 25-year sentence with mental health treatment to be followed by full supervision upon release.
Wright suffers from an unspecified psychotic disorder and schizophrenia, he said.
He had a horrific childhood. [There was] both physical and sexual abuse in his household,” Starbranch said.
Wright, he added, was unable to hold down a job, was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army and has no criminal record.
While McAuliffe agreed Wright likely suffers from major mental illnesses, he imposed the maximum 160-year penalty and ordered him to undergo sexual offender treatment.
These crimes are terribly destructive,” McAuliffe said.
The primary issue for me is the need to protect the public, and the need to protect the public warrants a life sentence,” the judge explained.
Wright’s wife, Charlotte, wept quietly in her front row seat behind her husband. Wright cast a slight smile at his wife and blew her a kiss as U.S. marshals led him from the courtroom in handcuffs.
Wright’s school bus exploits were discovered by members of the New Hampshire Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in 2011 when they found him downloading and trading child pornography, Kacavas said.
Upon executing a search warrant at his Milton home, authorities found thousands of child sexual assault images. A subsequent federal search warrant revealed evidence linking Wright to the production of the videos. Wright was has been in custody since his indictment in October 2011.
Cases pending against Wright by the states of New Hampshire and Maine likely won’t be prosecuted given the lengthy prison sentence he received, Kacavas said.
Rochester, New London, Dover and Kittery, Maine, police departments, the FBI, and Strafford County Attorney’s office also investigated the case.
Wright was prosecuted under Project Safe Childhood, a national initiative to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Distributed by MCT Information Services

15 comments:

Trigger said...

This is awful!
Those poor children.

I do not believe that therapy will cure a man who could torture children without any mercy or compassion towards them, while video taping it.

He will always be a danger to children. He needs to stay in jail.

Tania Cadogan said...

He should be executed immediately, why waste taxpayers money on mental health treatment when technically he will never be released, why pay for his food and medical bills whilst innocent people can't afford the same?

He is a danger to any child and always will be, being an alleged victim of abuse he would know what it is like,why the inflict the same torture and lifetime of suffering on 3 young boys who can't even talk about it?

My concern is, like the death penalty, in the future some dogooders will decide such long sentences including whole life sentences are cruel and unusal punishment (they keep trying here in the UK to get whole life tarriffs abolished, just like they did the death penalty using the damned human rights act and the european court of human rights to say every prisoner should have a chance of parole and thus get given a fixed tarriff. Th British public on the other hand wants to execute the whole lot of them)

Can you imagine if say 10 yrs down the line some liberal berk decides no more death penalties, no more LWOP max sentences to be say 30-40 years and paedophiles can be cured and are thus no danger.
If you can't cure hetrosexuality or homosexuality there is no way you can cure paedophilia.

In cases of paedophilia execution should be the only sentence, this includes viewing since a child was abused, raped and possibly even murdered to provide the images.
paedophiles progress from viewing to touching outside clothes to touching inside clothes and so on down to rape and possibly murder. viewing becomes never enough so stop them before they physically harm a child.

Anonymous said...

White trash with tats I bet.

BostonLady said...

Evil ! Preying on the weak and defenseless. I'm betting this disgusting piece of flesh will soon learn what it's like to be preyed upon.

ellish said...

This man is the lowest of the low.
I have a son with severe disabilities and I know of numerous instances where vulnerable children have been abused by caregivers; they feel safe since they know the kids can`t tell anyone.
He should be locked up forever.

Anonymous said...

I'm with Hobnob. Execute him. First they should castrate him just for jollies.

Good on the judge.

Apple said...

One one hand you have to be around for your kids. On the other, it's tempting to take the law into your own hands. Great job, ICAC. Thank you for protecting these children from further torture.

skip said...

My children both have autism, both in this age range. One is nonverbal and the other isn't verbal enough. This horrifies me but I am so glad the mofo is going to prison, it's second best to torture and humiliation that he deserves.

Anonymous said...

Execution is the correct sentence for this beast. What a depraved individual.

The defenseless, helpless, young boys subjected to such horrific cruelty. It breaks my heart. Reading of such horror makes me feel sick. God help these innocents.

Pineapple said...

Peter,
Would you please analyze this statement made by the grandfather of the PA girl who was abducted and raped?
******
Three weeks after a 5-year-old girl was abducted at an elementary school in Cobbs Creek her grandfather is insisting the unsolved crime was a random act of violence.

“We believe it was a random act of a pervert sending someone who they had control over to go to a public school, kindergarten class, and take out a young girl who he could take out his perversion on,” Imam Asim Abdur-Rashid told NBC10’s Daralene Jones.

Abdur-Rashid has been the leader of a mosque in Cobbs Creek for over 20 years and is also an Amir, which makes him the head of most of the mosques within Philadelphia. Due to his powerful stature within the Muslim community, police suspect his granddaughter may have been specifically targeted by someone with a vendetta against her family.

Police have now questioned Abdur-Rashid a second time about the kidnapping, asking specifically if he believes he was targeted by the people who committed those crimes.

“I told them absolutely not,” said Abdur-Rashid. “I’ve heard a lot of foolishness that really is offensive when you consider the hurt that my granddaughter suffered.”

Detectives have received more than 200 tips about the abduction, but for Abdur-Rashid, that translates to police spending a lot of time on information that’s not critical to the investigation. “We appreciate the fact that the police are leaving no stone unturned,” said Abdul-Rashid. “But while they’re getting tips about what may have happened and who may have done it, it’s clogging the system, sort of, with all of these random tips. And I believe it’s hindering what they should be concentrating on. While we do appreciate all the information that’s pouring in, we would like people to be a little more focused on the information that they give. Because sometimes you can clog the system with information that’s not important.”

Although police say the woman appeared to know the little girl and even signed her out of school by her name, Abdur-Rashid says that’s not the version of events he got from his granddaughter.

“My granddaughter told me that the woman asked for her name after they went outside,” said Abdur-Rashid. “My granddaughter then told her what her name was and the woman said, ‘By the way, my name is Rashida.’ So based on that information, we don’t believe she asked for her by name.”

And much like last year’s robbery, Abdur-Rashid said he also wonders if the woman who abducted his granddaughter is really Muslim, or if she used the clothes as a cover.

“We’ve had people who dress like Muslims, including women, that cover their faces and commit crimes since Islam is so popular in Philadelphia,” said Abdur-Rashid. “But it could’ve happened to any child and we don’t believe she was singled out.”

Abdur-Rashid insists that the Muslim community he and his family live in is a protective one, which doesn’t allow many outside interactions. For this reason, Abdur-Rashid says he doesn’t think the people behind the crime are people that the family knows. He also discounts any notion that it was sparked by an internal conflict within the Muslim community, saying Muslims “don’t fight each other by abducting children.”

Police have given polygraphs to both the victim’s mother and father. They’ve interviewed the father twice, raising suspicions about whether the little girl was targeted by someone who knew her father.

“My granddaughter’s father and my daughter have been separated for some time,” said Abdur-Rashid. “I can’t imagine anyone using my granddaughter as a way to get back at him for something. But God only knows, I can’t speculate on that.”

Pineapple said...

Continued:

Abdur-Rashid says his main focus is finding the people responsible for his granddaughter’s kidnapping and helping the young girl cope with the “unspeakable experience” she went through.

“I see a little girl that’s trying to be normal but at the same time suffering from an emotional trauma of being kidnapped and blindfolded and separated from her loved ones,” said Abdur-Rashid. “She was put in a cold, dark park in the middle of the night, freezing cold, with no clothes. Every time I see her it’s like something just goes through my heart, the helplessness of not being able to do anything about the evil that was done to her. We’re trying to get any information that we could possibly get that would lead to an arrest of the people who committed this crime.”

rob said...

It always amazes me, what extent these nut-jobs will go to to get their hands on helpless children. He purposely got this job, Sandusky purposely started a multi-million dollar charity. I can't see how spouses can live with these people and not have an idea of what they are all about.
Is hind-sight not still 20/20?

Sarah said...

This is HORRIFIC!!!

My son is 4 1/2. It would be horrific at any age. But having a son so close in age to the little victims, knowing how small and innocent and helpless he is--and knowing these poor children had autism on top of that...I can't comprehend it. As a mom, I don't know what I would do. Hopefully the police would get him before I could.

Anonymous said...

What horrifies me just as much? This animal's wife was there to support him in court. If that had been my husband raping children -- with all of the evidence on computer in our home-- I would be on trial for murdering him in turn.

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