Disgraced Honolulu officer Teddy O. Van Lerberghe, 45, flexed his blue privilege this month when he reached a deal with prosecutors guaranteeing he will not go to jail.
According to court documents, in 2017, Van Lerberghe was indicted on multiple counts of first- and third-degree sexual assault. According to the indictment, the abuse took place for years on victim(s) as young five-years-old.
Four of the charges were Class A felonies carrying mandatory 20-year prison terms.
Van Lerberghe initially pleaded not guilty, but he changed his plea to no contest earlier this month after reaching a disgustingly lenient deal with prosecutors.
As Hawaii News Now points out, felony sex assault charges usually carry long prison terms, but the 45-year-old only faces five years probation when he’s sentenced in August.
Despite facing over 100 years behind bars for all the charges, the seven major felony charges he faced were reduced to four Class B felonies punishable by up to 10 years in prison and three Class C felonies punishable by up to five years in prison.
Even though the lesser charges all carried multiple years behind bars, prosecutors still let him off, essentially scot free.
Van Lerberghe will also have to register as a sex offender for life — something he’s probably not too worried about considering he just escaped decades behind bars for raping a child.
The lack of punishment for this rapist public servant was so egregious, that the Honolulu Department of the Prosecuting Attorney has stated that they will not even comment on it until after Van Lerberghe is sentenced by a judge in August, spokesman Brooks Baehr said, well after the little media coverage his case received dies off.
The Free Thought Project found a profile on Facebook which appears to belong to Van Lerberghe. It shows that he has two small children, raising the question of whether or not they were the victims. Terrible indeed.
Unfortunately, officer-involved sexual misconduct is an all too common reality, and the majority of it happens to children.
In one study over a single 2010 sample, the officers associated with reports of serious sexual misconduct, 51% (180) were involved with reports that involved minors and 49% (174) involved adults.
As Van Lerberghe’s case illustrates, perhaps the most sickening aspect associated with the high rate of sexual assault among officers is the lack of punishment they receive.
TFTP has compiled a short list of cops just like Van Lerberghe who all essentially escaped accountability for preying on society’s most vulnerable. Below are a few of these horrific cases in which cops were convicted of sexual abuse and let off with a slap on the wrist.
In 2015, a former Manatee County Sheriff’s Lieutenant was sentenced for his sadistic and sickening acts against three children. Officer Dale Couch was arrested after children told authorities what he had done to them — violently sexually abused them.
He was charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under age 12, and a third charge of lewd and lascivious molestation against a 12-year-old child. Instead of being locked in a cage for the rest of his life, like Van Lerberghe, Couch flexed his blue privilege and was given 12 months probation — no jail time.
Just before Couch’s trial, we reported on the police officer who was caught with multiple hard drives full of child porn. All the charges were dropped.
The Free Thought Project also reported on the case of officer Christopher Allen Carson who orally forced himself onto a sleeping 7th grader and was only given a 30-day sentence.
And the list goes on.
Former state trooper, 36-year-old Samuel H. McHenry II, responded to a traffic accident in December 2016, and, instead of helping the victim, he threatened to take her to jail because he saw an empty pill bottle and a nasal spray bottle in her vehicle, neither of which are illegal. He then restrained the woman and threw her in the back of the cop car, drove her to a secluded area and raped her. He then left her at a closed store, away from her car, and sped off.
McHenry pleaded guilty to the charges and was given a measly 180-day sentence, 180 days of which he would never have to spend in jail, thanks to his blue-privileged status.
In November of 2013, John Van Trump was accused of sexually assaulting a girl younger than six-years-old. Since the girl was younger than six, his charge was considered a super crime.
The details of Trump’s crimes were so heinous that they were not released publicly. We only know that Trump sexually assaulted the daughter of his former girlfriend on multiple occasions. At the time of the alleged crimes, she was 5.
On June 17, 2015, John Van Trump was convicted of sexually assaulting that little girl. However, instead of the minimum 25-year sentence he originally faced, Trump received far less time. In fact, he received no time, thanks to his police officer status.
A former Florida police officer of the year admitted to forcing undocumented immigrants into having sex with him.
Jonathan Bleiweiss, 34, pleaded guilty to an array of charges last year, admitting to 14 counts of armed false imprisonment, 15 counts of battery and four counts of stalking. However, he conveniently avoided all of the charges with “sex” in them.
Due to his police officer status, this former Broward Sheriff’s deputy was given an insultingly lenient plea deal. As part of that deal, Bleiweiss did not face charges of sexual battery, and as such was not required by the state of Florida to register as a sex offender.
Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein called the outcome, “shocking and shameful to the whole county.”
The Sun-Sentinel reported on another contrasting case that played out in court on the same day as Bleiweiss’ deal. Eric Beasley, 25, a former high school teacher from Broward, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after admitting to having a sexual relationship with an underage student.
Both men obviously abused their positions of authority, and both men victimized underage teens. But only one of them did it to multiple victims. Only one of them carries a badge and a gun and throws people in prison for the same crimes he committed. And, only one of them was able to get special privileges for their depravity. The cop.
This article could go on to be hundreds of pages long. In fact, 1,000 policemen across the US had their licenses revoked and lost their jobs over a six year period due to sexual crimes while on duty, and this number is likely only a fraction of the actual cases that have occurred.
After all, as this case and all the others show, cops don’t really have the incentive to stay out of jail for preying on others, which makes the entire system complicit in perpetuating it and potentially covering it up.
Source: TheFreeThoughtProject.com (excerpts)
