[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 55 (Tuesday, April 8, 2008)]
[House]
[Page H2059]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         RAPE OF A LITTLE GIRL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE. Madam Speaker, in the early morning hours of March 2, 1998, 
10 years ago, Patrick Kennedy of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, called 
911 to report that his 8-year-old stepdaughter had been dragged from 
her garage to the side yard and raped by two neighborhood boys. Kennedy 
told the 911 operator that he saw one of the boys riding away from the 
house on a bicycle, so a sheriff's deputy that was immediately in the 
area responded to the complaint and started looking for the culprit, 
but he did not find the individual.
  The deputy noticed that the crime scene in the backyard was somehow 
inconsistent with rape, and he noticed that the dog was still sleeping 
undisturbed in the grass. Be that as it may, Kennedy led the deputy to 
the victim, his stepdaughter's bedroom, where she was lying on the bed 
wearing a T-shirt and wrapped in a filthy, bloody cargo blanket.
  Kennedy informed the deputy that he had carried his stepdaughter like 
an infant from the yard and placed her in a bathtub to clean her. But 
the deputy noticed there was no blood on Kennedy's clothes.
  When the deputy tried to question the victim, Kennedy constantly 
interrupted and answered the questions for his stepdaughter. The victim 
said that she was trying to sell Girl Scout cookies when the two 
neighborhood boys dragged her from the garage and raped her on the 
grass nearby.
  The victim was taken to Children's Hospital for emergency surgery to 
repair serious injuries to her body. At the hospital, the victim told 
hospital personnel and a psychologist that the two neighborhood boys 
had raped her, but she finally told a family member that Patrick 
Kennedy, her stepfather, had assaulted her.
  The investigation began to focus on Kennedy because his story did not 
make any sense to the investigators. And then the police learned more 
about Patrick Kennedy and who he was. Before he called 911, Kennedy 
called his boss at a local moving company to say he wasn't going to 
work that morning and he asked a co-worker how to get blood out of a 
carpet. The co-worker later indicated at trial that Kennedy sounded 
nervous, and he said his stepdaughter had ``just become a young lady.''
  Kennedy also called B&B Carpet Cleaning at 7:30, 2 hours before the 
911 call, and he asked how to clean and remove blood stains from a 
carpet. Police then found a 1-gallon jug of carpet cleaner and the 
bloody towels Kennedy used to clean up his crime and hide the evidence.
  A forensic lab confirmed that the victim had no grass or soil stains 
on her clothes so she could not have been assaulted in the grass. The 
victim later told her mother that Kennedy had raped her. At the trial, 
she testified that when she woke up that morning, he was on top of her, 
covering her eyes with his hands, and that he raped her in her own bed. 
The victim said she fainted and later threw up.
  A jury convicted Patrick Kennedy of aggravated rape of his own 8-
year-old stepdaughter and sentenced him to death in Louisiana. Under 
Louisiana law, a person who commits sexual assault of a child under the 
age of 12 is subject to the death penalty. Kennedy has appealed to the 
Supreme Court, and next week in Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court 
will hear the case and decide if rape of a child is constitutional 
under the eighth amendment and whether it violates the cruel and 
unusual punishment provision of the eighth amendment.
  No one has been executed in the United States for a crime other than 
murder since 1964. Of 3,000 inmates on death row, only two face the 
death penalty for nonhomicide, and one is Patrick Kennedy.
  In addition to Louisiana, Georgia, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina 
and Texas have laws allowing death penalty for rape of a child. In 
1977, the Supreme Court decided that the death sentence for rape of an 
adult woman was unconstitutional, but they never ruled on the issue of 
sexual assault and rape of a child. Thus, this case appears before the 
Supreme Court.
  Louisiana has interpreted the Supreme Court's previous rulings not to 
apply in Louisiana because the sexual assault was of a child and that 
is why this case appears before the Supreme Court to make this 
decision.
  Madam Speaker, this crime is senseless. We can sometimes understand 
why people commit the crime of theft, we can understand why sometimes 
people commit the crime of burglary, and even sometimes commit the 
crime of murder, but there can never be a time in our culture when we 
understand why a person rapes an 8-year-old girl. It is the ultimate 
crime of degradation. It is the ultimate type of torture, and it is the 
ultimate crime against little girls and their identity. It is worse 
than murder. And in this instance, the victim has a daily reminder of 
the crime that has ruined her life. It is an attempt to destroy not the 
life but the soul of this victim. So justice must be pronounced in this 
case. Society will be judged and the Supreme Court will be judged by 
the way it treats the innocent among us. Hopefully this case will be 
upheld by the Supreme Court.
  And that's just the way it is.

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