CRIME TIME AT ST. MARYS COLLEGE OF MARYLAND; RAPES AT COLLEGE CONTINUE TO BE UNREPORTED BY COLLEGE OFFICIALS TO POLICE

CRIME TIME AT ST. MARY’S COLLEGE OF MARYLAND; RAPES AT COLLEGE CONTINUE TO BE UNREPORTED BY COLLEGE OFFICIALS TO POLICE

NEWS ANALYSIS

UPDATE: Maryland State Police did not investigate sexual assaults that St. Mary’s College failed to report to the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department

Maryland State Police Spokesman Greg Shipley told THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY that no investigations were conducted by Maryland State Police uniform or investigative personnel regarding the sexual assaults which took place in 2016 and 2017 and were not reported to the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department.

 “The Maryland State Police does not have a memorandum of understanding with St. Mary’s College regarding criminal investigations. Certainly, if a student or staff member at the college reported a crime to the Maryland State Police or requested an investigation by this Department, we would comply, in coordination and compliance with any agreements with St. Mary’s County law enforcement.”

Shipley noted that the security guards at the college hold “special police commissions” and can act as any police officer on college property.

ST. MARY’S CITY, MD. – Beneath the story-book scene of a small liberal arts public honors college nestled along the shores of the bucolic St. Mary’s River lives the hard truth that crime is just as fearful and strikes as suddenly as on campuses in College Park or Baltimore.

There may appear to be fewer crimes each year except when matched to the tiny number of students, the incidents are dramatic. Added to the crimes that are reported are the unreported as drug arrests are virtually nil. The reason for the lack of drug arrests as during the tenure of St. Mary’s Sheriff Tim Cameron, the Sheriff had turned a blind eye to the college, perhaps out of a desire to appease the college officials who were more image-conscious when prior drug investigations turned up numerous drug seizures and multiple arrests.

Federal law mandates that St. Mary’s College, along with other colleges and universities, report their crime statistics and they do. They include the stats at the very end of a long and boring guide to students that takes great care to instruct them to comport themselves as if they have half a brain. That it takes nearly fifty pages of instructions to tell them such things as not to get stoned or intoxicated on booze before having sex leaves the casual observer wondering how these students managed to graduate from high school.

Victims of Child Pornography

          It is important to distinguish child pornography from the more conventional understanding of the term pornography.  Child pornography is a form of child sexual exploitation, and each image graphically memorializes the sexual abuse of that child.  Each child involved in the production of an image is a victim of sexual abuse.
         While some child sexual abuse images depict children in great distress and the sexual abuse is self-evident, other images may depict children that appear complacent.  However, just because a child appears complacent does not mean that sexual abuse did not occur.  In most child pornography cases, the abuse is not a one-time event, but rather ongoing victimization that progresses over months or years.  It is common for producers of child pornography to groom victims, or cultivate a relationship with a child and gradually sexualize the contact over time.  The grooming process fosters a false sense of trust and authority over a child in order to desensitize or break down a child´s resistance to sexual abuse.  Therefore, even if a child appears complacent in a particular image, it is important to remember that the abuse may have started years before that image was created.  
          Furthermore, victims of child pornography suffer not just from the sexual abuse inflicted upon them to produce child pornography, but also from knowing that their images can be traded and viewed by others worldwide.  Once an image is on the Internet, it is irretrievable and can continue to circulate forever.  The permanent record of a child´s sexual abuse can alter his or her live forever.  Many victims of child pornography suffer from feelings of helplessness, fear, humiliation, and lack of control given that their images are available for others to view in perpetuity.
          Unfortunately, emerging trends reveal an increase in the number of images depicting sadistic and violent child sexual abuse, and an increase in the number of images depicting very young children, including toddlers and infants.

For the years of 2014 through 2016 there have been no murders or cases of manslaughter, at least none where anyone had discovered a body, though there could always be a shallow grave that is not a leftover from the Colonial days when St. Mary’s City was the first capital of Maryland.

Now that murder is out of the way – and since an armed robbery during a dorm invasion by four thugs took place on Feb. 9, 2018 – murder might not be far behind – how about rape?

Rape is becoming more popular at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, not that a relay team has yet been announced, though the St. Mary’s County States Attorney Richard Fritz initiated such an event when he was a college man, and he and two others pleaded guilty to carnal knowledge of a female child.

St. Mary’s College reported that seven rapes took place in 2014, five in 2015 and eight in 2016. One of the 2016 rapes occurred in 2013 but wasn’t reported until 2016, perhaps due to the victim not reading the part of the orientation warning students to not have sex while under the influence. All of the rapes took place on campus proving that contact with townies isn’t required for this crime.

(Scroll down to story on College failing to report rapes to Police.)

Parents of siblings who attend the college will be glad to know there were no reports of incest among students during the calendar years 2014-2016. No such statistics are kept for faculty. Thus social media will have to be searched for an answer.

Forcible fondling is becoming increasingly popular at St. Mary’s College, but it has yet to be considered for team sports status. Four cases were reported in 2014, three in 2015, and seven in 2016.

When it comes to statutory rape, there were zero reports in all three years, perhaps due to the absence of teeny-boppers on the campus.

In all three reporting years, there was but a single instance of aggravated assault on the campus each year, proving that the stats don’t include the lacrosse field.

Robbery was reported only once, and that was in 2015, showing that customers of drug dealers don’t try to get their money back at gunpoint, until this year.

Stolen vehicles is still rare, given the general lack of quality of available rides on the campus compared to thieves being able to find better vehicles to steal in Lexington Park.

Arson is really popular but only in one residential housing structure and grounds – Dorchester Hall. Ten arson cases were investigated in 2016 as fires were set by some firebug with a slightly weird case of sexual deviancy that manifests in lighting matches or using lighters to combustible material.

Domestic violence scored zero in 2014, four times in 2015 and zero in 2016 with the possible reason being that the squabbling couple moved out, graduated or changed into a third gender.

Dating violence racked up one reported crime in 2014, none in 2015 and just one in 2015 possibly due to no students dating but just watching porn online.

The weirdos that stalk and have a secret desire to become an actor and get a job as an understudy on Bates Motel or work at NBC for Matt Lauer’s return were reported eight times in 2014, thirteen in 2015 and ramping up to twenty-five reported incidents in 2016.

There was one drug law arrest in 2014 and none in either 2015 or 2016. Imagine, a drug-free campus at St. Mary’s College where dopers have reigned supreme since the days of Professor Andy Chovanes.

There were 42 liquor law referrals in 2014, 25 in 2015 and 58 in 2016. Drug law referrals were noted at 41 in 2014, and zero in either 2015 or 2016.

Only 2015 saw a weapons law violation.

College Student Charged with St. Mary’s College of Maryland Arson Fire

ST. MARY’S CITY, MD. – According to Maryland Fire investigators in an announcement of an arrest on Feb. 3, 2017, a 19-year-old male student was charged after determining he was responsible for setting a fire inside Dorchester Hall located on St. Mary’s College of Maryland campus in St. Mary’s City.

On March 24, 2016, at approximately 3:00 p.m., a fire involving clothing inside the laundry room was discovered by staff and quickly extinguished.  The Office of the State Fire Marshal investigated the incident and collected evidence.  Two additional incidents occurred on March 25th with a small fire on a chair cushion on the third floor and March 27th when a roll of toilet paper was found burning on a table. 

Investigators determined Edward Granlund, 19, of Westminster, Maryland was responsible for the fire that occurred on March 24, 2016.  The additional incidents remain under investigation. Granlund was transported from Westminster to the St. Mary’s County Detention Center without incident.  He was being held on a charge of 2nd Degree Attempted Arson.

Maryland online court records do not reflect his arrest details or the disposition of the charges. 

UPDATE: As of Nov. 7, 2019, Maryland online court records only show that Granlund ran a red light in Carroll County and no reference is displayed revealing the crime of arson.

Washington Post: article reviewed dorm arsons and unrest over Confederate flag left drawn on beer can
Multiple dorm arsons, Confederate flags put a college on edge

Washington Post: Students hold Easter Egg Hunt on campus and hide beer cans instead of eggs….this year a can had a Confederate flag on it.

Fires have been set multiple times at a single dormitory at St. Mary’s College of Maryland during the past week, alarming many students at the small public college.

The fires come after months of tensions on campus, according to some students, including incidents with Confederate flags and swastikas. As with so many colleges, issues of race and culture are close to the surface, several students said, particularly since the emergence of the national Black Lives Matter movement and the protests and riots in Baltimore that followed the death of Freddie Gray.

At campuses nationwide, students have been demonstrating about race and bias incidents. At St., Mary’s, a small close-knit community in a beautiful rural setting alongside a river in Historic St. Mary’s City, those tensions can feel particularly personal. 

Like many small colleges, St. Mary’s has many traditions, some sweet, some silly. One is its take on an Easter egg hunt: Seniors hide cans of beer around the pastoral campus for the underclassmen to find,

This year, one of the cans had a Confederate flag on it, Brown said.

Some students said more than one was found, with images shared on social media of the “racist bohs” (referencing the common nickname for National Bohemian beer, Natty Boh), but Brown said he had not heard that.

MORE

Southern Maryland Police Beat / WHEN THUGS GET ADMITTED TO COLLEGE – four students, three of them on the basketball team, charged in armed dorm invasion & robbery

RAPES AT COLLEGE CONTINUE TO BE UNREPORTED BY ST. MARY’S COLLEGE OFFICIALS TO POLICE

Warnings to the campus by the St. Mary’s College Security Office:

• 

  Issued on Sept. 4, 2017: A sexual assault was reported to a SMCM staff member on September 3, 2017. The sexual assault was reported to have occurred in a campus residence on September 3, 2017. It is believed that the offender and the victim DO NOT KNOW each other. The suspect is described as a white male, tall, skinny with short dark wavy brown hair. The assault WAS NOT reported to the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Office and therefore IS NOT under police investigation at this time.
• Issued on Sept. 10, 2016: A sexual assault was reported to a SMCM staff member on September 10, 2016. The sexual assault was reported to have occurred in a campus townhouse in the early morning hours on September 10, 2016. It is believed that the offender and the victim do not know each other.

The assault was not reported to the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Office and therefore is not currently under police investigation at this time.

One rape that took place at St. Mary’s College was “handled” by the college and not reported to the Maryland State Police or the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department. The rapist was expelled from St. Mary’s and went on to be enrolled at a college in Pennsylvania, without the benefit of a criminal record or being registered as a sex offender.  As a result, he committed another rape at his new college, was caught and convicted.

The reasons police should be called to conduct any sexual assault at St. Mary’s College are many; one being that a rape kit and other forensic evidence can be stored in a secure facility where DNA matches can be made in the future in order to identify an offender. The college security office is not staffed by certified police officers nor are college officials trained in forensics or investigations. St. Mary’s College officials typically are more concerned with the reputation of the college.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s top swim coach Andre Barbins charged with dealing in child porn

FROM FINDLAW.COM

Maryland criminalizes both rape and “sexual offenses”, which some states call sexual assault. Rape has two degrees or levels of offenses, while sexual offenses are divided into four degrees of offensive sexual activity. In general, criminal penalties in Maryland vary by degree based on “aggravating” factors (showing maliciousness and increasing guilt and punishment). Some of the aggravating factors are using force or violence, displaying weapons to a victim, or if the victim is particularly young or elderly.

In Maryland, most statutes provide both the crime and the applicable penalty. The penalties for the crimes listed above are:

• Rape
  • First Degree – Generally, life imprisonment is the maximum sentence for this crime or attempt of this crime. However, if a person commits the rape on a kidnapped child under 16, had a prior conviction for first-degree rape or sexual offense, or raped a child under 13 while over 18 years old then life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is the maximum sentence available.
    • Note: There’s a 25-year mandatory minimum prison sentence if the rape was by a person over 18 of a child under 13. The court can’t suspend any part of those 25 years neither is the person eligible for parole.
  • Second Degree – Generally, the penalty by up to 20 years in prison, including for attempted second-degree rape. However, if a person 18 years or older rapes a child under 13 the minimum prison term is 15 years and maximum is life in prison.
• Sexual Offense
  • First Degree – Usually this crime or attempt of this crime is subject to life imprisonment. However, if a person was previously convicted of first-degree rape or sexual offense, commits the rape on a kidnapped child under 16, or the defendant is over 18 and the victim was under 13, then life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is the maximum sentence.
    • Note: The same 25-year mandatory minimum prison sentence applies here if the defendant was over 18 and the victim was a child under 13. None of the 25 years can be suspended by the court, nor is the person eligible for parole.
  • Second Degree – Usually, the punishment is a maximum of 20 years in prison, including for attempt. However, if a person 18 years or older sexual assaults a child under 13 the minimum prison term is 15 years and maximum is life in prison.
  • Third Degree – A felony with a sentence not more than 10 years in prison
  • Fourth Degree – Typically, this crime is a misdemeanor punished by not more than one-year imprisonment and a fine not more than $1,000. However, if a person previously committed a sex crime, the punishment is increased to 3 years in prison and a fine up to $1,000.

In addition, conviction of any of these sex crimes will require you to register as a sex offender in Maryland from 15 years to lifetime registration, depending on the crime. Being on the sex offender registry will greatly impact where you can live and work.