Rapist who impregnated victim asks court for child visitation rights
Jamie Melendez was found guilty of statutory rape in 2009 after he pressured a 14-year-old girl into having sex with him four times.
The girl became pregnant as a result of the rapes, and she gave birth in 2010 to a beautiful little girl.
In 2011, Melendez admitted to the four counts of rape but was not sent to jail. Instead, a judge ruled that he should serve a probationary sentence so that he could continue to work and pay child support.
Melendez now pays his victim $110 a week in child support, but he applied in 2012 for visitation rights, arguing that he had the right to see the child that he was paying support for.
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While a judge turned him down, Melendez can apply multiple times until the girl is eighteen, meaning his victim will be forced into court with her rapist to fight against his application.
Now, his victim is trying to get the case removed from family court before she is forced back into the courtroom to see her attacker, claiming that he is only trying to torment her into backing off of her claim to child support, which he has not paid since June.
“She is terrified that this new ruling means her rapist will soon be taking her child on visits as a way of ramping up the pressure to revoke the order requiring him to pay for the consequences of his crime,” Wendy Murphy, the victim’s lawyer, said.
