A Tennessee mother faces criminal charges after she nearly beat a kids’ football coach to death with a baseball bat over claims he molested her sons.
Lakeshia Richmond, 27, of Memphis, admitted she took the law into her own hands when her boys, aged 8 and 9, told her they had been groped by their coach, Tony Massey.
“I asked them ‘Did he touch you bad, did he touch you down there?’ and my little boy said ‘yes,'” Richmond told reporters, “and I said ‘was it just you?’ and he said ‘no, it was some more kids.'”
Within an hour of being told this information, Richmond saw the little league football coach walking alone in Memphis on Saturday. “When I see him, I see my kids being hurt and that’s all I see,” she told WREG-TV.
It was then that Richmond said she flipped. She went to the trunk of her car and pulled out a baseball bat. She chased Massey down and began beating him repeatedly with the bat.
“During the beating he was saying he didn’t do it and that he was sorry,” said Richmond. “If you didn’t do it then why are you saying you’re sorry? What are you sorry for?”
Massey was found, bleeding and badly injured, by police officers and remains in a serious condition in hospital.
“I didn’t intend to do whatever I did to him,” Richmond said at a media conference, after she was released from jail on a $10,000 bond. “I apologize, but I don’t apologize for what happened to my kids.”
‘What if they had killed him,’ his grandmother, Lula Massey, said to WREG. ‘He is [in his 30’s], I have never seen him touch a child inappropriately or heard of him touching a child inappropriately,’ she said.
“If [the allegations are] it’s true, I hate it, but if it’s not, I want these people to pay for beating up my grandson like they did,” said Massey.
“We see a fair amount of vigilante justice when it comes to child molestation cases, partly because of the dehumanization and devaluation of child sex offenders,” said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
On a cultural level, with the negative stereotypes, people feel they are entitled to treat child sex offenders badly, said Finkelhor. “Instinctively, parents also have a strong urge to protect their children and wreak vengeance to those who harm them.”
“I understand her anger,” said Terrance Roberts, founder of the Prodigal Son Initiative, an after-school program in Denver to prevent youth violence. “But these are unsubstantiated claims from a child. She should have let law enforcement deal with it.”
Massey’s apartment was searched by police but nothing was found and so far he has not been charged with any crime. Officers say they are still investigating the allegations.
Richmond has been charged with aggravated assault.
Earlier this year, a 23-year-old Texas father, who beat to death a man he found sexually assaulting his 5-year-old daughter, was not charged. Reportedly that dad called 911 when he realized the extent of his victim’s injuries.
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