Missouri prosecutor scolds community for supporting molester

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A Missouri prosecutor has called out members of a small community for shunning a sexual-abuse victim while publicly supporting a community leader who confessed to molesting her for more than a decade.

In a scathing news release last week, Platte County prosecuting attorney Eric Zahnd listed 16 Dearborn residents who had either written letters or testified in court in support of Darren Paden after he admitted the girl's claims were true.

"Prosecutors met with most of them to make sure they understood that Paden had fully confessed to his crimes, yet many of those community leaders continued to stand behind Paden," Zahnd wrote in the news release.

Paden, 52, pleaded guilty in August to two counts of statutory sodomy, admitting he molested the girl up to 300 times over a 10-year span, starting when she was 5. He was sentenced Oct. 30 to 50 years in prison.

A lifelong resident of the northwest Missouri town of about 500 residents 40 miles north of Kansas City, Paden is former chief of the local volunteer fire department, and his parents are prominent members of the Dearborn farming community.

Many of the letter writers were relatives or longtime friends who told of positive things Paden had done for his neighbors, his town and his church.

Some acknowledged the seriousness of Paden's crimes, but asked the judge for lenience in sentencing because of his previous good deeds. One couple, trustees in his church, suggested Paden had been coerced into confessing and didn't molest anyone.

John O'Connor, a Kansas City attorney who represented Paden in court, said it's common for people to write letters before sentencing on behalf of a family member or friend who commits a crime, but that doesn't mean they endorse the crime itself. The Associated Press contacted four of the letter writers, who did not respond to requests for comment.

"This will absolutely have a chilling effect on any individual who wants to write a letter in support for a criminal defendant in the future," O'Connor said. "If you follow their statements logically, any person who writes a letter for any criminal defendant supports what that criminal defendant does."

Such letters generally have little impact on judges, who already have heard all of the facts in a case, he said.

Larry Dessem, former dean of the University of Missouri School of Law who continues to teach there, said he didn't see anything clearly unethical about Zahnd's actions. He noted, however, that Missouri's Rules of Professional Conduct say prosecutors should refrain from making extrajudicial comments that "have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused."

"In this case, the prosecutor reached out and not only identified anyone who had supported the defendant, but also listed their workplaces," Dessem said. "I can think of no good reason to identify those people and their employers or their churches. I have not seen anything like this."

He added that if he were a defense attorney working in Zahnd's county, he would file motions to transfer similar cases elsewhere on the argument that those who don't agree with the prosecutor's view of a case will be ostracized.

At Paden's sentencing hearing, the victim read a statement detailing some of the man's acts against her and the reaction of many in the community after she told authorities what he had done.

The victim, now 18, said she was forced to transfer to a different high school because she felt uncomfortable at her old school and was worried a teacher would snap at her in front of her peers. She said she was afraid to go into the town's new cafe because someone might tamper with her food, and that she felt like all of Dearborn had turned its back on her.

"I wanted to die, sincerely and unapologetically, wanted to be off of this earth," she said. "I deeply desired to be gone. I wanted to be freed from the memories slowly creeping their way into my mind."

Zahnd, former president of the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said it's the first time he had issued such a harsh statement against specific members of a community.

"I only hope the community treats this victim with the same compassion that it did for the man who stole her innocence and took actions that caused her deep and lifelong suffering," he said.