A man who allegedly raped a 12-year-old girl nearly a decade ago has been granted joint custody and parenting time of the victim's now–8-year-old boy, according to local news reports.
According to the victim's attorney, Rebecca Kiessling, a Michigan judge granted joint custody after a DNA test confirmed that the man, 27-year-old Christopher Mirasolo, was the father.
'This is insane,” Kiessling told the local press of the decision by Gregory S. Ross, a Sanilac County Circuit judge in Michigan.
"Nothing has been right about this since it was originally investigated. He was never properly charged and should still be sitting behind bars somewhere, but the system is victimizing my client, who was a child herself when this all happened," Kiessling said, according to the Detroit News, after the decision was first revealed on The Steve Gruber Show, a radio program in Lansing, Michigan.
BuzzFeed News has attempted to reach Kiessling, the lawyer, and Ross, the judge, for comment.
According to Kiessling, the judge also revealed the victim's home address to Mirasolo and ordered that his name is put on the child's birth certificate. The incident was prompted after the county conducted a survey of the victim's child support payments.
In the news report, Kiessling said that Mirasolo raped and threatened to kill the victim nine years ago, in September 2008, when she was only 12.
This was Kiessling's account of the victim's assault in 2008:
She, her 13-year-old sister and a friend all slipped out of their house one night to meet a boy and the boy’s older friend, Mirasolo, showed up and asked if they wanted to go for a ride. They thought they were going to McDonald’s or somewhere. Instead, he tossed their cellphones away, drove to Detroit where he stole gas from a station and then drove back to Sanilac County, where he kept them captive for two days in a vacant house near a relative, finally releasing the older sister in a park. He threatened to kill them if they told anyone what happened.”
Kiessling said that Mirasolo, who was 18 at the time, was arrested a month later, when the victim was pregnant. Mirasolo received a plea deal attempted third-degree criminal sexual conduct and was sentenced to one year in jail but only served six and a half months so he could take care of his ailing mother, according to the Detroit News.
Kiessling added that in March 2010, Mirasolo was also convicted of criminal sexual conduct on a person between the age of 13 and 15, and subsequently went to prison for four years.
Mirasolo is currently out on parole, according to the Michigan's Department of Corrections website.
The attorney for Mirasolo, Barbara Yockey, told the paper that "it’s unclear what her client’s future involvement — if any — will be with the child."
In a brief statement, the victim told the paper that it "is all crazy.” “They (officials) never explained anything to me. I was receiving about $260 a month in food stamps for me and my son and health insurance for him. I guess they were trying to see how to get some of the money back,” the victim was quoted as saying.
Kiessling is attempting to gain protection for her client's son under the federal Rape Survivor Child Custody Act. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for later this month.