Former Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin has people furious after he made a controversial comment about one of his decisions while serving the state. Bevin shared the reasoning behind one of several pardons of violent criminals he made while still in office. The Republican former governor explained on Thursday, Dec. 19, that in one of the cases, he didn't believe that a 9-year-old girl was raped because her hymen was still intact, which is why he pardoned the convicted rapist.
Bevin's upsetting comments came during a radio interview with WHAS host Terry Meiners.
According to The Washington Post, Bevin had a history of making controversial and unproven claims during his one term as the Kentucky governor. But before he left office, after being defeated by Democrat Andy Beshear in November, he issued 428 pardons to criminals, including a group of multiple convicted murderers and sex offenders.
In his interview on Thursday, Meiner focused in on 41-year-old Micah Schoettle, who in 2018 was sentenced to 23 years in prison after being convicted of rape, incest, sodomy, and other sexual offenses.
First, Meiner asked Bevin why he didn't leave the rapist's case for the next governor to consider, but Bevin needed clarification for that question, the Courier-Journal reports.
"Which one, though?" he replied. "Because there were a couple of people that were accused of that whose sentences I commuted."
The radio host then pointed out that he was referring to Schoettle, whom Bevin pardoned the day before he left office on Dec. 9, 2019.
Schoettle had only served 19 months of his sentence when Bevin allowed him to walk free, and because he was pardoned, he won't have to register as a sex offender. At the time that Bevin issued his pardon, he defended his decision by calling Schoettle's case, "sloppy at best."
Meiner asked Bevin, a father of nine, how he could stomach defending the criminal, to which the former governor responded that there was "zero evidence” that Schoettle had been guilty, the Courier-Journal reports.
He also disclosed the relationship between Schoettle and the victim for the first time and shared that the girl's sister was present at the time of the alleged assaults. Bevin also claimed that the girl's sister denied the assaults took place.
"Both their hymens were intact," he said. "This is perhaps more specific than people would want, but trust me. If you have been repeatedly sexually violated as a small child by an adult, there are going to be repercussions of that physically and medically."
But medical experts have proven that Bevin's claims are flatly incorrect.
Dr. George Nichols, who served as Kentucky’s chief medical examiner for 20 years — and later started the child abuse evaluation system at Kosair Children’s Hospital — explained that it would not be possible to determine rape by examining someone's hymen.
“Rape is not proved by hymen penetration,” Nichols said. “Rape is proved by phallic penetration … where the vaginal lips meet the outer surface of the vagina. He not only doesn’t know the law, in my humble opinion, he clearly doesn’t know medicine and anatomy.”
Additionally, a peer-reviewed journal Forensic Science International conducted a survey that found that only 2.1 percent of examined subjects in pediatric abuse rape cases had visible lesions on their hymens. Which directly contradicts Bevin's assertions.
The victim's mother even spoke out after the pardon and likened Bevin's actions to "a slap in the face."
WCPO spoke with the mother but chose not to reveal her identity to protect her family.
"It feels like we're going through it all over again … we just got to the point where we felt safe leaving the house and not looking over our shoulders," she told the station.
"[Bevin has] met my daughter, and now he's saying that my daughter is a liar … Shame on him. Shame on him," she continued.
The mother added that her daughter has been in intensive therapy for three years to deal with her traumatic experiences, but since Schoettle has been allowed to walk free, it's now their family that feels like they need to go into hiding and the mom said that they are considering moving out of the area.
"Now that he got away with it, who's to say what he's going to do to another child?" she added. The Washington Post reports that the mom has also been working on obtaining an emergency protective order.
The mother's heartbreaking comments just go to prove that there are real-world consequences to using hymens to determine rape or even virginity and this former politician's foolish decision has now put an actual child back at risk.
