Former Vanderbilt University football player Corey Batey’s punishment isn’t long enough! His hate crime and rape of a coed deserves so much more! Batey’s sentence was the minimum allowed by law! He told the young victim he raped: “That’s for 400 years of slavery you b—-“…He got off easy!
A judge Friday sentenced former Vanderbilt University football player Cory Batey to 15 years in prison, but said the man’s true punishment for raping an unconscious woman three years ago was a life sentence.
“It is one of the saddest cases that I have ever encountered,” Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins said. “And I’ve been in the legal business for 32 years.”
The judge said he’s seen many cases involving young people who made bad decisions and had to weigh how his punishment would impact the victim, the defendant and their families.
“All of the defendants in this case basically have life sentences,” Watkins said. “After they get out of jail or prison they will be on the sex-offender registry for the rest of their lives. That’s a life sentence in and of itself.”
The prison term Watkins handed down was the minimum allowed by law. Batey, 22, must serve all 15 years.
The ruling came at the end of a 90-minute hearing in which the rape victim gave an emotional statement about her own life sentence. She spoke from a podium, reading her statement, pausing to cry and looking up at the judge.[…]
In prior court hearings, prosecutors have acknowledged a racial statement was made but it was never said publicly in court.
On Friday, multiple sources confirmed to The Tennessean the statement Batey made.“That’s for 400 years of slavery you b—-,” Batey said, according to the sources.
Metro Nashville police told her what happened as they uncovered evidence in their investigation, including graphic photographs and videos of the rape. Those videos were both the key evidence and a unique piece of evidence that drew additional attention to the case that some said furthered discussion of how colleges respond to sexual assault.
“Something permanent snapped that day,” the woman said of seeing the pictures. “I felt myself detach from my body. Now, I feel like I’m walking around in the shell of someone else. A part of me went numb, a sense of being a whole person with hopes and dreams about what’s possible in the world was now gone. I felt my belief that people are inherently good twist into some cruel joke in an instant.
“But sexual assault was not where the attack ended,” she said. Her sobs intensified as the described what else the men did to her.
“Mr. Batey continued to abuse and degrade me, urinating on my face while uttering horrific racial hate speech that suggested I deserved what he was doing to me because of the color of my skin. He didn’t even know who I was.”
Read more: Tennessean
