Woman Fights To Stop Her Rapist From Visiting Her Daughter

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

A woman who conceived a daughter after being raped has started a legal battle against her assailant, after a sentence approved her request for visitation rights.

The woman, now 22, who wants her identity to be secret, and who was raped by Jamie Meléndez in 2009, filed a first appeal against Meléndez's request that was denied by the Massachusetts appeals court, as reported by the Boston Herald, This means that the woman could be forced to allow her rapist to visit the daughter of both, since since 2014 family judges have the power to guarantee convicted sex offenders the right to see the child as a result of their crime, based on that "visits are in the best interest of the child."

"You shouldn't go to family court," said the woman. “I don't want to go to family court with the man who raped me. I don't want to be worried that the man who raped me comes and takes my daughter.”

According to the woman's attorney, Wendy Murphy, this case could encourage other convicting rapists to ask for the same rights.

Murphy said that the woman was 14 years old when she met Meléndez - who was 20 at the time - and that he repeatedly raped her, leaving her pregnant. Meléndez pleaded guilty in September 2011 and was sentenced to 16 years of probation.

His first request for visitation rights was denied by a family court in 2014.