More details have emerged in the disgusting story of Sanilac County Probate judge Gregory S. Ross who awarded a serial child rapist joint custody with his rape victim who he impregnated when he raped her as a 12-year old child. The Detroit News is reporting that his second victim, a woman he raped when she was 14, has come forward to tell her story:
The second victim said she was 14 when she met Mirasolo through a friend in Deckerville and he invited her and a younger friend to go for a ride in his truck in March 2010.
“He said we were going to a McDonald’s, but next thing I knew we were going miles away to a house he wanted to show us,” she recalled.
She said Mirasolo took them to a house on the outskirts of Brown City, believed to be owned by his parents.
Once inside, she said Mirasolo showed her a bathroom and tried to lock the door with the two of them inside.
“I shouted to my friend that we had to go,” she said. “Things didn’t feel right and I wanted out of there.”
Mirasolo dropped the woman’s friend off, the second victim said.
“I didn’t want him to see where I lived, so I asked him to take me to an apartment nearby where I had left some belongings,” she said. “I went inside and didn’t know he had followed right behind.”
She said Mirasolo, who was armed with brass knuckles, raped her in the apartment.
Fortunately she didn’t get pregnant. She agreed to a plea deal that lessened Mirasolo’s 25 year-to-life prison sentence to only four years because she was, “told if [she] went into court it would just be [her] word against his, no guarantees.”
What Mirasolo did to this second child rape victim is frighteningly similar to what he did to his first victim and her older sister. However, in that first case, the 12-year old kidnap and rape victim DID get pregnant. Her story since then is heartbreaking:
Tuesday morning, the woman, who identified herself as “Tiffany,” appeared on The Steve Gruber Show, which streams online at stevegruber.com. She said she was living in Florida and when she went to change her address was told there was a court order for her to return to Michigan.
“Part of me didn’t want to come back home because I was scared,” she said on the radio show. “I would’ve got contempt of court if I hadn’t shown. I would’ve been thrown in jail.”
Tiffany said she felt “so alone, by myself” over the last nine years since her assault.
“I didn’t talk about it, I tried to put it behind me, but that’s never possible. You never forget what happens.”
Tiffany said a judge decided to put the rapist’s name on her son’s birth certificate.
“(I’d been told), he’d have to fight for any kind of rights,” Tiffany said. “Then this judge just hands him these rights, like he deserves them.”
Her son, she said, wants nothing to do with the man.
The attorney for Mirasolo’s first rape victim has filed for protection for her under the federal Rape Survivor Child Custody Act. You can read her motion HERE. This part spells it out clearly:
Plaintiff and the minor child’s rights have been violated by the entry of the Order of Filiation. Plaintiff never consented to sexual intercourse with Defendant, never consented to his plea bargain, never consented to her address being provided to her rapist, and never consented to any of the terms in the Judgment of Filiation.
The Judgment of Filiation she mentions is the court order by Judge Ross that “awarded joint legal custody, restricted the child’s domicile and residence, granted parenting time, disclosed Plaintiff’s address to Defendant, and ordered payment of a birth record fee (presumably to place Defendant’s name on the birth certificate) — all without plaintiff’s consent or any opportunity to be heard.” In the motion, she also says that Mirasolo, now a registered sex offender who lists his address as that of his father, is actually living with his mother across the street from a school, a clear violation of the sex offender law. “Hence,” she writes, “This Court granted joint legal custody and parenting time to a convicted sex offender who, according to the state legislature, should still be in prison throughout the duration of the minor child’s childhood.”
The most effective way to get Judge Ross off the bench – and it is indisputable that he SHOULD be off the bench – is to go through the grievance process of the State of Michigan’s Judicial Tenure Commission. From their website:
Anyone can file a complaint against a judicial officer in Michigan. Just download the Request for Investigation form … Please note that only judges, magistrates, and referees who serve in the Michigan state court system fall within the jurisdiction of the Commission, so it may not act concerning federal judges, administrative law judges, and attorneys.
The form is lengthy and will require some research as well as be notarized. But this is the most likely avenue to getting this man who is, as former Republican State Rep. Lisa Posthumus Lyons put it, “at best is unaware of Michigan law, or at worst, places (a) rapist above victims.”
You do NOT have to be a Michigan resident to file the grievance.
You can also sign a petition HERE. That petition had a few hundred signatures when I first posted about this on Saturday. Today it has over 13,000. That said, a petition is all but useless in this situation. This will require filing a grievance with the Judicial Tenure Commission. The more they receive, the better.
NOTE: My initial post is HERE and a follow up which suggests that Judge Ross violated state law in his actions is HERE.
UPDATE: An important update to this story is HERE. It’s beginning to look like the most evil player in this sad drama is the County Prosecutor James V. Young. Judge Ross has stayed his motion. That said, he should still be removed from the bench as quickly as humanly possible.
UPDATE 2: An important update to this story is HERE. It’s beginning to look like the most evil player in this sad drama is the County Prosecutor James V. Young.
