BY DAN HORN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The boy's feet swayed a few inches above the floor as he leaned forward in the big chair, trying not to look at the judge.
He kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling while a prosecutor described how the 9-year-old spent a lazy afternoon last summer playing a game with some friends and a little girl.
The game ended when the boys pulled down the girl's pants and took turns molesting her.
"Jesus, sweet Jesus," the girl's mother muttered as she listened in court Wednesday. "They was like a pack of wild wolves."
The boy and three friends - ages 8-11 - admitted their crime Wednesday in Hamilton County Juvenile Court and apologized for hurting the 7-year-old.
But the victim's mother left the courtroom angry when Court Magistrate Sara Schoettmer said she probably would sentence the four boys to probation and a treatment program when they return next month for another hearing.
The mother said her child still wakes up screaming from nightmares about how the boys held her down, covered her mouth and touched her all over her body.
"I can't get no justice here," she said, wiping away tears. "They took my baby's life from her. Can't nobody replace what's been taken from her."
Magistrate Schoettmer urged the mother to seek help immediately so her daughter could get the intensive therapy she needs. The mother just shook her head and glared at the four boys seated across the room.
The boys, who are not being named because they were charged as juveniles, sat quietly in the courtroom next to their parents and lawyers. The youngest were so small their feet could barely reach the floor.
They glanced nervously at their parents as their attorneys stood, one by one, to formally enter the pleas to gross sexual imposition. In exchange for the pleas, prosecutors agreed to drop the more serious charges of rape and abduction.
"They look like babies to me," Magistrate Schoettmer said. "To be in here for a crime this serious, it just overwhelms me." She said the case was among the most difficult she's seen She said it makes little sense to take the boys away from their parents and lock them up in a juvenile facility.
"We need some help for all of these guys," Magistrate Schoettmer said. "There's not a lot a court has to offer for children this young. They made a big mistake, and we want to help them get back on the right track."
Before accepting the pleas, she lectured all of them about the emotional scars their actions left.
"You don't touch anybody who doesn't want to be touched," she said, turning to the 9-year-old boy. "Can you imagine what it was like for her? Can you imagine how she felt when all this was going on?"
The boy looked at the floor and shrugged. "Sad," he said.
"Do you think you'd be scared if somebody was holding you down, covering your mouth, touching you?"
"Yes," the boy whispered.
Assistant prosecutor Karen Falter said the offense occurred Aug. 12 when the boys lured the girl into a wooded area. Once there, she said, they forced the girl to the ground, removed her pants and touched her.
"They held her hands behind her and covered her mouth," Ms. Falter said.
While they agreed to the plea deal, prosecutors asked Magistrate Schoettmer to keep the boys on the county's home incarceration program pending the outcome of a probation department investigation. The program links each boy to the monitoring system with an electronic bracelet, triggering an alarm if they leave the house for anything but school.
"They've suffered from this," one of the boys' uncles said.
The magistrate said she would remove the boys from the system because they already have spent three months on it. She did, however, order all four to stay away from the victim and her family.
That wasn't enough for the girl's mother, who said she moved from her Westwood home and took her daughter out of school because the boys' friends have harassed her.
"She's reliving this day after day," the mother said.
"They attacked her and left her naked in the woods."
