Quote: chipolata @ June 12 2012, 11:03 AM BSTIt's just as conceiviable that the farmhand discovered the father abusing the girl and tried to stop him. The father, worried that his paedophile ways were about to be exposed, killed the heroic farmhand and terrified his traumatised daughter into going along with it. The poor girl could now be faced with the prospect of spending the next ten or fifteen years being abused by the father.
According to the sheriff, none of the witness statements or evidence contradicts the father's statement that he heard his daughter screaming, found the guy on top of his daughter and hit him with his bare hands. It appears that the father was tending horses with a group of people, so it's reasonable to assume that they reported hearing the screams as well. It's also reasonable to assume that a medical examination and statement from the girl also corroborated the father's version of events.
I'm not proclaiming his innocence without full access to the evidence, but I am proclaiming my belief that innocent, law-abiding citizens deserve the full protection of the law while violent criminals deserve whatever happens to them at the hands of their victims. As it stands, there is no evidence that the father was anything but a protector of his child, and the dead man was a scumbag molester.