Some diamonds are dross

I don’t think I’m stretching the bounds of propriety and legal responsibility when I say that Raymond Diamond is a bad man.

In the course of his 43 years, Mr. Diamond has been convicted of rape three times and arrested for sex crimes seven times. His rap sheet dates back thirty years and consumes six pages of accounts of assaults, robberies, drugs, domestic violence, and prison escape, among other offenses. And Massachusetts lists him as a Level 3 sex offender — the highest classification, considered the most likely to re-offend. (“Re-offend” is bureaucratese for “brutalize another innocent person.”)

Last February, Mr. Diamond was arrested in Dorchester for failing to register as a sex offender. That offense carries a six month-to-five-years sentence. That would seem to indicate that Mr. Diamond would have been locked up until at least August.

But in an amazing stroke of genius, officials decided to presume Mr. Diamond’s violation of the law was a mere oversight, and let him go after he did register.

Let’s fast-forward to the present day. Tuesday, a near-naked, hysterical woman bleeding from a stab wound to her leg ran into a police station, saying she had been kidnapped and raped. Police were asking her for details when she started screaming. She recognized her alleged assailant there in the police station.

On the bulletin board showing pictures of registered sex offenders.

The police immediately went out looking for Mr. Diamond, and found him posing as a gypsy cab driver — with another woman in the car with him.

FINALLY, he’s behind bars, being held on $1 million cash bail.

Massachusetts’ governor, Mitt Romney, is using the Diamond case to push for stronger enforcement of the sex-offender registry law. I strongly suspect that Mr. Diamond’s last victim wishes they’d done so a while ago.

Credits:
Boston Herald 1, 2

Boston Globe 1, 2

Diamond’s partial criminal record

I just looked at Mr. Diamond’s record, and I’m even more outraged:

May 15, 1980: Convicted of kidnapping and assault with intent to rape a teenage girl in Dorchester. Sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Oct. 18, 1985: Convicted of kidnapping a 6-year-old and trying to extort money from her mother. Sentenced to three to five years in prison.

Oct. 18, 1989: Convicted of abducting and raping a Charlestown woman. Sentenced to five to seven years for rape and a concurrent eight to 10 years for kidnapping.

In 1980, he was sentenced to thirteen years in prison for attempted rape of a teenager. Barely five years later, he’s free and kidnapping a child. And exactly four years after THAT, he’s convicted of convicting and raping a woman. If he’d actually served either of his sentences, those victims might never have had to suffer at his hands.

But thank heavens Massachusetts doesn’t have a death penalty. I’d hate to see Mr. Diamond denied his umpteenth chance to “turn his life around” and become a productive member of society.

Everybody Wang Chung Tonight
Power to the people!

13 Comments

  1. dodgeman June 16, 2005
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