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Incestuous brother gets off lightly to spare sister greater distress

One of the most important reasons prosecutors are offering a plea bargain deal to the 17-year-old Indian immigrant who impregnated his 12-year-old sister is to save the latter from greater distress.

"She does not want to see her brother sent to the jail, if it is left to her, nor does she want him deported to India," says a family friend who asked for anonymity.

"She knows fully well what the brother did was wrong, but she feels that there could be a family reunion some time, that all family members could go for therapy."

Prosecutor Karl Marlinga says he has heard similar sentiments from the girl who is living with her aunt for three months. She aborted her baby a month ago after the American Civil Liberties Union fought on her behalf and got the court to give permission for a late abortion. She was 29 weeks pregnant. The family migrated to America about a year ago.

Marlinga says his office did not want to subject the girl to testify against her brother.

"She has been humiliated enough," he says. "She has undergone too much of distress."

The brother -- whose name is not given in order to protect the identity of his sister -- won't have to go to trial if he pleads guilty. If there is a trial, he could face a long sentence and then be deported to India. "That might lead to the ruin of the entire family,'' says the family friend. "How many tragedies do they have to endure?" The boy and girl who slept on the same twin bed had sex one time, officials say.

Under the new offer -- which has to be accepted in about four weeks -- the brother has to plead guilty. A judge will then decide whether the boy has to go to jail for about two years or be put on probation and asked to do community service.

The brother and sister have not met since the girl's pregnancy was discovered in June. Though she had been sent to a doctor in March and April following severe vomiting, she was not tested for pregnancy. She wore baggy clothes, and the doctors could not suspect she was expecting, family friends said.

Though Marlinga has offered a lenient deal to the boy, the prosecutor says he will not order the boy's record be wiped out.

"God forbid, but if he repeats another sexual crime in another part of America," Marlinga says, "I would not want a prosecutor asking for a lenient sentence since this was the first kind of crime. I want the records to show that the boy had committed a sexual crime earlier."

The incest case drew publicity across America in July when a judge temporarily stopped the girl's parents from taking her to Kansas for an abortion. The girl was more than six months pregnant -- five weeks later than Michigan allows for an abortion, unless the mother's life is in danger.

Judge Pamela Gilbert O'Sullivan made the girl a ward of the court until doctors showed an abortion would be in her best interest. The judge lifted the ban on July 24 and the girl had the abortion.

Anti-abortionist activists had fought fiercely to stop the abortion; they had even offered to adopt the baby and pay for the counselling of the entire family. They refused to buy the ACLU argument and that of the parents and the girl, that the girl was an emotional wreck and bringing the child into the world would cause her greater distress. Besides, the child could be deformed because of incest, ACLU and psychologists who dealt with the girl extensively pleaded.

The defence has acknowledged that the boy fathered the foetus that was aborted.

The boy is "very remorseful that this happened,'' his lawyer, Arthur Garton said, and hoped that some time he and his sister could be reunited to "face this together on their own terms and deal with it.''

The boy was ordered freed on a $ 10,000 personal recognisance bond. As a condition of the bond, the siblings must remain apart, at least until the case is resolved.

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