After a recess, Judge Arterton came back with her decision to sentence Perlitz to the maximum, nearly 20 years in prison, with additional conditions. She believes he is in danger of repeating his offenses, calling Perlitz someone who abused his position in the "worst kind of way."
Said Judge Arterton, "If one digs a well to supply water to those who have never had water, and then that person poisons the water, was building that well a good deed?"
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Perlitz sentenced to nearly 20 years for sex abuse in Haiti
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Human rights lawyer, Ezili Dantà ², of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, leaves the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse in downtown New Haven, Conn. during a break in the sentencing hearing for Douglas Perlitz on Tuesday December 21, 2010. Photo: Christian Abraham / Connecticut Post
NEW HAVEN -- It's a story filled with chapters on hope, dark desires, courage and persistence.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton wrote another one -- on justice -- sentencing Douglas Perlitz, the humanitarian turned sex predator, to 19 years and seven months in federal prison for his systematic and prolonged abuse of at least 16 homeless boys in a program he created to shelter, feed and educate them in Haiti.
"Our country places a high value on defending citizens' individual dignity and protecting every child," Arterton told Perlitz, 40, Fairfield University's 2002 commencement speaker. "This was a horrific crime ... In a country that's very hard to live in; he took away the childhood they were never able to have... ."
But Arterton didn't stop there. She looked directly at Perlitz and told him: "Survivors of sexual abuse have unique, long-lasting permanent injuries -- for these boys that's on top of being poor, hungry and homeless in Haiti. Now they have fingers pointed at them in derision."
Arterton set a March 7 hearing on the restitution that Perlitz must provide to help his victims.
She feared he might again "injure and abuse" children so she placed him on 10 years of U.S. Probation Department supervision following his release from prison and banned him from associating with children under 18. She ordered him to enter a sexual abuse counseling program during his confinement, which she recommended take place in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' medical facility in Devens, Mass.
"This is a vindication of those victimized by this atrocity as well as those who are not yet known," said Joseph M. Champagne, the mayor of South Toms River, N.J., and a member of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, several of whom attended the sentencing. "Now everyone knows that if you rape and sodomize someone in some other country you will be brought to the bar of justice."
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