A Superior Court judge has admitted to violating the state’s code of judicial conduct by making bizarre, flippant remarks about rape and domestic violence. In sentencing a man convicted of sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl, he reportedly said, “From what I’ve read, this was not someone who was — I hate to use the phrase ‘asking for it.’ There are girls out there who seem to be temptresses, and this does not appear to be anything like that.”
Judge Timothy Dooley of Nome, Alaska admitted to making the comments during a disciplinary hearing, KTOO reports. The original complaint was brought against him in May, after the state Commission on Judicial Comment said they’d received several anonymous complaints about his conduct. One complaint came after he told his courtroom that he couldn’t “slap around” a witness in a domestic violence case to get her to speak up on the stand. And from Alaska Dispatch News, a laundry list of the other statements that got him into hot water:
• On May 29, 2013, Dooley said during a sentencing, “Has anything good ever come out of drinking other than sex with a pretty girl?”
• On Oct. 29, 2013, during a sentencing, Dooley said, “What you’ve done with this young girl, it’s a strange thing, routinely done in Afghanistan where they marry 6-year-old girls. In our society, and in the society of the local tribal communities, supposed to be totally forbidden.”
• On Nov. 5, 2013, Dooley said during a sentencing, where the victim was a 14-year-old girl, “This was not someone who was, and I hate to use the phrase, ‘asking for it.’ There are girls out there that seem to be temptresses. And this does not seem to be anything like that.”
• On Aug. 12, 2014, Dooley said during a civil trial involving parties that did not have attorneys that, “I’m gonna enforce these oaths and they’re enforceable with a two-year sentence for perjury. And I’d be the sentencing judge. I also have a medieval Christianity that says if you violate an oath, you’re going to hell. You all may not share that, but I’m planning to populate hell.”
• On Aug. 20, 2014, Dooley made off-the-record comments to the jury about a soft-spoken witness, according to the complaint. “I’m sorry folks, but I can’t slap her around to make her talk louder,” the complaint accuses Dooley of saying.
Dooley initially denied wrongdoing, but KTOO reports that at his disciplinary hearing, he reversed course and apologized: “I probably caused grief for some victim, perhaps. I’m also regretful that I caused trouble for the staff at the Nome court. They don’t deserve to have a judge who goes off the high dive and lands on the rocks.”
Dooley will be publicly censured, assigned a “mentor” judge, and encouraged to undergo training on “gender sensitivity, cultural awareness, and domestic violence.”
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Screengrab via KTUU, Big Time Small-Time Dicks logo by staff male Bobby Finger.