Texas fraternity president spared jail following rape accusation plea deal

The former president of a fraternity at a private Christian university in Texas has been spared jail time after being accused of raping a fellow student at a party, in a decision which has devastated the victim and her family.

Jacob Anderson, 23, was accused of repeatedly raping a woman at a party in 2016, after she was plied with drink.

A Texas judge on Monday accepted a plea bargain, allowing the former Baylor university student to walk free and serve only community service.

The woman, who was 19 at the time, attacked Anderson and the district attorneys in her victim impact statement – expressing her fury that they did not show up in court for Monday’s decision.

"If I had the courage to come back to Waco and face my rapist and testify, you could at least have had enough respect for me to show up today,” she said.

“You both will have to live with this decision to let a rapist run free in society without any warning to future victims.”

Turning to the man she accused of repeatedly raping her, she said: “It must be horrible to be you. To know what you did to me. To know you are a rapist. To know that you almost killed me. To know that you ruined my life, stole my virginity and stole many other things from me.”

She told police she woke up choking on her own vomit.

“By the grace of God I am alive today to fight this injustice,” she wrote.

“One breath either way and Jacob Walter Anderson would be on trial for murder.”

Anderson had been indicted on sexual assault charges and the deal allowed him to plead no contest to a lesser charge of unlawful restraint.

A no contest plea means a person does not admit guilt, but will offer no defence.

He was expelled from Baylor after a university investigation, and be placed on deferred probation. Anderson, the ex-Phi Delta Theta fraternity president, also agreed to seek counselling and pay a $400 fine. He will not be forced to register as a sex offender.

Abel Reyna, McLennan County district attorney, defended the plea deal in October.

"This office stands by the plea offered and believes we have achieved the best result possible with the evidence at hand," he said, adding that evidence did not support the allegation that the victim may have been drugged.

Judge Strother said on Monday that in making the decision he had the benefit of arguments filed by attorneys on both sides, and a background report assembled by a probation department.

He said much of the comments he saw on social media or in emails were "not fully informed, misinformed or totally uninformed."

Yet the decision was not the first time that the judge has sentenced men accused of sex crimes to probation.

Last year, he sentenced a man to deferred probation after he pleaded guilty in the 2013 rape of a former Baylor student. The judge ordered the man to pay for the woman's counselling. The man told police the woman had been drunk, according to an affidavit.

And earlier this year he sentenced a man to felony probation for the sexual assault of a former Baylor student, a punishment that came with 30 days in jail. The man, who was a student at the time and told authorities the sex was consensual, was allowed to serve the jail time on the weekends.

The Anderson case bore strong parallels to that of Brock Turner, the Stanford university swimmer who was convicted in 2016 of sexually assaulting an intoxicated woman outside a fraternity party.

A judge in that case rejected a prosecutor's demand for a lengthy prison term and instead sentenced Turner to six months in jail. He was released from jail in September 2016 after serving three months.