We the people are asking for the resignation of Judge John Hall of Warren County New York after his decision to give 10 years probation to a convicted pedophile. Someone with this much leniency for a monster who robbed children of innocence and security needs to step down as his judgement is no longer  reasonable and just. This 6 year old girl was brave and spoke up, she deserved justice! Here is the Mother of one of the victims statement. 

 

WARNING: CONTENT REGARDING CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE MAY BE DISTURBING.

The mother of one of David Saladin of Fort Edward's child sexual abuse victims from Child Care at Willow's Bend daycare in Queensbury has requested that her statement and thoughts be shared with our community. She wishes to remain anonymous to protect the privacy of her daughter. The following are her words:
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"David Saladin of Fort Edward is a free man, after admitting to sexually abusing two children, ages 4 and 6, while they were at Child Care at Willow's Bend daycare in Queensbury. One of those children is my daughter.

Despite confessing to his crimes, David Saladin was given a plea deal and sentenced to probation. He pleaded guilty to three felony counts of child sexual abuse and two misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child.

David Saladin is getting married on October 26 and there may be children present.

David Saladin kept his eyes closed during my entire statement, and the emotional statement of the mother of his other victim, who described how his abuse has shattered her family.

Moments later, as I was walking back to my seat in the courtroom, David Saladin and his attorney, Bill Montgomery, were laughing and joking with Judge Hall as if nothing we said mattered. As if we didn't matter. As if our children didn't matter.

David Saladin informed the judge that he was getting married on October 26. He requested that CHILDREN be allowed at the rehearsal dinner on October 25 and wedding on October 26.

Judge Hall granted his request, with the caveat that Mr. Saladin not be alone with any child.

According to the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, only 46% of convicted child sexual abusers ever go to prison.

Brave children step forward and tell of their trauma, over and over again, just to have their abuser walk free in more than half of the cases in which there is a conviction.

This is due to the fact that many cases lack physical evidence because of the length of time it takes for children to disclose, and parents like me are often understandably reluctant to re-traumatize their children by proceeding with a criminal trial.

I believe that there should be mandatory minimum sentences for child sexual abuse offenders. No family should be forced into accepting a plea deal this lenient simply because a predator chose to victimize the smallest and most vulnerable people in our society.

I share this because I want to raise awareness for how our legal system protects these predators, and because our community must be aware that there is a monster roaming free.

The following is my victim's impact statement to Judge Hall, given on October 16, 2019. Graphic description of the abuse has been redacted, but the content may still be disturbing.

"Judge Hall,

I want to start by thanking the Jason Palmer; the Warren County Sheriff's and New York State Police investigators; the CARE Center; Ben Smith, Matt Burin and the DA’s office; and especially Manon Affinito for their diligence, support, and communication throughout this very long and stressful process.

Thank you for allowing me to give my young daughter a voice today. I deliberately will not use her name, nor will I use the convicts. This monster sitting before you is not worthy of hearing my daughter’s name spoken aloud. I hope the world remembers her as the nameless warrior who slayed a demented and perverse monster, and I hope the world remembers him as the disgusting coward who deserves nothing but misery for the rest of his pathetic life.

When my daughter was six years old, she believed in magic. She believed in fairies, and unicorns, and the goodness in people. When she was six years old, she was in first grade, learning how to spell, and how to add, and how to read. When she was six years old, she believed that if she only wanted it enough, she could fly with the birds. When she was six years old, she smiled at strangers, and she sang all the time, and when she dreamed, those dreams were sweet, and uncomplicated, and pure.

When she was six years old, I sent her to Child Care at Willow’s Bend daycare with Mary Chris Dennett, a woman I believed when she said that she would keep my daughter safe. When she was six years old, a shameless, bold, brazen predator whom she had just met, who didn’t even yet know her name, [graphic description of sexual abuse] and stole her innocence for his perverse pleasure. When she was six years old, this monster [graphic description of sexual abuse] and he wouldn’t stop when she said stop. When she was six years old, she learned that she was not safe, that people are scary, that the world can hurt, that just because someone is bigger and stronger than she is means that they can violate her, that her body doesn’t belong to herself, that her small, child’s body can be used for someone else’s sexual gratification.

I didn’t know this monster. We had never been introduced. I had no knowledge of his presence at Child Care at Willow’s Bend daycare, but that didn’t stop him from abusing my small child’s little body and forever altering the trajectory of her young life.

On the few days that my daughter attended Child Care at Willow’s Bend, Mary Chris Dennett would meet me at the door when I came to pick her up. She would tell me glowing lies about how much fun my daughter was having in her care. My daughter would get in the car, and she would scream and she would tantrum. Every single time. I would tell her that if she didn’t stop acting like that, I wouldn’t let her go back to that daycare anymore. So she would scream louder. She told me later that she was hoping that she could be “bad” enough to make me follow through on that threat, and to never send her back to that house of horror. She told me that she would hug me extra hard when I dropped her off because she didn’t want me to let her go. She tried everything she could, in her tiny little 6 year old heart, to get me to listen to what she so desperately wanted me to understand.

She was 6 years old.

When she was 6 years old, my daughter started to have nightmares of the abuse. She would wake up, screaming and crying, every single night, and not be able to go back to sleep. She became fearful. Fearful of the dark, fearful of strangers, fearful of being away from me. Her school work suffered, her relationships suffered, everything in her life suffered. My previously fiercely independent, confident little girl, retreated into a shell of herself. She became moody, angry, tearful at the drop of a hat. Her outbursts would last for hours, with her tiny body wracked with sobs, so scared and so sad and so angry, and not knowing why. How could she? How could anyone, no matter what age, know how to process what she had experienced at just 6 years old? How could she wrap her tiny little mind around the fact that someone who was supposed to protect her instead used his power and position as a daycare worker to assault her repeatedly, shamelessly, brazenly, in full view of anyone who cared enough to be paying attention.

My daughter attended Mary Chris Dennett’s daycare less than a handful of times. This monster didn’t groom her, he didn’t get to know her, he didn’t even know her name. These are the actions of someone who has been blatantly abusing children and getting away with it, for a very, very long time. There was no fear, there was no hiding, there was nothing but pure, predatory, emboldened evil.

In February of 2018, after my daughter found the courage to tell me that she had been sexually abused at Child Care at Willow’s Bend, the monster was questioned and gave a full confession. I felt relieved; I thought it was over. I had no idea that the monster and his attorney would further victimize my daughter and our family by stretching out this process for 602 days, forcing her to retell the story of her repeated sexual abuse again and again, forcing her to begin trial preparations just days before she started third grade, and forcing her to feel scared and vulnerable over and over again, preventing her from truly beginning the healing process for 602 days.

602 days we waited, we lost sleep, we tried to give my little girl answers when there weren’t any. 602 days we were forced to wait while the monster and his attorney played the system, exploited the young age of the monster’s victims, and took advantage of their legal upper hand. 602 days we waited before the monster and his attorney, Mr. Montgomery, finally, at the last minute, forced our hand, forced us to agree to allow this monster to roam free simply because we could not bear the prospect of forcing my little girl to endure yet another trauma of being ripped apart at trial.

I would give anything for this monster to have sexually assaulted me instead of my sweet little baby girl. I would give anything to have had the opportunity to fight back as an adult, to take him to trial, and to make him suffer the consequences that he so very much deserves. He is getting off virtually scot free because he chose to victimize the most vulnerable among us, small children who couldn’t speak up, and who couldn’t fight back, and who didn’t have a voice. He chose to be weak, and cowardly, and make tiny children his chosen victims. And then he chose to take the coward’s way out, again and again, to take no actual responsibility for his choices, to portray himself as the victim, and to manipulate the system to avoid paying for his crimes against helpless, terrified, forever scarred little children. 602 days this monster refused to take personal responsibility for his actions.

He does not believe that repeatedly sexually abusing these small children was wrong. That is the scariest thing of all. THAT is what makes him an extreme and present danger to our community, and THAT is why he needs to be behind bars, on registries, and supervised for the rest of his life. If he won’t accept responsibility for what he has already done, for what he has confessed to doing, what makes anyone think he won’t easily do it again?

He said so himself on his online, public postings looking for children to “babysit”: he prefers children younger than 8 years old. His words. If he won’t take responsibility for his “preferences”, than someone else has to do it for him. Please let it be you, Judge.

I don’t know how to stop a monster such as this, but this is what I do know. I know that my daughter will live. She will flourish. She will not be defeated. She is a survivor, not a victim. She will shine as bright a light as one can possibly shine, and she will blossom into her life knowing that she, at 6 years old, defeated a monster. She stood up, she, the last in what I fully believe is a very long line of victimized and terrorized and abused children at Child Care at Willow’s Bend daycare, and she said ENOUGH. She stood up, and she took him down. He picked the WRONG child to abuse. She is brave, and she is good, and she is strong. She is the pride of my life, and she will no doubt do great things with hers.

I believe in karma, Judge Hall, and I believe in you. I believe that you know how lenient this sentence will be because of the plea deal we were forced into accepting by this remorseless monster, and I believe that it will pain you to hand it down. I implore you to punish this monster to the fullest extent that you are able. This legal horror is over for us; may that monster’s karma be just beginning. Thank you."