Word: polumbo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...September afternoon in 1974 Elaine Summers, 23, then a University of Hartford senior, was studying in a park when a man brandishing a piece of broken glass threatened to rape her. She talked him out of it. Two months later police arrested Joseph Polumbo Jr., 20. Polumbo pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of assault, but was set free when the judge gave him a suspended sentence...
That did not please Summers, by then a law student. She filed a civil suit against Polumbo in 1975, alleging both physical and emotional wounds. A court awarded her $12,000 in damages, but Polumbo did not pay. So Summers' attorney invoked a rarely used 1842 Connecticut statute that allows the indefinite imprisonment of a wrongdoer who has not paid his damages, as long as the creditor pays the prisoner's upkeep. For twelve days Summers kept her attacker locked in the Hartford jail, a revenge that cost...
Last week a Connecticut judge freed Polumbo until the court can decide whether the jail-'em-yourself law is constitutional. "If a woman can be attacked, take her assailant to trial and come away emptyhanded, women will be discouraged from going to court," says Summers, now working as a lawyer in Hartford. "I wanted to show assault victims that there is a legal remedy." The message may be getting through. A Connecticut women's group has begun passing out flyers reading, "For one dollar an hour you can keep a rapist in jail...
| 1 |