text: SULPHUR, Okla. (AP) — An Oklahoma man who is legally blind has been sentenced to probation for raping a 13-year-old Texas girl at a church camp, after prosecutors cited his disability in agreeing to a plea deal that spares him prison time. 
   
   Benjamin Lawrence Petty, 36, pleaded guilty to attacking the girl in 2016, while she was attending the Falls Creek church camp in southern Oklahoma. Petty, who was a cook at the camp, tied a rope around the girl's wrists, raped her and threatened to hurt her if she told anyone, according to investigators. 
   
   Murray County Assistant District Attorney David Pyle said a major factor in his decision not to insist on prison time was that Petty was legally blind, the Oklahoman newspaper reports . But a group that works to prevent and eliminate sexual and domestic violence said the sentence sends the wrong message. 
   
   "Failure to hold perpetrators accountable regardless of their disabilities sends the wrong message to victims of crime," said Candida Manion, executive director of the nonprofit Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. 
   
   Under the terms of his probation, Petty will be required to wear an ankle monitor for 24 months, register as a sex offender and obtain treatment. But Manion said monitoring systems do not prevent sexual assaults and that state agencies that monitor sex offenders suffer from a lack of resources. 
   
   "There is a lack of knowledge about sexual assault within the criminal justice system, and what we know about violent offenders is that they will reoffend," Manion said. 
   
   Petty received three suspended 15-year prison sentences and was placed on probation after pleading guilty to felony counts of first-degree rape, forcible sodomy and rape by instrumentation. Documents indicate that he had no prior felony convictions. 
   
   Murray County District Attorney Craig Ladd said he was unaware of the details of Petty's negotiated plea before it was entered in court. 
   
   "I didn't authorize it," Ladd said. He said he plans to review the investigative reports surrounding the case before deciding whether to take any further action. 
   
   Petty's defense attorney, Lee Berlin, said "it's a misstatement of what the law and the facts are" to assert that Petty is not being held accountable. Berlin said Petty will be registered as an aggravated sex offender and must comply with rigorous assessment, polygraph and reporting requirements during his probation. 
   
   "He certainly is being punished," Berlin said. 
   
   The Falls Creek church camp is owned and operated by the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and is the largest youth camp in the nation. Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, was director at the camp for 13 years before stepping down in 2009 to run for Congress. 
   
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   Information from: The Oklahoman, http://www.newsok.com ||||| OKLAHOMA CITY – An Oklahoma man who pleaded guilty to brutally raping a 13-year-old girl at a church camp was sentenced to 15 years probation. 
   
   In the summer of 2016, a 13-year-old girl said she was raped by Benjamin Lawrence Petty, 36, while she was at Falls Creek. 
   
   Petty was reportedly a cook at the church camp. 
   
   Court documents show that the victim says that Petty told her he was going to show her how to perform tricks on a device he brought to the camp when he suddenly pulled her into his cabin. 
   
   “Petty closed the door to his bedroom, tied [victim’s] hands behind her back, pulled down her jeans, pushed her face down on his bed, and violently raped and sodomized her,” the document states. 
   
   He was later arrested and charged with forcible sodomy, first-degree rape, and rape by instrumentation. 
   
   Last week, Petty, of Spencer, pleaded guilty to the three felonies as part of a plea deal, NewsOK reports. 
   
   Court records show Petty received three 15-year suspended sentences in exchange for his guilty plea, all of which will run concurrently. 
   
   Murray County Assistant District Attorney David Pyle, who negotiated the guilty plea deal, told NewsOK that Petty is “legally blind” which was a major factor in his decision not to insist on prison time. 
   
   “The big thing is Mr. Petty is legally blind and the parents (of the victim) live out of state and this little girl lives out of state and didn’t want to make all the travels back and forth,” Pyle said. “The plea was negotiated with their permission.” 
   
   Pyle also said that Petty was legally blind at the time of the rape. 
   
   Last year, the girl’s family filed a civil lawsuit against the church that brought her to the camp from Terrell, Texas, along with County Estates Baptist Church in Midwest City, which brought Petty to the camp, and Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. 
   
   The victim’s family says all of the organizations failed to perform background checks, which may have protected the teen. 
   
   “Minimal effort on the part of the Defendants- before and/or during the camp- would have revealed that Petty was not an appropriate adult candidate to bring to , or remain at, the camp. In fact, Petty was a convicted criminal and it was readily apparent that he was involved in a lifestyle contrary and repugnant to the values espoused by the BGCO, Country Estates, Terrell and Falls Creek,” the lawsuit alleges. 
   
   The Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma released the following statement to News 4: ||||| SULPHUR — In an unusual plea deal, a Spencer man has been sentenced to 15 years on probation after pleading guilty to brutally raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl at Falls Creek church camp. 
   
   Benjamin Lawrence Petty, 36, tied rope around the girl's wrists, raped her and then threatened her with physical harm if she told anyone, according to the criminal charge. He was at the camp as a cook at the time of the 2016 offense. 
   
   Murray County Assistant District Attorney David Pyle, who negotiated the guilty plea, said Petty is "legally blind" and that was a major factor in his decision not to insist on prison time. 
   
   Petty was given the suspended sentence by District Judge Wallace Coppedge on Jan. 19 after entering a negotiated guilty plea to first-degree rape, forcible sodomy and rape by instrumentation. All three are felonies. 
   
   A woman in Judge Coppedge's office said he would not be making any statement. 
   
   "The big thing is Mr. Petty is legally blind and the parents (of the victim) live out of state and this little girl lives out of state and didn't want to make all the travels back and forth," Pyle said. "The plea was negotiated with their permission." 
   
   Petty was already legally blind at the time of the rape, Pyle said. Under terms of the probation, Petty will be required to wear an ankle monitor for 24 months, register as a sex offender and obtain treatment. He had no prior felony convictions, according to plea agreement documents. 
   
   Bruce Robertson, an attorney who is helping represent the victim's interests in a civil case, said the family's consent to the plea agreement came after "the family was told by the district attorney's office that the rapist would not serve any meaningful prison time due to his medical conditions." 
   
   "Based on this representation, the family did not object to the probationary sentence," Robertson said. "As a result of the plea, Benjamin Petty has been convicted of three felonies resulting from this incident, in which he bound and raped a 13-year-old, and is required to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his life, providing at least some protection for other potential victims." 
   
   The girl was raped in June 2016, while attending church camp at Falls Creek with a group from Terrell, Texas, according to court records filed in the civil lawsuit. 
   
   The rapist was brought to the camp to serve as a cook by The Country Estates Baptist Church of Midwest City, according to that lawsuit. 
   
   The First Baptist Church of Terrell is named as a defendant in the lawsuit along with the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and The Country Estates Baptist Church. 
   
   Currently pending in the civil case is a request by attorneys for the Midwest City church to question the rape victim about her "prior history of voluntary sexual activity." 
   
   Oklahoma County District Judge Aletia Timmons rejected the initial request, saying, "I don't think it has any — even a scintilla of any relevance to anything." 
   
   Attorneys for the church have asked the judge to reconsider her decision, claiming the victim talked with fellow campers about "her sexual activities and history with her then-boyfriend, including her fear that she might be pregnant with her boyfriend's child." 
   
   The church's attorneys contend that is relevant because it may have "contributed to her physical and emotional damages." 
   
   Attorneys for the victim claim the rape, itself, is responsible for the girl sustaining physical, emotional and psychological damages. 
   
   "We are saddened to see that the church has stooped to victim-blaming," Robertson said. "While we will not publicly debate the consensual sexual history, if any, of our teenage client, we fail to understand how the church can conceivably argue that any female's consensual relations are relevant to the trauma suffered as the result of a horrific, violent rape. The church has improperly used information in its motion which we believe is in violation of the court's protective order and we will not comment further at this time." 
   
   The Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma is a cooperative owned by a partnership of Oklahoma Baptist churches. It owns and operates Falls Creek, which is located in the Arbuckle Mountains in south-central Oklahoma. About 54,000 adolescent campers attend the camp during the summer camping season, according to the lawsuit. 
   
   The lawsuit accuses the churches and Baptist General Convention of negligence, contending they didn't do a good enough job of checking the backgrounds of workers, failed to adequately supervise sponsors and camp participants, and failed to train them on how to recognize and avoid predators. 
   
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target: – Benjamin Petty, a cook at a Baptist church camp in Oklahoma, pleaded guilty to tying up a 13-year-old camper, raping her, sodomizing her, and threatening her if she told anyone, the Oklahoman reports. Despite pleading guilty to three felonies, Petty was sentenced to 15 years probation with no prison time earlier this month. While Petty's attorney says his client "certainly is being punished"—he must wear an ankle monitor for 24 months and register as a sex offender—others find the sentence issued by Judge Wallace Coppedge on Jan. 19 lacking, according to the AP. "Failure to hold perpetrators accountable ... sends the wrong message to victims of crime," says the executive director of the Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. Assistant district attorney David Pyle says he didn't push for prison time because of the state of Petty's vision. "The big thing is Mr. Petty is legally blind and the parents (of the victim) live out of state and this little girl lives out of state and didn't want to make all the travels back and forth," he says. "The plea was negotiated with their permission." The victim's family has filed a civil suit against three churches involved in the camp—the largest youth camp in the US—alleging they didn't run background checks, KFOR reports. In the civil case, one of the churches is pushing for the victim's "prior history of voluntary sexual activity" to be introduced. An attorney for the victim says they "are saddened to see that the church has stooped to victim-blaming."