A teenage rape victim has slammed an Illinois judge after he decided to reverse her attacker’s conviction – saying she ‘cried so much’ when she found out the news.
Adams County Judge Robert Adrian had originally found then-18-year-old Drew Clinton of Taylor, Michigan, guilty of sexually assaulting 16-year-old Cameron Vaughan during a May 2021 graduation party.
Victim Vaughan, now 18, described the horrific assault. She said she woke up with a pillow smothering her face as she felt what was happening to her body.
But at Clinton’s sentencing hearing, months after his conviction, Adrian said he had served ‘plenty’ of time behind bars – 148 days – and that while he couldn’t sentence him to time served, he could overturn the verdict and set him free.
In turn, the Illinois Courts Commission removed Adrian from the bench on Friday after it held a three-day hearing in Chicago following a complaint against him.
Following Adrian’s removal from his duties as a judge, Vaughan told NBC News: ‘I cried. I cried so much. I was just.. it was unbelievable.’
Vaughan said that she is pleased that Adrian was removed and said: ‘He needs to see what he did to me, how he made me feel and know that I’m the reason you’re not a judge anymore’
Former Illinois Judge Robert Adrian decided to set Drew Clinton free after he spent 148 days behind bars for assaulting Vaughan at a graduation party in May 2021
The state Judicial Inquiry Board filed a complaint against Adrian after the judge threw out Clinton’s (pictured) conviction in January 2022
She added: ‘He hurt me. He changed my life, and nothing happened to him.
‘He needs to see what he did to me, how he made me feel and know that I’m the reason you’re not a judge anymore.’
Vaughan said that though she didn’t get the result that she imagined, she thinks that justice was still served because Adrian was removed from the bench.
‘I didn’t have faith in the justice system because of what he had done, but it has definitely been restored,’ she said.
The state Judicial Inquiry Board filed a complaint against Adrian after the judge threw out Clinton’s conviction in January 2022.
Vaughan waived her right to anonymity and said that at the time of the incident, she passed out drunk in the basement and woke up to find Clinton sexually assaulting her while holding a pillow over her face.
‘I woke up, had my face covered with a pillow and I could feel what was happening,’ she said.
Clinton claimed they had consensual sex and that she was not as drunk as she claimed she was.
At the time, the judge said: ‘He has no prior record, none whatsoever. By law, the court is supposed to sentence this young man to the Department of Corrections… This court will not do that. That is not just.
‘There is no way for what happened in this case that this teenager should go to the Department of Corrections. I will not do that.’
According to the state’s law, Clinton should have served a minimum of four years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.
In an interview with NBC News on Monday, Adrian said that he stands by his reversal.
‘Why would I want to send a person who’s not guilty to the Department of Correction? Of course, I’ll reverse,’ he said.
Cameron Vaughan, 18, has slammed former Judge Robert Adrian after he was removed from the bench on Friday after he reversed her attacker’s sexual assault conviction
During an interview with NBC News on Monday that he stands by his reversal decision and that he ‘didn’t believe’ Vaughan’s accusations against Clinton
‘There’s a lot of judges that wouldn’t. They’d wait and say, “Oh, well, if I made the mistake, the appellate court [will] straighten it out”.’
He went on to say that he ‘didn’t believe’ Vaughan’s accusations against Clinton and that he ‘made a mistake, and I corrected my mistake.’
The decision from the courts commission said Adrian ‘engaged in multiple instances of misconduct’ and ‘abused his position of power to indulge his own sense of justice while circumventing the law.’
They also said that they did not believe him after he ‘intentionally subverted the law and then lied about it under oath to serve his own interests,’ court documents said.
The complaint also said that the former judge kicked out a prosecutor from the courtroom after they liked a social media post that was critical of him.
Adrian told the prosecutor: [‘I don’t get on social media, but my wife does, and she saw the thumbs-up you gave to people attacking me … I can’t be fair with you. Get out.’
The complaint also said that Adrian had acknowledged he was supposed to impose the mandatory four-year sentence against Clinton, but that he would not send him to prison.
The commission could have issued a reprimand, censure or suspension without pay, but its decision said it had ‘ample grounds’ for immediately removing Adrian from the bench in western Illinois’ Adams County.
According to court transcripts, after he reversed Clinton’s conviction, Adrian blamed parents and adults for ‘having parties for teenagers, and they allow coeds and female people to swim in their underwear in their swimming pool. And, no, underwear is not the same as swimming suits.’
Vaughan waived her right to anonymity and said that at the time of the incident, she passed out drunk in the basement and woke up to find Clinton sexually assaulting her while holding a pillow over her face
In response to his removal, Adrian said that the decision is ‘totally a miscarriage of justice. I did what was right. I’ve always told the truth about it’
Now that Adrian has set Clinton free, he cannot be tried again for the same crime under the Fifth Amendment. A motion to expunge Clinton’s record was denied in February 2023
He added: ‘It’s just — they allow 16-year-olds to bring liquor to a party. They provide liquor to underage people, and you wonder how these things happen. Well, that’s how these things happen. The court is totally disgusted with that whole thing.’
In response to his removal, Adrian said that the decision is ‘totally a miscarriage of justice. I did what was right. I’ve always told the truth about it.’
Adams County court records showed that Clinton’s guilty verdict was overturned because prosecutors had failed to meet the burden of proof to prove Clinton guilty.
But in Friday’s decision, the commission wrote that it found Adrian’s claim that ‘he reversed his guilty finding based on his reconsideration of the evidence and his conclusion that the State had failed to prove its case to be a subterfuge – respondent’s attempt to justify the reversal post hoc.’
Clinton cannot be tried again for the same crime under the Fifth Amendment. A motion to expunge Clinton’s record was denied in February 2023.
‘Yeah, he blamed everybody else for what happened except for the person who sexually assaulted me, blamed everybody else,’ Vaughan said about Adrian.
‘Because what [Clinton] did was not right. I mean, it ruined me,’ she added.