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John Grogan | Justice blinded by a résumé

By John Grogan

Inquirer Columnist

 

 

Just imagine...

 

A bright, young woman newly arrived in Philadelphia to begin classes at
the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Just imagine a sexual predator who lurks in the wings, waiting for
unsuspecting victims. Imagine him leveling the coed in his crosshairs,
befriending her, winning her trust, drinking with her, then leading her
into a darkened office on campus where he sexually assaults her.

 

Now, imagine he is a janitor or handyman or perhaps a drifter living on
the streets of West Philadelphia. What sentence would you expect for
this opportunistic sociopath?

 

Five years in prison? Ten? Twenty?

 

But Tracy McIntosh was not a janitor or drifter. Until his forced
resignation, he was a celebrated, nationally renowned scientist at Penn
and head of its prestigious Head Injury Research Center. He lived in a
comfortable home in Media. Justice for professor McIntosh was
exceedingly kind.

 

Would you believe 111/2 to 23 months of "house arrest" in that same
comfortable home with his wife and two daughters? Criminals get harsher
sentences for shoplifting candy bars.

 

There was no question of McIntosh's guilt. In December, facing damning
evidence and with a dozen other women lined up to testify about their
own oily run-ins with him, he pleaded no contest to sexual assault.

 

The right résumé

 

Pennsylvania sentencing guidelines called for a minimum sentence of 51/2
years behind bars. But Common Pleas Judge Rayford A. Means seemed
impressed with McIntosh's credentials and the work he has done for
brain-injury and stroke victims.

 

District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham, who is appealing the sentence as
"inordinately lenient," said house arrest followed by 12 years of
probation for a calculated sexual assault did not even rise to the level
of a wrist slap. Carol Tracy, executive director of the
Philadelphia-based Women's Law Project, noted the sentence was "barely a
sentence" at all.

 

The victim's relatives expressed outrage. None of it mattered.

 

Justice, we learn as children, is blind. Blind to race and class and
profession. And yet the deviant professor remains at home while others
convicted of similar crimes serve hard time.

 

Tell me justice is blind.

 

In sending McIntosh home with an ankle bracelet, Means said he could not
ignore all the good work the professor had done. He should have asked
the victim, now 26, if it was any less traumatic being sexually
assaulted by a celebrated neurologist than by a plumber.

 

McIntosh's lawyer, Thomas Bergstrom, has tried to spin the judge's
decision as equitable. He characterized McIntosh's conduct as
"inexcusable" but "not a violent crime."

 

Oh, really? The victim would beg to differ. One question for the
counselor: Knowing what he knows about his client, whose lechery was one
of the worst-kept secrets on campus, would he encourage his daughter or
niece to drop by the professor's house for coffee? No, I didn't think
so.

 

Beyond violent

 

McIntosh's crime was beyond violent. It was an insidious violation of
trust. The victim is the niece of McIntosh's former college roommate.
The uncle had advised her to look up his longtime friend when she got to
town.

 

McIntosh welcomed her to campus by taking her out drinking and,
prosecutors alleged but never proved, slipping her a strong animal
sedative that left her violently ill and incapacitated, unable to fight
him off. This crime was not only violent; it was vile, as well.

 

And while justice was not blind in this case, McIntosh's university
appears to have been happily blind to his increasingly blatant predatory
behavior. He was a research juggernaut who brought in hundreds of
thousands of dollars in research grants to Penn. Did his bosses at the
university simply not want to know about the dark side of their rock
star?

 

I called McIntosh at home Friday, and he picked up on the first ring. He
declined to comment for this column, as I expected, but what I wasn't
expecting was how polite and gentle, even meek, he sounded on the phone.
It was the voice of a man you just might trust your daughter with.

 

That, the world now knows, would be a big, big mistake.

 

 

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Contact John Grogan at 610-313-8132 or 
.
 Read
his recent work at http://go.philly.com/grogan.  ;


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