Protester angry over lack of indictment

Published 12:00 am Friday, July 14, 2006

“Try saving your daughter from a rapist,” the placard read. “Down with area courts good ole boy mentality.”

Kirk Saltsman, of Greenup, County, Ky., was a man on a mission Wednesday. He walked repeatedly around the Lawrence County Courthouse carrying a sign in protest of a grand jury’s decision last week to not indict a man accused of raping his daughter.

“She’s suffering,” he said, wiping tears out of his eyes. “She’s seeing a psychiatrist. … I am so angry right now. I assumed this boy would be indicted.”

Email newsletter signup

Saltsman said in February, his daughter met a man at a bar in Huntington, W.Va. When she was driving to her home in Kentucky, the man called her on her cellular phone and asked if she would meet him at a gasoline station in Ironton.

They met, spoke for a while and the man suggested they go elsewhere together. She then followed him in her car to his friend’s house, where they dropped off his car. He then joined her in hers and they drove around, eventually winding up at St. Mary’s Cemetery on Coryville Road, Saltsman said.

They parked the car and walked around for a while and before the reported rape occurred in the back seat of the car, Saltsman said.

Saltsman said his daughter used a Swiss Army knife in her purse to get the man off of her. With the knife between her legs, he said his daughter drove the alleged attacker back to his car and drove herself to Kentucky.

Police there referred her to the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office and to Hope’s Place, the agency in Ashland, Ky., that cares for sexual assault victims.

A grand jury meeting last week returned a no-bill in the case, meaning they did not indict the man accused in the case.

“We presented evidence to the grand jury and the grand jury didn’t feel there was enough evidence for an indictment,” Assistant Lawrence County Prosecutor Brigham Anderson said.

“If we receive new evidence in the case we would present it to the grand jury again. The grand jury, just like a petit jury, is made up of members of the community. They didn’t feel there was enough evidence to indict.”

Saltsman said he is frustrated not only that the grand jury did not indict the man, but that local authorities did not often return their telephone calls and would not tell him anything about the case since his daughter is an adult.

“I have to ask questions for her, she is in no shape to do this right now,” he said. “There was such disrespect, no common courtesy.”

Saltsman said his daughter had been raped once before and was just getting back to the point where she would go out and socialize when this occurred.

As for the protest, Saltsman said he prayed about what to do and God told him to do it.

“I don’t know what else to do,” he said. “I can’t seem to get any help. All I want to do is get her help.”