News and Commentary

Woman Who Falsely Accused A 13-Year-Old Of Rape And Allegedly Distributed Child Porn And Groomed A Teenage Girl For Sex Gets NO Jail Time

   DailyWire.com
Lonely teenage boy in front of black background looking down - stock photo
Westend61 via Getty Images

A Warwick, Rhode Island, pastor admitted to falsely accusing a 13-year-old boy of raping his 13-year-old girlfriend and violating an order that prohibited him from contacting the girl.

Her false accusations against the boy led to him being held at a juvenile detention facility and being forced to wear an electronic monitoring device, The Providence Journal reported. The pastor, Kelly Shannon, 48, is also a Christian rock singer, but what she has admitted to and has been accused of are anything but Christian.

Shannon pleaded “no contest” in exchange for reducing a charge of possessing child pornography down to a charge of “fraudulently using a computer to send and receive photographs,” the Journal reported.

Police found photos of a teenage boy’s erect penis on Shannon’s phone, The Metro reported. The ordeal began when Shannon started helping the boy and his girlfriend with their homework and taking the boy out for various trips. At some point, Shannon performed a fake marriage ceremony for the young couple. The boy’s mother found out about the fake ceremony and took away his phone. Shannon reportedly bought him a new one, which the mother also found. The mother then got a restraining order against Shannon.

Shannon, according to the Journal, threatened the boy with arrest if his mother didn’t get the restraining order lifted.

This is when Shannon accused the young teenager of raping his girlfriend. She went so far as to tell the young girl what to say in order to back up the claims. Shannon is also accused, according to Metro, of making the girl perform sex acts with other young boys and coaching her on how to perform those acts. The girl reportedly told teachers at her school that Shannon had asked her to lie about being raped, prompting school officials to call the police.

Shannon has also been accused of taking nude photos of a female teenage relative, which she then reportedly passed around to young boys that she knew.

In court, the teenage boy said that he thought he was “a good judge of character, but at 13, I didn’t have the trust-your-gut instinct I wish I had.”

“[Shannon] was someone that mastered the art of deception and manipulation. I trusted her, an adult figure, and unknowingly over time became a victim in her web of lies,” the boy said, according to a transcript from Metro. “It would take a hundred pages to list all your lies, manipulations, and abuse of the legal and justice system. You may have a few years of punishment, but I have to live with what you did to me for the rest of my life.”

The Journal reported that they boy is now “suffering from PTSD, anxiety, anger and trust issues in the aftermath” of what Shannon had done to him.

So, what punishment did Shannon end up receiving for what she did? Essentially, nothing.

She was facing five years in prison (still a short amount of time for what she did) for the computer charge. Instead, she will serve 18 months on home confinement while the remaining three-and-a-half years were suspended with probation. She also received one year of home confinement for each of the false reports she made to police, but her sentences are to be served concurrently, meaning she only received two years of home confinement for falsely accusing a teenager of rape, possessing child pornography, and allegedly forcing a teenage girl to perform sex acts.

Shannon’s plea deal led to five additional charges being dropped, and most infuriating of all, she won’t have to register as a sex offender. No man in a similar position would get such a deal.

Got a tip worth investigating?

Your information could be the missing piece to an important story. Submit your tip today and make a difference.

Submit Tip
The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  Woman Who Falsely Accused A 13-Year-Old Of Rape And Allegedly Distributed Child Porn And Groomed A Teenage Girl For Sex Gets NO Jail Time