So what about this is most troubling?
On one hand you have the disgusting John Jerome Speights Jr., 45, the father of 30 with paternity claims from more than a dozen women, who has been convicted of raping and impregnating his 13-year-old niece. He dares to call himself “Papa Love.”
Then there was the courtroom reaction of the large Speights-family contingent to his guilty verdict.
“Papa Incest” got life in prison — prefaced by Circuit Judge Chet A. Tharpe’s unprecedented character assessment: “You are devoid of any moral values.”
The family’s reaction? An outburst of anger. Wailing. Cursing. Menacing looks. Attitude. But none of it directed at the loathsome “Papa Predator.”
The visceral outrage was aimed at the system. At the sentence.
The judge left the bench for his own protection. Deputies rushed the victim’s mother to a back room. Emergency exits were opened to usher out the Speights family.
As degenerate and perverted as the crime was, it wasn’t the most repulsive — or alarming — part of the trial and sentencing. It was Speights family values. This societal cancer may not have run its course.