Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has filed a motion to stop a convicted rapist from gaining custody of an 8-year-old boy conceived during the rape. In court papers filed with the 24th Judicial Circuit Court in Sanilac County, the attorney general asks Judge Gregory Ross to set aside a consent judgment.
Ross had signed a paternity order on Sept. 22 naming Christopher Mirasolo as the father of the boy. Mirasolo was ordered to pay child support and was granted joint custody and parenting time.
On Tuesday, Ross stayed the order and set a hearing for 1:30 p.m. Oct. 17. The attorney general’s motion asks the judge not to award custody to Mirasolo.
In a brief accompanying the motion, Laura Moody of the attorney general’s office writes that the state Legislature in 2016 enacted legislation to prevent someone who commits a rape resulting in the birth of child, but who is not convicted of a serious criminal sexual conduct offense, from gaining custody of that child.
The law, she wrote, “was enacted to prevent this situation. The law meant to protect victims of sexual assault was not given effect in this case.”
She also wrote the state has an “interest in seeing that survivors of sexual assault who conceive a child as a result of that assault may raise that child without the fear of having to share custody with the person who assaulted them; without the dread of disclosing personal details of their and their child’s life with the person who victimized them; and without having to relive the assault again and again.”
