Back in the 90s, an evil pervert in California named Cody Woodson Klemp was convicted of repeatedly raping his own niece when she was just fourteen years old. She told police that “it would happen as often as he could make it happen.” He was found to have raped other young girls as well. When he was finally caught and taken to trial, the judge sentenced him to 170 years in prison for his crimes. But now the California Parole Board has approved his release after less than thirty years behind bars. Needless to say, his victims are both outraged about his lenient treatment and frightened that he might seek revenge or do the same thing to other young women. (CBS News)

A victim of a convicted rapist is outraged after the California Parole Board approved his release, less than 30 years into his 170-year sentence.

“I’m most afraid that he is going to harm, damage, ruin other women like he’s done to me,” one victim said.

The victim was talking about her uncle Cody Woodson Klemp, who was imprisoned for repeatedly raping her three decades ago. She was 14 years old. He was in his 30s.

Although the parole board has approved the release, Klemp isn’t a free man yet. The approval is being appealed by the District Attorney and must be approved by Governor Gavin Newsom, who will meet with the victim prior to making a decision. Hopefully, he will find a way to reverse this miscarriage of justice.

And it would be a serious miscarriage indeed. If you look further into Klemp’s background, he was a serial offender starting at an early age. This wasn’t some one-off case of domestic violence. The niece told police that she couldn’t even add up how many times he raped her in the early nineties. But at that point, he had previously been convicted of rape in 1976 and attempted rape in 1981. He had pulled a girl off of a bicycle and raped her right by the side of the road. His parole officer reported that he had threatened to kill his niece for reporting his attacks if he ever got free.

So how did the niece wind up being vulnerable to her uncle to begin with? As it turns out, the Riverside Child Welfare Agency placed her there for adoption. They either didn’t know about his criminal record or, if they were aware, they brushed it aside and placed her there anyway. The entire saga is inexcusable, and now it could potentially get even worse.

Klemp could potentially be the beneficiary of a “justice reform” policy in California known as the Elderly Parole Program. It allows prisoners over the age of fifty to qualify for parole if they have served more than twenty years behind bars. But the release isn’t supposed to be automatic and the Parole Board is required to take other extenuating circumstances into account. What were they thinking in this case?

When you see someone who has received a 170-year prison sentence, that should send a message or at least give you pause. That’s a signal that a judge was dealing with a convict who was ineligible for the death penalty, but they wanted to ensure that the person died behind bars and could not be a menace to society again. That clearly seems to be the case with Cody Woodson Klemp. Short of going on a murder spree, it’s difficult to imagine many people more deserving of being locked up and throwing away the key. And yet, thanks to California’s “reform-minded” Parole Board, he could conceivably be turned loose. Let’s hope that Given Newsom gets an earful from his victim and decides to do the right thing for a change. Klemp has already threatened to murder his niece if he’s released. If he makes good on that promise, Newsom will have blood on his hands.