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Article from Walton Sun
PANAMA CITY - A South Walton County firefighter's rape charge was reduced to a misdemeanor Monday, over the objections of the alleged victim. Fred Austin Steele, 38, of Panama City Beach, was looking at a maximum of 15 years in prison if he had been convicted as charged of sexual battery. But Monday, Steele accepted a plea offer from prosecutor Pat Faucheux to drop the charge to misdemeanor simple battery and a sentence of one year's probation.
Faucheux told Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet the prosecution felt it could not maintain the burden of proving this case to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
As part of his probation, Steele will have to write a "sincere letter of apology," do 20 live presentations to groups of men or teens on the subject of "no means no," and pay $723 in medical expenses and lost wages to the woman.
"The last thing you want to do," Faucheux told Steele, "is to make a joke out of these presentations. Learn from this experience."
Faucheux said the presentations were to be videotaped and given to him so he and the alleged victim could review them.
State Attorney Glenn Hess said after court that new information, which had not been revealed to the arresting officers, came to light during depositions in the case. He did not go into detail, but said the new information made it impossible to bring the case to a jury.
According to the police report, Steele was arrested Aug. 1 after a former girlfriend accused him of raping her a few nights before.
The woman told Overstreet on Monday that she did not approve of the plea deal.
Overstreet told her he was going to accept the plea deal and said he would pray that she would be able to move on with her life. Because Steele had no prior convictions, Overstreet stayed with his usual custom of not adjudicating first offenders guilty of a misdemeanor. That means Steele technically was not convicted of a crime.
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