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Bond revoked for former Hubbard mayor convicted of raping small child
warren
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Richard Keenan, former Hubbard mayor, is now in the Trumbull County Jail, where he will remain until he is sentenced on eight counts of rape of a small girl and other offenses against the girl.
Judge Peter Kontos revoked Keenan’s bond Monday afternoon without a hearing. Keenan, 66, of Moore Street in Hubbard, turned himself in to the jail Monday afternoon, arriving with his attorney, J. Gerald Ingram.
Keenan pleaded guilty Friday before Judge Kontos to eight counts of rape, four counts of attempted rape and eight counts of gross sexual imposition.
“Obviously we feel it’s inappropriate that he’s out,” Gabe Wildman, assistant county prosecutor said of Keenan in announcing the judge’s decision to reporters. “We feel given the nature of the crimes, what he’s pleaded guilty to, the public has an interest in him being incarcerated.”
Wildman filed a motion with the court Friday after Keenan’s hearing asking that Keenan’s bond be revoked.
The filing said bond is frequently revoked in cases involving aggravated murder, murder, rape and other serious offenses.
“This is done because the cloak of innocence has been removed by the defendant’s plea of guilty,” the filing said. “In our opinion, a person so convicted becomes a greater risk to flee or cause harm to others. In short, a 66-year-old child rapist has nothing left to lose.”
By pleading guilty, Keenan admitted raping and molesting a girl over a three-year period starting when she was 4.
Prosecutors said Keenan assaulted the child from the fall of 2013 through last June, when the allegations surfaced.
Keenan’s agreed-upon sentence calls for him to go to prison for life with parole eligibility after 10 years, but he was allowed to leave the courthouse after the hearing.
He was free on $75,000 bond at the time. He will be sentenced in several weeks.
Keenan served as Hubbard mayor in 2010 and 2011 and served on Hubbard City Council in the early 1990s and again in the late 1990s and was a probation officer in Girard Municipal court in the mid-1990s, according to Vindicator files.