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		</div><h6><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>Rape victim, now 20, is awarded $1billion in damages after security guard working at her building attacked her in front of her boyfriend</strong></span></h6>
<h6><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>Hope Cheston was outside by some picnic tables with her boyfriend during a party in Oct 2012 when an armed security guard approached </strong></span></h6>
<h6><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>The guard told the boyfriend not to move and raped Cheston </strong></span></h6>
<h6><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>Identified in the lawsuit as Brandon Lamar Zachary, the guard was convicted of statutory rape and is serving a 20-year prison sentence </strong></span></h6>
<h6><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>Renatta Cheston-Thornton filed a lawsuit in March 2015 on behalf of her daughter, who was still a minor at the time </strong></span></h6>
<h6><strong><span style="color: #000000;">Zachary, who was 22 at the time of the rape, should never have been hired because he wasn&#8217;t licensed to be an armed guar</span></strong><span style="color: #000000;">d, as well as, being a convicted rapist<br />
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<h6 class="mobile-gallery-icon"><strong><img class="alignnone wp-image-293682" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Hope-Cheston-1.png" alt="Hope Cheston 1.png" width="651" height="625" />Victim: 14-year-old Hope Cheston was outside by some picnic tables with her boyfriend during a party in October 2012 when an armed security guard approached. The guard ordered the boyfriend not to move and raped Cheston</strong></h6>
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<p class="imageCaption">A Georgia jury has awarded an eye-popping $1 billion verdict against a security company after an apartment complex guard was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl.<br />
Hope Cheston was outside by some picnic tables with her boyfriend during a party in October 2012 when an armed security guard approached, attorney L. Chris Stewart said on Wednesday.<br />
The guard told the boyfriend not to move and raped Cheston, Stewart said.<br />
The rapist, identified in the lawsuit as Brandon Lamar Zachary, was convicted of statutory rape and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, records show.<br />
he victim&#8217;s mother, Renatta Cheston-Thornton filed a lawsuit in March 2015 on behalf of her daughter, who was still a minor at the time.<br />
On Tuesday, the jury handed down the verdict against Crime Prevention Agency, the security company that employed Zachary.</p>
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<p class="mol-para-with-font">Zachary, who was 22 at the time of the rape, should never have been hired because he wasn&#8217;t licensed to be an armed guard, Stewart said.<br />
He also had been previously convicted for statutory rape.</p>
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<h6 class="imageCaption"><strong><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-293681" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Brandon-Lamar-Zachary-1.png" alt="Brandon Lamar Zachary 1.png" width="382" height="488" /><br />
Brandon Lamar Zachary [photo], the guard, was convicted of statutory rape and is serving a 20-year prison sentence &#8211; Zachary wasn&#8217;t licensed to be an armed guard, and had a previous rape conviction.</strong></h6>
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<p class="mol-para-with-font">The judge had already determined the security company was liable, so the jury was only determining damages, on Tuesday. After reading the verdict, in an unprecedented move, jurors immediately left the jury box &#8211; without waiting for the judge&#8217;s permission &#8211; to hug the victim and her mother.<br />
The security company that employed the guard. The name Mario Watts is named on the corporate registration as the CEO and identified in the lawsuit as the company&#8217;s registered agent.<br />
Cheston, who&#8217;s now 20, waived her rights of anonymity and said she wanted her name used. A full-time college student who plans to spend her summer working with an organization in downtown Atlanta that helps homeless people, Cheston said she wants her story to provide strength for other sexual assault victims.</p>
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<h6 class="mobile-gallery-icon"><strong> <img class="alignnone wp-image-293689" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Hope-Cheston-and-her-mom-Renatta-Cheston-Thornton-1.jpg" alt="Hope Cheston and her mom, Renatta Cheston-Thornton 1.JPG" width="707" height="450" />Renatta Cheston-Thornton [right], filed a lawsuit in March 2015 on behalf of her daughter, who was still a minor at the time. On Tuesday justice was served, as the court awarded the victim $1billion in compensatory damages</strong></h6>
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<div class="container-3zJLP vertical-2XJd5"><strong><img class="alignnone wp-image-293685" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Renatta-Cheston-Thornton-left.-Juror-centre-and-Hope-Cheston-1.jpg" alt="Renatta Cheston-Thornton [left]. Juror [centre], and Hope Cheston 1.JPG" width="681" height="667" /></strong>After reading the verdict, attorney L. Chris Stewart [right], said, jurors immediately left the jury box &#8211; without waiting for the judge&#8217;s permission &#8211; to hug Cheston and her mother.</div>
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<p class="mol-para-with-font">A lot of women who suffer sexual assault don&#8217;t pursue justice, choosing instead to put it behind them, she said in a phone interview Wednesday.<br />
&#8216;I feel like my case is just to show that you may not get it immediately, but you will get what you&#8217;re worth,&#8217; Cheston said. &#8216;This shows that people do care about the worth of a woman.&#8217;</p>
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<h6 class="container-3zJLP vertical-2XJd5"><strong><img class="alignnone wp-image-293686" src="https://konniemoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Hope-Cheston-5.jpg" alt="Hope Cheston 5" width="558" height="714" /><br />
&#8216;This shows that people do care about the worth of a woman.<br />
&#8221;I feel like my case is just to show that you may not get it immediately, but you will get what you&#8217;re worth,&#8217; Cheston [photo], said.<br />
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<div> Stewart, who has tried a lot of sexual assault cases, said he was shocked when he heard the verdict. He said he had asked jurors to really determine the value of the pain caused by the rape.&#8217;I was really proud of the jury because there is no basis in the legal world for</div>
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<p class="mol-para-with-font">how high a rape verdict can be,&#8217; he said.<br />
Verdicts in the tens of millions of dollars, or even hundreds of millions, are not uncommon, Jeff Dion, director of the National Crime Victim Bar Association said in an email. But he&#8217;s never heard of a $1 billion verdict in a case with a single victim.<br />
&#8216;This jury was clearly trying to send a message about bad conduct on the part of the company,&#8217; Dion wrote.<br />
It is more than likely that the security company will appeal the verdict, said Georgia State University law professor Jessica Gabel Cino. An appeals court would consider the reasonableness of the verdict and would also compare it to those awarded in similar cases to see if it&#8217;s proportional, and it will likely be lowered, she said.<br />
Cino agreed that this verdict was highly unusual but said the allegations in the case seemed especially egregious.<br />
&#8216;The facts are just so in the plaintiff&#8217;s favor when you put all of this together,&#8217; she said. &#8216;I mean, it&#8217;s really kind of serving up the right case on a platter to the jury.&#8217;</p>
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Court in Georgia awards $1B in damages to rape victim, raped at 14 by security guard working at her building! Brandon Lamar Zachary was unlicensed, a convicted rapist and shouldn’t have been hired by the security firm
