Taqiyya.
As he stood at the courtroom podium Monday morning, his hands and legs shackled together, 20-year-old Mohammed Ali Mohammed admitted he did “very, very horrible things” six years ago.
At age 14, the Somali refugee sexually assaulted two women at knifepoint on consecutive nights in Salt Lake City. He attacked one woman who was standing outside of her home, and, on the following night, broke into another woman’s home and assaulted her there before demanding she go to an ATM and withdraw $400 for him.
“I was a monster,” Mohammed said Monday in 3rd District Court. “I didn’t know what I was thinking. I was a very stupid kid.”
But now, after six years in a secure juvenile detention facility, Mohammed says he’s learned a lot and is ready to show he’s a different person than the boy who assaulted the two women in 2011.
“There is nothing that I could say or do that could restore what I did to them,” he said. “The only way I can show them I’ve changed is how I live my life.”
Judge Vernice Trease gave him the opportunity to do just that, opting to sentence Mohammed to five years of probation instead of a term at the Utah State Prison.
The sentencing comes a month before Mohammed’s 21st birthday — the time when he would age out of the juvenile system and could no longer be housed at the Wasatch Youth Center, where he has been since he pleaded guilty to rape, sexual assault and kidnapping charges in 2012.
He pleaded guilty to charges in both adult and juvenile court, allowing a “blended” sentence that would give him the chance to receive services in the juvenile system, but still give the judge the option to sentence him to adult prison, if necessary.
However, Trease told the defendant Monday that he would not go to prison, and instead sentenced him to strict probation — requiring weekly check-ins with the court and his probation officer, no internet access and ankle monitoring, among other restrictions.