"A Charlottesville judge on Tuesday meted out punishments for six teenagers who beat up college students on city streets, handing them sentences ranging from about 15 days of time served to two months in juvenile detention.

For the pair of Charlottesville High School seniors accused of leading the attacks, one, a 17-year-old girl hoping to attend Virginia State University, will spend the next two months in a detention center, Judge Susan L. Whitlock decided Tuesday.

And the young man who has admitted involvement in four of the five attacks will be on house arrest until late December. A CHS senior planning on college, he also must write letters of apology to his four victims.

Whitlock ordered four other teenagers who each assaulted a single student to spend a year on probation. Prosecutors estimated the teens already had spent about 15 days in a juvenile detention center.

Another teen, a girl convicted of a misdemeanor for driving the getaway car, will face no time and will have her conviction erased if she behaves for a year, Whitlock ruled Tuesday.

A different teenage girl will be sentenced in September for snatching a University of Virginia student’s purse.

The one attacker tried as an adult, Gordon Lathan Fields, 18, was sentenced earlier this year. He likely will serve about 15 days of a 30-day sentence in jail this summer.

In all, the five late-night assaults and robberies in September and January left one UVa student with a shattered jaw, one with a concussion, others with bruises and sore ribs and two women without their pocketbooks.

'I describe it as a certain type of loss of innocence. You can’t reclaim the way you lived before. It makes you question every single person and in some real way, it makes life less enjoyable,' said Robert Benjamin Bateman, who was left with a battered face after being attacked the night of Jan. 12 as he walked along Maury Avenue.

Bateman, who came from Waynesboro to attend Tuesday’s hearing, said he’s disappointed that the main person who attacked him is on house arrest, not in jail.

'I don’t doubt that he is remorseful now, but clearly he wasn’t that remorseful after he attacked, because he went and did it again,' added Bateman, an English and government major who will be a junior this fall.

Other victims have voiced concern that the teenagers’ lives not be ruined for the mistakes they made.

Those attacked in January all reported being approached from behind, then pushed to the ground, punched or kicked. One victim who suffered two black eyes reported being called 'preppy UVa boy.' Prosecutors have said the teenagers coordinated at least one of the attacks by talking on cell phones while they cruised around the UVa area picking out their victims.

In one of the January attacks, prosecutors said, the now 18-year-old put on house arrest Tuesday announced his desire to hit a woman, then got out of the car and approached a community college student walking alone on Grady Avenue. He and his friend, the 17-year-old girl sent to a detention center, then grabbed her purse, prosecutors said.

The other robbery occurred in September, when a group approached a UVa senior sitting with her roommate and a girl robbed her of her purse, prosecutors said.

Of the nine teenagers ultimately convicted, only one, Fields, was 18 when the crimes occurred. All but one, a girl, attend Charlottesville High School, though the two leaders have been placed at alternative sites.

On Tuesday, city prosecutors asked Whitlock to send those two to a detention center, arguing that they 'owe a debt to this community.'

Both teenagers, who each were convicted of four felonies, apologized Tuesday. The now-18-year-old man turned around to face the courtroom before expressing his remorse, and the girl read a letter she had written.

'I have changed my life, I assure you, I’m sorry,' she read through tears.

Whitlock agreed to lock up the girl and review the case in July. The judge could release her then or send her back to serve more time.

But Whitlock put off deciding whether the 18-year-old belongs in a detention center. Instead, she put him on house arrest, where he is to be under constant parental supervision.

Dave Chapman, the city commonwealth’s attorney, said he was not disappointed with the sentencing decisions, the only two so far that his office has not arranged through a plea agreement.

'The proceedings today reflected the juvenile court system at work. This is the process that we with open eyes entered into,' Chapman said after the four-hour hearing in juvenile court.

He said he chose not to try the teens as adults in large part because they did not use weapons, though one victim has reported being hit with a wooden club.

As for the teens who joined in just one attack, Chapman said Tuesday that he wanted their sentences to be about the same.

As part of their plea agreements, Whitlock put the four juveniles on probation and ordered them to pay for their victims’ out-of-pocket medical expenses — between $31 and $214 per teenager — and to perform between 75 and 150 hours of community service.

Fields was convicted of assault and battery by mob, a misdemeanor. The four juveniles, who pleaded guilty in April to a felony, will have a year to reduce their charge to a misdemeanor by obeying their probation officers and staying out of trouble.

The girl who drove the car the night of Jan. 18 must pay about $83 in medical expenses and perform 30 hours of community service.
“This is something that can be rectified by having these young people make something of themselves,” Whitlock said.

The assault cases attracted intense attention last winter after police said several of the attackers, who are black, said the victims were chosen because they appeared white. One of the victims is Indian and one is Asian.

Chapman has said that though race may have been one of the many motivating factors in some of the cases, there is no evidence to conclude they were hate crimes.

Since the arrests, the Rev. Alvin Edwards, a former city mayor who is seeking appointment to the School Board, has helped lead a community-outreach program to improve UVa/city relations and to raise money for the teens’ defense and victims’ medical bills. The committees have raised about $4,000.

Edwards testified Tuesday on behalf of the girl sent to detention. After the hearing, he said he still has questions about the cases, but he added: 'If you do the crime, you do the time.'" (Adrienne Schwisow, The Daily Progress, June 5, 2002)