Prostitutes aren't people, after all.

Well, this is despicable:

[Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Teresa Carr Deni] dropped all the sexual assault and assault charges against Dominique Gindraw, even though he stood accused of forcing a prostitute to have sex with him and three other men.

At gunpoint.

But Deni didn't let Gindraw entirely off the hook. Because he didn't pay her what he'd agreed to pay her for sex, and since she was in the business of providing sex for money, Deni let stand a charge of theft of services.

Deni told me she based her decision on the fact that the prostitute consented to have sex with the defendant.

"She consented and she didn't get paid . . . I thought it was a robbery."

The prostitute, a 20-year-old single mother, agreed to $150 for an hour of oral and vaginal sex on Sept. 20, according to assistant district attorney Rich DeSipio. The arrangements were made through her posting on Craigslist.

She met the defendant, Dominique Gindraw, 19, at what she thought was his house, but which turned out to be an abandoned property in North Philadelphia.

He asked if she'd have sex with his friend, too, and she agreed for another $100.

The friend showed up without money, the gun was pulled and more men arrived.

Got that? Because she agreed to have sex with Gindraw and his friend for a set price, and because that price wasn't paid and Gindraw drew a gun and forced the complainant to have sex with not only him and his friend, but also with two other guys, that's not rape, that's robbery. Because it's the same as stealing your neighbor's cable.

This alone isn't enough to get a sense of the enormity of this judge's scorn for the victim--Deni also declared that this case "minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped." Truly horrific.

[Edit] A small update here.