Molester Sentenced to English Lessons

A Southeast Asian immigrant who molested his young stepdaughters was sentenced to English lessons when he could have gotten 80 years in prison, shocking the girls’ relatives and members of the community. Family members in La Crosse, Wis., complained that the judge misunderstood the victims’ views on punishment. They expressed outrage at the suggestion from Sia Ye Vang’s lawyer that sex with girls is accepted in Vietnam, the Hmong immigrant’s native land. “There are no cultural differences to allow a man to molest children that age,” said an official of the Hmong Mutual Assistance Assn. Vang, 32, was found guilty of four counts of sexual assault for fondling the two girls beginning in 1992, when they were 10 and 11. Judge Ramona Gonzalez sentenced Vang to 24 years’ probation and ordered him to continue English classes and perform 1,000 hours of community service. The judge was on vacation and unavailable for comment. Vang’s lawyer, Katherine Schnell, defended the sentence on cultural grounds.