An Iowa man responsible for recording himself raping a 1-year-old baby will serve ZERO time in prison. You read that correctly, an animal is being released back into the wild free to perform another heinous crime on another innocent victim. Sure he has to register as a sex offender, but to serve no time in prison? The judge responsible for this should really reflect on what he did there. This is not something to be taken lightly.

According to The Inquisitor:

Wapello County judge Randy Degeest sentenced now 19-year-old Kraigen Grooms to a 10-year suspended prison sentence after accepting his plea of guilty to one count of engaging in a lascivious act with a child. He will be required to register as a sex offender for life.

Back in 2013, federal investigators became aware of a child pornography video in which a man — unidentified at the time but later determined to be Grooms — could be seen sexually abusing a small baby. That baby was also unidentified at the time, but has since been identified. Grooms was 16 years old at the time; the baby was one-year-old.

As the Ottumwa Evening Post reported in September 2014, Grooms carried out the assault on the toddler at an Ottumwa home while a viewer in New Orleans watched the assault remotely on his or her computer and recorded it, according to a criminal complaint.

Agents from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jointly investigated the pornographic video, but had little information to go on. They posted the suspect’s face on a “Wanted” poster and hoped the public would be able to help with the investigation.

It is not clear, as of this writing, how the video came to the attention of federal investigators.

Grooms might not have been identified had it not been for social media, according to a March 2014 Ottumwa Evening Post report. Facebook user Tim Caya runs a Facebook group called “Locate the Missing,” and the website LocateTheMissing.com. He started the group as a hobby in order to help out law enforcement back in 2006.

No sooner did Caya post the “Wanted” poster for Grooms than the tips started pouring in. Caya says people started recognizing the Iowa man within an hour.

Grooms was arrested March 19, 2014, and charged with second-degree sexual abuse, a Class B Felony in Iowa. However, he languished behind bars for over two years, first in juvenile detention and then, once he turned 18, in the county lockup. A series of delays and continuances kept him from going before court for well over two years until finally, this week, when he was ultimately sentenced.

Judge Gookin did not say why he gave Grooms such a seemingly light sentence. However, as reported by the Inquisitr, Iowa can be seen to have a tendency to go light on sex offenders. A Des Moines Register investigation turned up at least seven cases of teachers who had sexually abused students failing to do any prison time, even though Iowa law requires that they do time behind bars.

There is something seriously wrong with both the offender and the judge responsible for his release? You have to ask yourself what they are thinking in regards to sex offenders in Iowa? Any person that can come up with something so evil deserves nothing less than to rot in a cell. What do you think? Was the judge too lenient?