In September, a jury in Limestone County, in north central Alabama, found Austin Smith Clem, 25, guilty of raping Courtney Andrews, a teenage acquaintance and his then-neighbor,three times—twice when she was 14, and again when was she was 18.

Attorneys for the state questioned whether Clem's sentence was even legal. Andrews asked Woodroof to reconsider the sentence, she said, to no avail. "The judge still chooses to send him home to his three little girls," she said. "I don't understand that. I can't fathom that."