A top Republican prosecutor in Wisconsin sent a series of lewd texts propositioning the young domestic abuse victim of a man he was prosecuting, according to the AP.
“Are you the kind of girl that likes secret contact with an older married elected DA … the riskier the better?” Calumet County District Attorney Kenneth Kratz, 50, texted to Stephanie Van Groll, 26, last October.
In another of the 30 texts Kratz reportedly sent over a three-day period, he wrote: “I’m serious! I’m the atty. I have the $350,000 house. I have the 6-figure career. You may be the tall, young, hot nymph, but I am the prize!”
The AP, which broke this story, gives the context:
Kratz was prosecuting Van Groll’s ex-boyfriend on charges he nearly choked her to death last year. He also was veteran chair of the Wisconsin Crime Victims’ Rights Board, a quasi-judicial agency that can reprimand judges, prosecutors and police officers who mistreat crime victims.
…
“Nothing really happened to him and I had three days of hell,” Van Groll said in a phone interview with the AP.
A woman who answered the phone at Kratz’s office this morning told Salon: “He’s not giving any additional comment.”
But in an interview with the AP, Kratz argued the texts were a “non-news story” but that nevertheless, “I’m worried about it because of my reputational interests.”
He said earlier this week that he will run for reelection in 2012; and he actually mulled a run for Congress back in 2008 after prosecuting a high-profile murder case.
