Former Planned Parenthood attorney running for WI Supreme Court under fire for past ruling

A former attorney for Planned Parenthood is currently running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and a sentence she gave to a child rapist is currently causing backlash after coming to light.

Susan Crawford previously served as an attorney with Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the ACLU Reproductive Rights Project, and aided in blocking the 2011 Wisconsin law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their abortion facility. However, Crawford has said she would not recuse herself from any abortion-related cases, saying, “The law does not require judges to automatically recuse just because they have done some kind of legal work in the past as a lawyer.”

She is currently under fire for a past case in which she reportedly gave a light sentence to an adult man who repeatedly raped and molested a child beginning at the age of five.

Wisconsin Right Now

@wisconsin_now

·Follow

Susan Crawford defending her weak sentence of Curtis O’Brien and calling it a “successful” sentence. He raped a 5 year old girl repeatedly and is already out. “I don’t regret that sentence.” He got four years. The state wanted 10. He could have gotten 60. By saying she applied Show more

Watch on X

1:19 AM · Mar 13, 2025

810

Reply

Copy link

Read 81 replies

According to court records, Crawford set bond at $500 for Curtis O’Brien, against the prosecutor’s objections, and then after he was found guilty of the charges, sentenced him to four years in prison, while crediting him with 777 days already served in prison, followed by six years of supervised release afterwards. This was significantly less than what had been requested by prosecutors, and O’Brien has already been released from prison.

During a debate with her opponent, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, she was asked about that sentence, to which she replied:

I don’t regret that sentence because I followed the law in that case as I always do. I applied the law which says that judges have to consider every relevant factor in sentencing.

You have to consider both the aggravating and mitigating factors, and the Supreme Court has said you have to order the minimum amount of prison time you believe is necessary to protect the public.

Many children who have been victimized have been taken to Planned Parenthood, and the corporation has covered up that sexual abuse. Predators, abusers, and traffickers have used abortion as a tool to cover up their crimes, destroying the evidence. Staffers have at times failed to file required reports alerting authorities to potential abuse.