By MARYCLAIRE DALE
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - In a rare rebuke, the Philadelphia city bar association condemned a judge who dismissed rape charges in the alleged gang rape of a prostitute and instead called it a theft of services.

The prostitute admitted going to a home on Sept. 20 to have paid sex with a customer but said she was instead gang-raped by four men, including the customer, while he fixed a gun on her.

Municipal Judge Hon. Teresa Carr Deni dropped the rape and sexual-assault charges at an Oct. 4 preliminary hearing, but upheld robbery, false-imprisonment and conspiracy charges against Dominique Gindraw.

Deni has since heightened the furor in defending her decision to a newspaper.

"She consented and she didn't get paid," Deni told the Philadelphia Daily News. "I thought it was a robbery."

Deni also told the newspaper that the case "minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped."

The chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association issued a statement Tuesday that questioned Deni's understanding of the state's rape law.

"The victim has been brutalized twice in this case: first by the assailants, and now by the court," Chancellor Jane Leslie Dalton wrote. "We cannot imagine any circumstances more violent or coercive than being forced to have sex with four men at gunpoint."

Carol Tracy, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Women's Law Project, called Deni's comments "a throwback to the Middle Ages, when rape was a crime against property, not against a person."

The 20-year-old victim, a single mother, testified that she worked for an escort service that advertised through the Web site Craigslist.

She went to a North Philadelphia home to meet the customer, who had agreed to pay her $150 for sex. He then said a friend was coming with the money, and that the friend would pay her another $100 for sex.

Instead, three other men arrived, and Gindraw pulled a gun and ordered the woman to have sex with all of them, she testified.

"He said that I'm going to do this for free and I'm not going nowhere and I better cooperate or he was going to kill me," the woman testified at the preliminary hearing. "I didn't know if I was going (to) make it out of there alive because I seen everyone's face."

Gindraw, 19, also took the victim's cell phone and a purse containing pepper spray, she said. The other men have not yet been identified or charged.

"Even though the woman is a prostitute, it doesn't mean she couldn't be a victim," Dalton said Wednesday. "Once she says ‘No, it's not OK,' then to have sex with her is rape."

A bar association committee had recently given Deni high marks for her 12-year judicial career and recommended that voters support her in a Nov. 6 retention election. The job pays $148,596 a year.

Deni did not return a phone message, but her lawyer called Dalton's statement "regrettable."

"The transcript doesn't necessarily tell the whole story," said lawyer George Bochetto, who said that Deni also considers a witness' tone of voice, demeanor and other factors in her rulings.

Dalton, in response, said that witness credibility should not be an issue at a preliminary hearing, where a judge decides whether prosecutors have probable cause to charge someone.

Assistant District Attorney Richard DeSipio, stunned by Deni's decision from the bench, declined to pursue a second, similar case that day against Gindraw. DeSipio said he did not want to put his second victim through the same experience. He has asked for a rehearing in the first case.

Neither he nor public defender Susan Lin returned messages seeking comment Wednesday.

Women who work in the sex trade rarely report crimes they suffer because they fear being prosecuted themselves, Tracy said.

Dalton called the bar rebuke highly unusual.

"The thing about the law is that the legal rights of minorities and the unpopular and the unwashed are to be protected by the courts," she said. "That's why we thought it was appropriate to speak out in this case."