Maryland Senate Candidate Arrested on Rape, Assault ChargesIt looks like the crowded field for the Democratic nomination for Senator in Maryland just lost one candidate.
David Dickerson is one of 18 Dems seeking the nomination. But he was arrested by Baltimore County police on Saturday on charges of repeatedly raping and assaulting his 19 year-old Latvian wife.
According to Corporal Mike Hill, Dickerson, who’s 43, met his wife in Latvia when she was 16 and took her back to the States to marry her when she was 18. She shortly thereafter got pregnant. She has told police that Dickerson starved her, denied her the ability to call her mother, and repeatedly beat and raped her. She eventually left for Latvia, she told police, but returned when Dickerson threatened her and her family, saying that he “could have anybody bring her back.”
Dickerson, who was running on a family values oriented campaign, has denied the charges through his lawyer, saying that his wife is mentally unstable. After she called 911 after an alleged attack July 16, Dickerson told medics when they arrived that his wife was “crazy in the head.” His lawyer told a Baltimore station that the charges were false and that Dickerson’s wife has a history of mental breakdowns, and said the wife has disappeared. Corporal Hill told me that she was being kept in an undisclosed location.
Our calls to Dickerson’s campaign headquarters weren’t returned.
Update: Hill said he couldn’t confirm that Dickerson’s wife was a mail order bride, as reported here.
