After the Montgomery County District Office withdrew prosecution of their case against former Montgomery County Republican party chief Bob Kerns, the PA Attorney General’s Office has decided to open their own investigation of Kerns, who was originally charged at the county level with raping an unconscious victim, raping a substantially impaired victim, and sexual assault.
Kerns is accused of having sex with a woman after an October office party in Blue Bell by taking advantage of the victim’s alleged inebriated state and by spiking the woman’s drink with the drug Ambien. An account had Kerns offering to drive the alleged victim home because she was too impaired to operate her own vehicle. Montgomery County prosecutors had to drop the case last week when they discovered that lab reports revealed that the victim had no Ambien in her system as first reported. The DA’s office gaffe has left the responsibility of prosecuting the case to the AG’s office because DA Risa Ferman now believes that her office has a conflict of interest in the case and could no longer prosecute Kerns.
The fact that there is no Ambien in the victim’s system leaves a big hole in the case against Kerns in that a large portion of any case against him would be based largely on the victim’s inability to consent to sexual relations due to a drunken or drug induced state.