A Montana woman who shot her ex-husband after she claimed he tried to rape her has had the murder charges against her dropped, putting a definitive end to a roughly two-decade cycle of abuse she suffered at his hands.
A district judge in Sanders County dismissed the charges against Rachel Bellesen, 38, with prejudice on Tuesday, the Daily Beast reported.
While it is not clear what prompted Judge Amy Eddy to make the decision, her order means the mother-of-two cannot be charged again for the same crime.
On the evening of October 8, Bellesen’s ex-husband and the father of her children, Jacob Glace, used threats against their son to lure her to a local swimming pool, where she said he tried to rape her twice before she shot him.
Rachel Bellesen was accused of murdering her ex-husband last year when she said he tried to rape her. A Montana district court judge fully cleared her of the charges on Tuesday
Bellesen, who now works as coordinator at a shelter for domestic violence victims, had gone to police with her current husband, Cory Bellesen, shortly after to report the shooting, and went to a hospital to have her injuries documented. She was charged with murder the next day.
Lance Jasper, a pro-bono attorney for Bellesen, presented her entire defense to prosecutors before trial under the condition that they ask for the charges to be dropped with prejudice upon reviewing it.
Instead, in April they filed to have the charges dropped without prejudice, saying they would wait for forensic test results before deciding whether to charge Bellesen again for the killing.
Bellesen chronicled roughly two decades of abuse she suffered from her ex-husband Jacob Glace (pictured)
Advocates at the Abbie Shelter, where Bellesen works, argued that she should not continue to have the threat of prosecution hang over her. Judge Eddy, it would seem, agreed.
On Facebook, Bellesen’s son, Orion, celebrated the decision, and praised his mother for her strength, saying: ‘I am so beyond proud & at a loss for words for how strong you are. to go through what you had to go through is unimaginable & beyond the definition of brave. I love you so very much, with all of my heart, to the moon & back a million times. you will always be my hero, my best friend & wisest teacher I know.’
Bellesen met Glace 23 years ago in Washington state, when he visited her friend’s house to sell them marijuana, the Daily Beast also reported. At the time he was 23 and she was 15.
They went on to have two children together over the next two years, and she moved in with him when her mother left to live in Montana.
Their relationship was short lived. In 2004 the two divorced after Glace pleaded guilty to assaulting Bellesen after he hit, scratched and dragged her out of her apartment by her hair.
Bellesen would leverage her difficult experience into a career as counselor at a shelter for domestic abuse victims
Bellesen with her son, Orion. He would take to Facebook after her mother was cleared to praise her for her strength
Bellesen, struggling with homelessness and alcoholism, lost custody of her children to Glace and at age 21 moved to Montana.
Despite having full custody, he let her take care of the children, but Bellesen said her ex-husband would constantly threaten to take them away after he too moved to Montana to live near them.
By 2012 things started to look brighter for Bellesen. She met her current husband and started going to college to become a substance abuse counselor. She also started volunteering at Abbie Shelter, which would hire her full-time in 2018.
Glace, however, would still continue to harass her, she said.
In 2010 he was found guilting of assaulting another partner, and in 2020 he was charged for assaulting two other girlfriends.
After the judge’s decision, Bellesen issued a statement, comparing the state’s actions to those of her ex-husband’s, saying they were, ‘eerily similar to when an abuser attacks you—and then tries to serve a sad excuse of apology with a bouquet of flowers the next morning, expecting you to just take them in gratitude, say nothing, and go on about your day like nothing happened.’
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk
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