Oh look… another criminal sex pervert with a rap sheet stretching back decades is loose in Illinois, where soft-on-crime judges, prosecutors, and legislators have turned the state into a predator’s playground. Too bad the good guys weren’t armed — maybe a armed citizen could have ended this nightmare before brave bystanders had to risk their lives with a water bottle and a wet floor sign.
Garland Benton, 45, of Crystal Lake, didn’t pick a random victim on Monday morning. Around 6:40 a.m. in the Millennium Park parking garage at 30 North Michigan, he grabbed a 20-year-old woman, slammed her to the ground, punched her in the face, yanked up her sweater, shirt, and bra, and began sexually abusing her while she screamed and fought. He had his mouth on her exposed chest and was ripping at her pants when witnesses stepped in.
A 65-year-old co-worker heard the rape screams, rushed over, and started hitting him with a water bottle. Benton knocked her down. Two more bystanders joined; he kept charging back at the victim even as they tried to pull him off. A fourth witness grabbed a wet floor sign and beat him with it until he finally fled. Surveillance caught it all — plus his pathetic escape: changing clothes, wrapping a pink scarf around his face, hopping trains and buses with a sex device on him and a one-way Amtrak ticket to Kansas City.
The victim suffered scratches and bruises to her face, neck, chest, and breasts. Her co-worker had shoulder pain. Benton now faces attempted aggravated criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual abuse, and aggravated battery charges. He was detained Tuesday — for the moment.
This isn’t his debut. Benton’s a career violent degenerate:
- 2020: Public indecency (364 days) + five years IDOC for punching a 19-year-old woman repeatedly in the face on a CTA platform.
- 2019: Five years for trashing a Cricket Wireless store; battery for grabbing a woman’s buttocks at a gym; aggravated assault for threatening to kill a CTA bus driver.
- 2016: One year for threatening to kill a cop in federal court.
- 2015: Two years for battering a woman over 60 on a CTA bus with a wooden crate.
- Plus disorderly conduct, concealed weapon conviction in Vegas, and a fresh 2025 New Mexico arrest for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, concealing identity, and failure to appear.
Illinois politicians love “justice-impacted” euphemisms and revolving-door “reforms” that prioritize predators over public safety. Short sentences, generous credits, probation for battery and indecency, early releases — all while victims and bystanders pay the price. Cops and citizens are left improvising with whatever’s handy because the system refuses to warehouse monsters like Benton for good.
Welcome to the criminal paradise Illinois built. Lock these animals up permanently, or keep watching women get mauled in broad daylight while the “reformers” pat themselves on the back. Enough.