Man gets house arrest for attacking girl at IU violin camp

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - A 19-year-old man has been sentenced to eight years of house arrest after pleading guilty to attacking a 13-year-old girl in 2019 as she was attending an Indiana University violin camp.

Dongwook Ko, who was 17 at the time of the attack, was also sentenced by a Monroe County judge Wednesday to two years of probation and barred from contacting the victim.

Ko, who pleaded guilty in July to criminal confinement while armed with a deadly weapon, must also receive psychological treatment.

The girl's mother said in a statement she was disappointed Ko didn't receive prison time, saying her daughter had been denied justice, The Herald-Times reported.

'œThe freedom to watch Netflix in a fancy south Bloomington house is not part of a punishment that parents expect when their 13-year-old daughter is strangled, beaten, and stabbed and slashed more than a dozen times in a premeditated crime,'ť she said.

Prosecutors said the girl was playing her violin alone in a Merrill Hall practice room during IU's Summer String Academy when Ko, whom she knew from the previous summer's camp, lured her away by saying the academy director wanted to see her.

The girl said Ko forced her into a locker room where she feared for her life as he held a pocketknife blade to her throat. She suffered cuts to her hands, arms and legs before knocking Ko to the ground. An IU employee who heard her screams stopped Ko, and she ran away.