CLEVELAND — A 9-year-old boy admitted Monday to attempted rape and felonious assault in the brutal 2025 attack on a 5-year-old girl with autism who was found badly injured in a Cleveland field, a case that has drawn national attention because adult prison time is not available in Ohio juvenile court.
The boy entered the admission in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court under a plea agreement as proceedings opened Sept. 28, more than a year after the Sept. 13, 2025, attack near East 148th Street and St. Clair Avenue, behind the Collinwood Athletic Complex. Judge Kristin W. Sweeney scheduled his disposition, the juvenile equivalent of sentencing, for Nov. 20.
Prosecutors originally charged the boy and a co-defendant, a girl now 11, with attempted murder, rape, felonious assault, kidnapping and strangulation. The boy’s agreement reduced his case to two admitted counts. The girl has not admitted the allegations and her case continued separately. Prosecutors have alleged the victim was strangled with her own shirt. The child survived.
The victim’s mother, Antavia Kennibrew, previously told 19 News she discovered her daughter after leaving her at a relative’s home. “I literally saw the worst thing ever,” she said. She has argued the accused children should not simply be returned home, saying the behavior that led to the attack “started at home.”
Cleveland police’s Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Unit investigated. Court records and local reporting have described the victim being lured to a field, beaten, sexually assaulted, and left injured for hours. The case is unusually serious for defendants who were 10 or younger at the time of the alleged offense.
Sweeney, a Democrat on the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Juvenile Division, earlier ruled in March 2026 that both children were not yet competent to stand trial but could become competent with treatment. She had previously placed them on home detention with monitoring. Juvenile court in Ohio is built around rehabilitation, not adult punishment. Options discussed in court have included commitment to a facility or program, community control or probation, not state prison.
That gap is what has fueled outrage online and among critics of the juvenile system: a child admitted to a violent sexual attack on a 5-year-old, and the maximum adult-style sentence is off the table by design. Disposition in November will determine what restrictions and services the court actually imposes. The co-defendant’s case remains unresolved.
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