That seems to be the message in Kathleen Parker’s column Sex, lies and prison. As long as the rapist is “a good son” and his victim isn’t a stranger he snatched off the street, then he isn’t a “real” rapist no matter what a jury decides. So much for the argument that rapists are “innocent until proven guilty.”

For Ms. Parker, rapists are innocent until she decides otherwise.

The moral of Gorman’s story, which can’t be proved or disproved in this limited space, is that boys and men accused of rape have little hope of reclaiming the life they once knew, regardless of whether they’re guilty or innocent.

Really? Tell that to Kobe Bryant.

And isn’t it interesting that Ms. Parker makes all accused rapists, those innocent and those guilty of rape, sound like the only ones we should be concerned about in rape cases. Rape victims are only important if something about them can be used to make them seem less than “good.”

Apparently, those of us who have been raped by “good” men or boys are only “good” if we shut up and let all “good” rapists continue on with their lives as if they’ve done nothing wrong. I bought into this destructive advice for far too long and paid a steep price for my silence.

If squashing victims’ voices means those “good” men and boys continue with the same type of rapes, Ms. Parker doesn’t care or will continue to blame the “bad” victims for the actions of “good” serial rapists.

Ms. Parker is blind to the irony that many “good” rapists pick victims who are vulnerable to attack and who are least likely to be believed if they do report. Ms. Parker’s disbelief that “good” men and boys commit “real” rapes is so strong that she sees all prior reports of rape as proof that the alleged victim must be the real perpetrator.

One minute a junior at Florida State University majoring in business/computer systems, the next a prison inmate labeled a sex offender.

Uh huh, it happened just like that. But somewhere in that minute, the accused had time to turn down a plea deal that would have kept him out of prison and given him twelve months probation. But does Ms. Parker scold him for his stupidity at not taking the deal? Nope. She continues to paint him as the only victim in this case.

With so much glossed over in this article, there is no way I can trust that Ms. Parker has accurately given readers the full picture of the events that led to this man’s conviction. With her “I only see wrongly-accused men” glasses, she can’t do anything except discount all elements in this case that counter her vision of who is a criminal and who is not.

But all is not lost for our wholesome convicted rapist. He reconnected with his high school sweetheart and got her pregnant. No marriage yet for this wholesome father and convict, but in this case Ms. Parker approves.

This backlash against the prosecution of “good” rapists will continue to grow as the minimum sentences for rape convictions go up. Of course another irony is that those behind the backlash are often those behind the push to increase minimum sentences given to “real” rapists.

For you men who would never rape any girl or woman, not even the “bad” ones, it should bother you that Ms. Parker lumps you in with “good” rapists.

Note: Also posted on my blog, abyss2hope.blogspot.com

WCCO

The board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota has voted unanimously to challenge a new Taylors Falls, Minn. ordinance restricting where sex offenders can live.

I think questioning these laws and making sure they don’t violate any civil rights is healthy.

If we hope to have an effective system that does its best to protect past, present and future victims without straining the criminal justice system or violating civil rights, we need to begin by accepting that sex offenders are not as different from us as we’d like to believe.

The good news with that concept is it means that at least some potential rapists can change their patterns before they get into a situation where they might rape.

We need a complex and coordinated structure of sex offender prevention, investigation, prosecution, sentencing, treatment and monitoring. And we need to accept that nothing we can do will eliminate all risk.

The best intense supervision programs do a great job of dealing with sex offenders who have set pre-offense triggers (like using alcohol) and who aren’t a physical danger to their victims. These programs work because they send most of those who are on the road to reoffending back to prison before they find their next victim. But even the best programs won’t work if they doesn’t have the funding needed to work as designed.

The worst thing we can do is have a system that does nothing more than catch, hold, tag and then release or kill sexual offenders. Many people crave the idea that the government can have the sex offender problem under complete control without helping these people in any way. However …

Absolute control of sex offenders is an illusion at best.

The most dangerous and least manageable sex offenders, like sadistic rapists who kidnap their victims, cannot be effectively controlled through electronic monitoring or sex offender registration. By the time we do catch them offending again it may be too late for one or many victims.

Many of the laws do a poor job of responding to the most serious crimes where the sex offender failed to complete the mission. If there is overwhelming evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that someone planned to kidnap, rape and kill the intended victim, that criminal should never be paroled — even if the intended victim got away during the kidnap attempt.

If criminals like that are only convicted of non-sex crimes that don’t put them on the sex offender registry but all non- predatory sex offenders are put on the list, something’s seriously wrong.

A key step to stopping the worst sex offenders from feeling what they are doing is acceptable or not that bad is for all of us to have zero tolerance for rape (even if it lasts for mere seconds) and sexual exploitation. If we make excuses for the least dangerous sex offenders, the most dangerous ones will think what they are doing can be excused just as easily.

Future and present sex offenders are listening. Are you sending them mixed messages?

Note: Also posted on my blog, | Posted by Abyss2hope in Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 11 Comments »