Heidi Gutman—ABC/Getty Images
I’m giving two readings over the next few weeks, one on April 21st at the Risk of Discovery Reading Series, and the other on May 2nd as part of the New Masculinities Festival 2015. The details are below, but I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what these events mean to me and I’d like to share some of that with you. April is both National Poetry Month and Sexual Assault Awareness Month, a convergence that—as you know if you’ve been reading my posts—fits well with the grant I received from the Queens Council on the Arts to complete my second book of poems, Words for What Those Men Have Done. At the April 21st reading, I will preview some of the poems from this manuscript, and the reading itself will serve as a preview of the larger, more interactive presentation that I will give on a date to be scheduled in September or October. One of my goals with this project is for there to be a conversation in my community about what it means to be a male survivor of sexual violence, and since poetry is one way for people to feel what it’s like to feel something they themselves have not experienced firsthand, I hope this reading helps to make that conversation possible.
The importance of having this conversation was brought home to me yet again by the interview Barbara Walters did this past Friday with Vili and Mary Kay Letourneau Fualaau. In 1997, when she was 34 and Vili was her 13-year-old student, Mary Kay Letourneau was arrested and convicted of child rape, ultimately serving seven-and-a-half years in prison, where she gave birth to the couple’s two, now-teenaged daughters. I did not see the interview itself, but when I read the coverage it received, especially, but not only, in the pieces that appeared in the lead-up to the broadcast, I was very disturbed. Simply put, much of it seemed to use the couple’s marriage and children to normalize the rape for which Mary Kay was rightfully convicted and to present their story as an against-all-odds tale of happily-ever-after in which the only villain was the society that tried to keep them apart. To be clear, it’s not that the coverage fails to mention Mary Kay’s prison term or that she is a registered sex offender. Those are historical facts it is impossible to deny. Rather, those facts seem to be presented more as obstacles the couple had to overcome than as the legal consequences of a sexual violation, a rhetorical move that almost makes the violation itself disappear.
In Time, for example, K. C. Blumm phrases it this way:
The 53-year-old [Mary Kay] – who spent 89 months in prison for child rape as a result of her relationship with her then-student Vili Fualaau in 1996 – is looking forward to celebrating her 10th wedding anniversary with Fualaau next month and admitted that as the date approaches she’s been looking back on the events that shaped her life. (Emphasis mine.)
I cannot think of another instance in which the words rape (much less child rape) and relationship would be used almost as synonyms, as if, when Letourneau, then in her early to mid-thirties “embarked on a sexual relationship” with her barely pubescent twelve-year-old middle school student—again, that’s Blumm’s phrasing—the problem was a matter of legal definitions, not the abuse of authority and trust. The language Blumm uses, however, fits very neatly our traditional narratives of manhood and masculinity, in which a boy who is initiated into sex by an older woman is considered “lucky” to have met her. More to the point, in popular perception anyway, that “luck” precludes any claim he might make not to have wanted the experience or that he was in any way harmed by it. To be a man, in this narrative, is to embrace that kind of “luck;” to suggest it wasn’t “luck” to begin with is to suggest that its recipient is not really a man.
Vili Fualaau, of course, was not a man when the woman who is now his wife violated him; he was a child, which is why we undertstand her to have raped him by definition. I get it, though. The fact that he is no longer a child, that he chose to marry the woman who violated him, that they have been married for ten years, and that they are raising two children to boot makes it hard to know just how to talk about not only who he was when Mary Kay victimized him, but also what the consequences for him actually were. After all, in spite of whatever may have been true back then, they have made a life together now, and—in the absence of any evidence to the contrary—it really isn’t anyone’s place to suggest that this life is somehow tainted or “less than” because of their history. Nonetheless, it is telling that Vili’s struggle with alcoholism and depression—“I’m surprised I’m still alive today,” he says. “I went through a really dark time”—is also implicitly presented as an obstacle he had to overcome, not as a possible consequence of the way she violated him; and since overcoming obstacles is traditionally what men do to prove themselves, this way of presenting what he says about himself also fits the traditional narrative.
I think it’s instructive to imagine how differently the media might have covered this interview if, leaving all other details of the story the same, instead of Mary Kay and Vili, we were talking about “Martin” and “Vivian.” Would the narrative have been framed the same way? I doubt it. Even for myself, when I do this thought experiment in my own head, I am struck by how much more readily available to me are the language and patterns of thought that foreground the abusive nature of my hypothetical “Martin’s” sexual contact with “Vivian.” Looked at through the lens of the traditional masculinity and manhood narrative, this makes sense. Men in that narrative are supposed to be the actors when it comes to sex, the ones who are always trying to get it, for whom “getting it” is a requirement of being who we are, and of whom my hypothetical Martin, therefore—again, within this narrative—is an example of a guy who needs to learn some self-control. The narrative, in other words, makes it easy to peg him as a perpetrator, since he’s doing what men are “supposed to be doing.” He’s just overstepping the bounds within which he’s supposed to be doing it.
Culturally, and despite what the law says, our investment in this narrative makes it hard for us to understand female perpetrators like Mary Kay Letourneau as perpetrators, perhaps especially when they abuse boys and men, which in turn can make it difficult to keep in focus the idea that what Mary Kay did to Vili when he was 12 or 13 is essentially no different from incidents of the sexual abuse of boys that everyone agrees is abuse, i.e., when there is violence or overt coercion or when, as in my case, the person trying to “initiate” me was a man. (You can read a partial telling of my story here.) Indeed, it’s worth taking a look at the website Female Sex Offenders if you’re interested in exploring this idea further. It’s crucal to remember, however, that no matter what the law says, this skewed perception of female perpetrators is not going to change until our fundamental understanding of what it means to be a man changes, until we have a narrative of manhood and masculinity that recognizes not just men’s vulnerability and uncertainty, sexual and otherwise, but also our variability—the idea that there is no single correct way to be a man.
That’s why I am very excited about participating in the New Masculinities Festival, one purpose of which is to produce new narratives masculinity and manhood. The festival will take place on May 2nd at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center in Manhattan. I don’t yet have full information for the event, but here’s the promotional video for last year’s festival:
Here’s the information for the two events:
April 21st
- Venue: QED Astoria
- When: 6:30 – 8:30 PM (Facebook event page)
- Where: 27-16 23rd Avenue, Astoria NY 11105
- Details: A writing workshop and open mic will presede my reading.
May 2nd
- Venue: New Masculinities Festival 2015
- When: TBA
- Where: Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street, New York NY 10002
- Details: More details to be announced soon.
Why, in your hypothetical alternative scenario, does Samoan-American Vili become presumably Anglo-American Vivian? Do you feel his race is irrelevant to the way things happened here?
Tamme,
Thank you for pointing that out.
Though I would be lying if I said I was thinking about this when I chose the name, because of the people I have known who were called Vivian from the time I was very young, the name is, for me, actually associated with (not necessarily American) women of color. Nonetheless, your point is well taken. I was so focused on gender and on the facts of the abuse that I did not think at all about the role race played in either Mary Kay’s initial abuse of Vili, their subsequent relationship, or the way in which the media has covered their story, up to and including Walters’ recent interview. No doubt it did play a role, though I don’t know enough of the details to say anything more than that.
The fact that you asked this question makes me wonder if you have thought about this issue. If so, I’d be curious to hear what you think.
I have to say that I find this whole episode with Barbara Walters horrifying. From the one article I read about this Barbara comes across as a rape-excusing apologist, and Vili sounds extremely ambivalent about his current life situation.
I don’t know why Barbara Walters did this–there is no reason to give Mary Kay the validation that an interview with her provides. Mary Kay ruined Vili’s life. She groomed then raped him, made him a father at 13-14, and then somehow convinced him to marry her years later. She deserves all her jail time and more, given the absolute contempt for the law and human decency she showed in getting caught raping Vili again as soon as she was let out on probation. She is the sort of person the registered sex offender lists were created for, given that she has absolutely no remorse for her actions, is a repeat offender, and would like to teach children again.
I feel bad Vili, who clearly never got the help he needed, and I feel bad for their children who will someday understand the real meaning of the circumstances of their birth. It is an absolute tragedy that boys who are raped by women are given the message by society (and sometimes by family and friends) that they should enjoy their victimization and that they are “lucky”. I think this only makes it harder for them to recover from their rape.
Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit has been covering this. He has been posting stories of female teachers who engage in statutory rape of their (male) students. What he’s seeing is that they tend to get relatively light sentences. Here is a female teacher who pled down a charge of essentially statutory rape with a 16-year-old student to 3 years probation and sex offender registration (with some other conditions). Here is another such case. Somehow if a 28 or 34 year old male teacher had sex with a minor girl I’m not thinking they get probation and no jail time.
Incredibly enough I actually watched this. My wife put it on and refused to change the channel.
“I don’t know why Barbara Walters did this”
Because she’ll do anything to keep getting on TV? I thought this was disgraceful. Why in God’s name give this rapist any more publicity? When Barbara asked why she was coming forward the rapist said that the anniversary of this case was coming up, that publicity was inevitable and she wanted to get out in front of it. Really? We were all going to be beating a path to her door? Words fail me.
Thanks for posting this.
RonF:
I wonder what your point is in mentioning Instapundit and linking to those two news stories. My own experience in reading people’s outrage at the differences in how male and female perpetrators are treated–and I am not attributing this to you–is that it leaves untouched and unquestioned the underlying gender assumptions about both men and women (and boys and girls) that make those differences seem reasonable. So, for example, few people have a problem recognizing that an adult woman–especially a teacher–who has sex with an underage boy–especially a boy in her class–has crossed a legal line for which she needs to be held accountable. In other words, there is a law and the law must be enforced. Conspicuous by its absence from those people’s outrage, however, is any discussion of the damage that sex, along with all the other violations that surround it, might have done to the boy in question. It is almost as if they think no damage exists.
Why female perpetrators get treated differently is, I am sure, a complex issue, but I am also sure that one of the reasons has to do with the assumption that what they did–if their victim was a boy or man; if there was no violence or overt coercion; etc.–didn’t really cause any damage and so why punish them as harshly as if it had. Changing that way of thinking requires changing our attitudes about boys and men, not about women.
That was the point of my post, so I am wondering where you see yourself in relation to it.
I’m a bit uncomfortable with some of this discourse. Which, I think it is clear that Walters chose to interview this couple for entirely salacious reasons, and that the public response to this is messed up. It is clear that Mary Kay’s whiteness and thinness and middle-class appearance all play a rather unsavory role. So yeah. Agreed. Furthermore, there is much that could be said about child rape and female perpetrators and male victims, which gets erased in the desire to appeal to the base interest in viewers, rather than to give a nuanced picture of what really happens and how typical victims feel. People want a maudlin, trashy romance tale. Walters gave them one. We are correct to detest this.
However, I feel as if some people here are stepping over their lived experience, and in fact placing meaning on the events in their lives that they seem to explicitly reject. I don’t think we should do that. For example, there is plenty here to criticize while not putting a “victim” label on a man who rejects that label. Likewise, if he refuses to relate his substance abuse and his depression to his rape, then that is his call. Perhaps he is wrong, but how do we know for sure? Let him own his own narrative. There are plenty of other good points we can make.
Like veronica d, I’m troubled that most of us seem inclined to think that we understand Vili’s life and experience better than he does. Well, perhaps we do, but I have never met this man, and I usually don’t understand other people’s perspectives as well as they do themselves. Richard, you reacted to your experience of being molested as seemed appropriate to you, and it seems appropriate to the rest of us too. But we all need to give Vili room to have his own personal reactions, which are not the same as yours, even if they don’t please us and don’t correspond to our understandings of such things.
I am not persuaded that Vili’s struggles with depression and substance abuse are necessarily connected to his early experiences. Lots of people abuse substances and get depressed even when they have not been abused as children. In any case, again, he seems not to be making the connection, and I think we have to give his personal evaluations some deference. And I’m not arguing that Mary Kay was inappropriately treated by the law. She broke the law and should take the consequences, which she did. And Barbara Walters makes my skin crawl.
All of that said, I’m uncomfortable with forcing Vili to fit into our narrative without his consent. Isn’t that part of what we insist on in such situations, that the understanding of the person himself or herself be given primary respect?
Susan & veronica d:
I was trying very hard, and perhaps I did not succeed, not to suggest that Vili—either in his own responses to what he’s been through or in our imaginings—should be made to fit into any particular narrative other than his own. This is what I wrote:
My issue was with how the Walters interview was covered in the press, the way that coverage, at least in my reading, almost “disappeared” 12-year-old Vili, who certainly could not have had the adult perspective he now has—and who, unless we are going to suggest that a boy that young can in fact meaningfully consent to sex with a 31 year old woman—was certainly violated by the woman who is now his wife. So, when I wrote:
I meant, again, to be saying something about how the press covered the interview, not to assign to Vili a victim-status that he himself has never claimed. I do think it is reasonable, and I, frankly, as I am writing this now (I might, on further reflection, end up disagreeing with myself) think it is the responsible thing to do—given what he is quoted as saying about himself—to note that his statements reflect very common responses of sexual abuse survivors, while at the same time noting that he rejects that status. (I acknowledge I did not make this distinction in the original post as clearly as I could have.)
Why do I say “the responsible thing to do?” Because I think that telling this story in a way that erases 12-year-old Vili, or that somehow suggests that he, as a 12-year-old gave meaningful consent to sex with Mary Kay—and that everything that followed, including her arrest, conviction, and imprisonment was merely an obstacle to their being together—feeds the narrative that minimizes the sexual abuse of boys, especially when the perpetrators are women.
I think that people’s internal definitions/expectations about whether post-pubescent children/teens can “meaningfully consent” to sexual relations with adults varies WIDELY in the USA right now, and that is why we see a lot of disparity of results in cases that come to the attention of the media/criminal justice system. I think MKL was treated fairly harshly because he was 12, which is very young, and she was his teacher, which is clearly a position of authority. I think that cases involving female adults and minor males may be treated much differently when the minors are 16 or 17 (presumed by more people to be more interested in sex/more able to “meaningfully” consent). I also think the total age difference, though rarely taken into account by the law, makes a big difference to people’s gut assessment of a situation. People who think a 16 year old can “meaningfully consent” to sex with a 22 year old might not think he/she can “meaningfully consent” to sex with a 54 year old. Those gut instincts affect sentences, if not criminal liability.
It is interesting and challenging for me to think through the dynamics of adult female/male teen abuse. I do think that male/female power differentials in our society play a role as well as expectations of masculinity that say males aren’t or can’t be harmed by a sexual experience with a female. Perhaps it is harder to see or easier to overlook the power differential on the adult/child axis because of the opposite power differential on the male/female axis. With adult males who have sex with female minors the axes of disempowerment compound whereas with adult women and male minors they confound/conflict?
It seems to me there is a piece of the disparate treatment/impulse not to see women/boy relationships as “as bad” as men/girl relationships that recognizes real disparities of power, but clearly also draws upon traditional notions of girls needing to “be protected” and boys needing to “learn to defend themselves.”
Also, there are lots of cultural narratives that excuse/valorize/accept man/girl relationships that lead to marriage – Lolita, Woody Allen, etc. – these things are starting to fall out of favor, but that is recent and incomplete at best.
RJN:
I was thinking similar things to Susan & veronica d, however not in direct response to anything you wrote. It was more in reaction to what others have said, including the comments of Jane Doe and Ron F in this thread.
It’s obviously important that the individuals involved get to define the meaning of their own lives and have self-determiniation for their future. While at the same time acknowledge that even if the individuals in a particular case don’t believe there’s a link between particular acts and particular outcomes, that in circumstances such as this, the probabilities of significant harm dictate that the ends don’t justify the means. It was still morally wrong, even though they personally migh feel that the moral wrong was worth it. The guilty have paid their price in this particular case, so that premise is perhaps more a concern for others.
I’d be surprised if the mass media were capable of communicating any of that with nuance (Note: I haven’t seen the interview).
Let’s not forget that it wasn’t “just” that Le Tourneau had sex with Vili when he was a child – she made him a father of two children.
I agree with Richard. It’s one thing to acknowledge what Fulaau is saying about his own perception of himself and his life now; it’s another to ignore the fact that he is indeed a survivor of sexual assault.
Emily:
I’m wondering if you’d be willing to say a little bit more, or to get a little bit more specific, about what you find challenging. Your discussion of “disempowerment dynamics” feels right to me—I said kind of the same thing using different language in the original post—but it also feels to me like only the first step in starting to ask the right questions.
Also: I was struck by how Mary Kay is quoted in People as describing her first sexual encounter with Vili:
Now, maybe she said more in the interview—again, I want to be clear that I am talking here about how this has been portrayed in the coverage—but it struck me that nowhere in this does she even hint that Vili indicated a reciprocal desire before she kissed him or did anything to suggest that he wanted a sexual relationship first. In other words, as this is portrayed here, she loved him, she wanted to kiss him, she couldn’t observe her own internal boundary—”Why can’t it ever just be a kiss?”—and the question of his initial consent is nowhere to be seen.
Now, it is entirely possible that this couple has done the necessary and possible work to come to terms with the violation in which their relationship is rooted and that the success of their marriage and family is rooted in this work. Put Mary Kay’s words in a man’s mouth, however, and I don’t think anyone would have difficulty recognizing them as if not predatory—do they not sound like the kinds of things pedophiles sometimes say?—then certainly self-involved and presumptuous, in the way that we readily recognize in men who project their own desires onto girls and women and then act on those desires as if the women felt them too.
For People not to somehow flag those comments as, at the very least, requiring further discussion is another way coverage of the interview suggests that twelve-year-old Vili was an equal participant in the sex Mary Kay had with him.
Which makes me think of Emily’s comments about meaningful consent and not only the age of the minor involved, but also the age difference between her or him and the older person with whom he or she has sex. A girlfriend I had a long time ago, who lost her virginity when she was 16 with a man who was in his 50s. As she told the story, he did not pursue her at all. Instead, she had decided she wanted to have sex, thought very carefully about who she wanted her first time to be with, and she chose him. I don’t remember her full explanation for why, except that she trusted him and she wanted it to be with someone who had experience. So she asked him, and I think this is important: she didn’t try to seduce him. She asked him outright if he would be the person with whom she had sex for the first time.
Leaving aside questions of legality—this was not in the United States and 16 might very well have been the age of consent where my friend was from, I don’t know—and leaving aside the question of whether or not the man should have said yes (which he did), I wonder what people make of this. Especially given the age difference, does this qualify as meaningful consent, since you certainly can’t argue that the sex wasn’t consensual? If it does, how young are you willing to draw that line? Does your perception of the situation differ if you switch the genders? If the genders are the same?
The whole point of statutory rape statutes is that they cover sex that is consensual, but where the law presumes an inability to consent. This does not mean that the law thinks that minors are idiots until they obtain the legal age of consent, at which point they instantly metamorphose like a butterfly into an adult who has the mental capacity to have all kinds of kinky sex and post pictures online under their own names.
In fact, the law acknowledges this rather explicitly when it notes that two minors having sex with each other aren’t typically committing two instances of statutory rape (many people think this is because minors, lacking the capacity to consent to sex, therefore cannot have the mental capacity to be liable for statutory rape- not true! incapacity to commit a crime due to mental status is treated VERY differently).
The point of statutory rape law is to create a firewall between two groups with significant power disparities. This is because a consent based ethic of sexual relationships presumes that the populace to which it applies is composed of people with at least roughly comparable abilities to express and pursue relationships that fit their needs. This is why we can answer questions like, “aren’t homosexual relationships destructive and awful?” by saying, “if that were the case, adults wouldn’t voluntarily enter into them, which they do, so, no.” That’s yer ethic of sexual consent speaking, right there. We presume that adults are capable of protecting their interests, so if they freely elect to do something, we can presume it was in their interests.
Anyways, it is expected that this firewall will not be 100% perfect. It doesn’t need to be. It just needs to get the job done. When its imprecision results in treating someone as incapable of consent when they are in fact capable of it, well, they’ll get older and that will stop. And when its imprecision results in treating someone as capable of consent when they aren’t, we have other laws.
So with that out of the way… I would consider your scenario to involve meaningful consent. Exact age could vary a bit, not sure how far. It would be case by case anyway.
But whether I would consider it meaningful consent would be beside the point. Figuring out exactly who can consent to sexual contact with who at what age for any given two people, age ranges, and relative powers, is an impossibly difficult task to do with any real objective precision. That’s why we created the bright line rule. So we wouldn’t have to answer that. The whole point of statutory rape law is to give us an objective standard that lets us avoid having to answer that question.
As for MKLF, same issue. Maybe this guy was capable of making meaningful decisions about sex at 13. Certainly other 13 year olds make these decisions, among themselves, and I think it would be absurd to treat them as having automatically defiled each other. When it comes to his modern thoughts about it, I’m happy to take his word that he didn’t feel violated. But when it comes to whether MKLF should have been prosecuted, yeah, yeah she should. Believing that she should be prosecuted is completely compatible with thinking that it’s perfectly likely that he gave informed, meaningful consent.
Another way to put it might be, if you fire a rifle repeatedly into the air in a residential neighborhood, I don’t have to prove someone was hurt someone to put you in jail. I don’t even have to know whether someone was hurt. I don’t know now, but more importantly, you didn’t know when you pulled the trigger. You were using your gun irresponsibly either way. Well, replace “gun” with “sexuality,” and leave “someone was hurt” as is.
TLDR- I’m also uncomfortable with using language about degradation or violation.
PS- I occasionally check in on an atheist who does an “ask me anything” bit online where people often ask him for advice. The gag is that he isn’t qualified to answer anything, but he’ll listen and at least answer. He had someone write in about growing up muslim in an unnamed country overseas, being entered into an arranged marriage as an adult, and having sex with his twelve year old wife. Years later he immigrated to the US, deconverted, and adopted VASTLY different moral norms about sex with minors. Now the guy feels like he’s the worst person on Earth. Thing is, he’s still with his wife, they’re both adults now, and she doesn’t care. He feels like he shouldn’t even touch her because he’s a monster.
So, ya know. The world’s got all kinds.
Seconding Tamme above – this situation needs to be evaluated in the context of race as well as gender. As exemplified by Madonna’s entitlement to Black/brown male bodies, there is a long tradition of thinking that men of color are oversexed and, in particularly, hungry for the bodies of white women. Thus Madonna’s recent nonconsensual kiss of Drake during a performance was seen as unproblematic for him – just problematic because she was an older white woman being sexual in public.
Stereotypes of Pacific Islander men are different than for East Asians in the US, and I’m much more familiar with the latter, but they play out along similar lines as other racial stereotypes: oversexed, simple, savage, etc. I distinctly recall reading articles at the time of the initial case that talked about how Pacific Islander men were sexually mature at younger ages, implicitly contrasted against the “normal” white man. The other implication, aside from non-normalcy, was of course that a Pacific Islander boy could not be raped because he was already sexually mature.
Seeing this only in terms of gender is very troubling because it basically lets Letourneau’s whiteness off the hook. Critiques of white women’s sexual entitlement and violence towards men of color have long been made by Black historians, who document the ways that white women deployed stereotypes of Black men as rapists to evade consequences for their own sexual actions – at the cost of the lives of those Black men. This extends to other people of color as well. People of color are seen as categorically sexually available to white people AND categorically desperate for sex with white people. They’re also punished by society for those (erroneous) traits.
So to be clear – this would have played out differently if Fualaau had been a white boy. How exactly this would have played out differently is a matter of speculation, of course, but race is absolutely an important factor in how this case is seen in the media and by the wider world. Boys of color do not ever get to be innocent in the same way that white boys do.
Thanks for this, Katie. I will look to see if I can find some of the articles you mention.
The highschool I went to had quite a few Pacific Islander boys (Fijian, Somaon, PNG) enrolled. I think it was in part due to a schoolarship program. One thing that was clear to us at the time was that the islander boys were, in general, larger than most of the rest of their age group, particular in the 12-15 age range. This was accutely clear to those of us who played rugby.
I can see how this might be mistaken for sexual maturity, although I don’t think any of us kids had drawn a connection betwen race and sexual maturity. The boys who could grow beards were seen as more sexually mature. I also recall that the islanders had a reputation for being more jovial/relaxed about life. If that cultural trait extended to a sexual context, constrated against more typical awkward/prudish american teen attitudes, could be misconstrued as maturity and/or openness. That’s just conjecture though, as I don’t remember much about their attitude to sex/dating, or know how representative it would have been even if I could.
@Patrick – I agree that meaningful consent doesn’t, and shouldn’t, matter in defining statutory rape crimes BUT, it absolutely does matter to discretionary decisions by actors in the systems regarding prosecution, plea bargaining, and sentencing. The person who shoots a gun in the air irresponsibly can be prosecuted, but not for murder, manslaughter, or the same assault charges that would result if someone WAS harmed in the incident. Harm may not be necessary to prosecution, but harm is taken into account, and should be taken into account, in all sorts of ways in the criminal justice system.
Emily- that’s true, but part of the reason we use statutory offenses for certain things is because harm is so difficult to determine, and sometimes isn’t the point for a given law.
If we had a good way to determine whether sexual activity below age of majority was a positive, neutral, or negative experience, we could just do away with statutory rape altogether and prosecute based on that. Or at least we could append a second charge to cover that issue.
Example- if I give my car to a twelve year old to drive on the highway, I have committed at least one crime. That crime doesn’t care about whether he hits someone. If he does hit someone, other offenses will be added.
Giving your car to an unlicensed, uninsured driver probably isn’t a strict liability crime (not sure, out of my field), but hopefully it’s a sufficiently binary issue to illustrate my point. You either do it, or don’t.
Richard @ 7:
No, I haven’t been ignoring your post. I was looking around for some information, and I finally found it.
Here is an example of a female teacher who got four charges (including 2 of third degree sexual conduct) dismissed in exchanged for pleading guilty to two counts of 4th degree criminal sexual conduct. She is getting only 2 years in jail. Another female teacher got a charge of “object rape” on an unwilling 17-year old student, a 1st-degree felony, pled down to sexual battery, a 3rd degree felony, and will get no prison time and will not have to register as a sexual offender. Here’s a female swim coach who had sex with a student and got only 364 days in jail and 5 years probation. Finally, here is a female teacher who got three years in prison and three years’ probation for lewd and lascivious battery and unlawful sexual battery with a 14-year old student.
Now, your theory is that these sentences would be this light because of our cultural viewpoints regarding masculinity cause us to not consider that the victim has been substantially damaged. But that isn’t valid in these cases. All of the students in these cases were female. So I propose that it’s more our attitudes towards the femininity of the perpetrators that is the issue.
Thanks for those links, Ron, but I do want to point out that this is what I wrote:
I was not making a blanket claim about the entire phenomenon of the lighter treatment given to female perpetrators. Obviously, our ideas about femininity also play into how we see them. Rather, I was speculating about one component of this phenomenon when the victim is male.
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