Genarlow Wilson, the teenage boy who was sentenced to ten years in prison for consensual1 oral sex with another teenager (at the time, he was 17 and the girl was 15, which is “aggravated child molestation” according to Georgia law), had his sentence thrown out by a judge who called his sentence “a grave miscarriage of justice.” But the Attorney General of Georgia has appealed, meaning that for now Wilson remains in prison.
Wilson’s long minimum sentence stems from the fact that Georgia’s laws, at the time of Wilson’s conviction, called for a harsh 10-year minimum sentence for “aggravated child molestation” (which includes oral sex). If Wilson had had coital sex with the 15-year-old, rather than getting a blow job, he would have been sentenced to one year instead of ten years. I suspect the harsher penalties for non-coital sex were based on the association of non-coital sex with homosexuality; so although Wilson is being punished for straight sex, he may be a victim of homophobia.
It’s also hard not to suspect that the system would have found a way to be more merciful — or the Attorney General would have given this appeal a pass — if Wilson weren’t Black.
One last disturbing note about this case: Wilson was also acquitted of raping a different girl at the same party. Of course it’s impossible to be 100% certain, but from what ABC reported, it sounds to me like Wilson probably is a rapist, despite the acquittal.
In a portion of a tape obtained by “Primetime,” Wilson, then 17 and an honor student and star athlete who was homecoming king, is seen having intercourse with a 17-year-old girl, who was seen earlier on the bathroom floor. During the sex act, she appears to be sleepy or intoxicated but never asks Wilson to stop. Later on in the tape, she is seen being pulled off the bed.
Other portions of the tape show a second girl, who was 15 and later said she did not drink that night. She was recorded having oral sex with several boys in succession, including Wilson.
The following morning, Wilson got a phone call that would change his life. He learned from a friend that the 17-year-old had gone to the police to report that she’d been raped.
“I was, like, ‘What? When was this happening? Did this happen at the same party I was at?'” Wilson said. “It was shocking to me.”
Authorities believed the 17-year-old alleged rape victim and said she was too intoxicated to consent to any sexual acts, which is what Georgia law requires, otherwise these acts can be considered rape.
Wilson maintained his innocence. “I know that it was consensual,” he told “Primetime.” “I wouldn’t went on with the acts if it wasn’t consensual. I’m not that kind of person. No means no.”
Five of the boys accepted plea deals, but Wilson — the only one without a police record — held out. […] Jurors voted to acquit Wilson of raping the 17-year-old.
“I mean it wasn’t even an hour,” said jury forewoman Marie Manigault. “We immediately saw the tape for what it was. We went back and saw it again and saw what actually happened and everybody immediately said not guilty.”
Notice that Wilson’s defense — that he understands that “no means no” — is exactly the kind of thinking that leads a lot of date rapists to think their rapes of semi-conscious victims are justified. “She didn’t say no,” in their minds, is enough to make the event “not rape”; that she actively say yes is not required, in this view.
Unfortunately, that belief is held not just by a lot of date-rapists, but by a lot of people everywhere, which is (perhaps) why the jury found acquitting Wilson of rape so easy. My view is that when someone is nearly asleep during sex with a half-dozen boys and men, and when she’s so out of it that she has to be pulled off the bed (presumably because she wasn’t able to get up by herself), and then she says that she didn’t consent — that’s rape.
EDITED TO ADD: Just to be clear, folks, I am in no way claiming that punishing Wilson for consensual sex is okay because in a separate incident he probably raped someone. Obviously, I don’t want the law to work that way. Sorry if my post was unclear on this point.
I haven’t paid enough attention to the case to actually know about the rape acquittal, but I personally have had some trepidations about holding Wilson up as any sort of martyr or hero because I am very uncomfortable with the whole scenario described in the tape.
Of course, I haven’t seen the tape, but I do remember guys like this from when I was in high school. The 15 year old says she consented, and I believe her, but I have this nagging feeling that there had to be some sort of coercion. I really don’t want Wilson to become a martyr in the criminal justice system any more than I want the Duke Lacrosse team to become martyrs.
You have just articulated precisely the prosecuting DA’s point: Genarlow was found not guilty of rape by a jury. A juror’s post-trial public statement that the jury did not believe a rape occurred is here. But the DA and senior Republican state legislators have continued to call it rape.
You can believe it is a rape if you wish but let’s look, then, at what’s going on: because he got off on a rape he’s being hammered on a trumped up alternative charge. I understand that this is how justice in our system works; I believe there is no justice in that. And you, I know, would not approve of the very same tactics in other legal spheres (think Bush’s tactics in his war on terror).
I submit, also for your consideration, that lawmakers have been passing the tape of that night’s goings on all around the state for over a year. Where’s respect for the woman in that? From a Bloomberg opinion piece today, “It isn’t clear whether the girls’ faces were obscured in the video. But the idea of a prosecutor distributing a sex tape to lawmakers in the name of victim protection is bizarre at least. The young women and their families can’t possibly be grateful for help like that.”
I’m sorry, you can call me an old-style liberal: criminalizing and locking up our kids is not the answer. Education is necessary. And so is facing up to the complexities of teens having sex, imperfectly, in a world that has sexualized and fetishized them.
You are a smart writer whom I admire. This kid would not be in jail in Georgia today if he were white. He is neither the model innocent my side portrays him to be or the gang rapist the other side sees. He is just like many, many, many kids his age (then 17) across this country. Criminalizing them, locking them up for 10 years, is not the answer.
I have a lot of sympathy for the 17-year-old rape victim described in this report, and the overall situation makes me suspect others may have been sexually abused at the party as well. (Perhaps not evidently enough to prosecute anyone, but a person can still be damaged.) I hope they get help and find peace of mind.
I understand looking at a victim and wanting to see an offender punished. I expect people who become police officers, prosecutors, or judges, must feel it even more strongly. The idea that helping a victim can be unrelated to punishing an offender is *hard*. We call it “closure” and “justice” and talk about punishing offenders as something that has to be done for the sake of the victims.
When Wilson was acquitted for raping that 17-year-old girl, I expect it looked like a very clever idea to just extend his sentence for statutory rape. I expect it looked like justice for someone to be in prison for 10 years for the rape of an incapacitated 17-year-old, plus oral sex with a 15-year-old who said she consented.
The problem is the acquittal. I have a real problem with a judge trying to punish someone for a crime after he has been acquitted of it. (So does the constitution, btw.) It seems particularly unfair to sneak in that extra penalty under the table. Wilson might be a really horrible person, but you can’t send someone to prison for being a really horrible person, only for specific convictions. Al Capone famously went to prison for tax evasion, but he was honestly convicted and sentenced for tax evasion. If the judge added up the standard sentences, and then tacked on, “plus a hundred years, for being Al Capone,” that would have been bad for the criminal justice system.
The US criminal justice system is already threatened. We have very little legal protection from search and seizure anymore, and protections against arbitrary detention without charge are diminishing. I don’t want to let go of the right to trial by jury, or protection against double jeopardy. These aren’t in opposition to feminism, even when they protect a rapist. If judges can sentence people however they want, without being constrained by laws, who believes the end result will benefit women? Or poor people? Or justice?
aT Joe: What I got from Amp’s piece, and this situation, is that the lines are blurred, but that Genarlow’s conceptualization of his defense surrounds his understanding that a verbal “no means no”. Which is only a partial truth. A “yes” from an underage girl or from an inebriated girl/woman may not be a clear verbal “no”, but it is also not full consent. It is incumbant within our concept of educating young men that we stress their role in delineating between their sexual urges and obtaining full and meaningful consent from the girls/women with whom they are sexual.
We may not be able to determine the right role of justice in this particular instance, but we can also recognize those embedded elements that further our rape culture (which also includes the distribution of the “evidence” tape to a large audience).
(1) the charge of conviction was not “trumped up.” It was not invented. In fact, Wilson conceded that he did violate the law that he was convicted of violating: the girl he was convicted of molesting gave him a blowjob. She was 15. He was 17. That was a crime of absolute liability in Georgia at the time — he need not have known or even suspected that she was underage; it was his absolute obligation to find out if she was under 16 and to refrain if she was.
(2) the judge didn’t punish him for the rape of which he was acquitted. The molestation charge carried a mandatory minimum.
(3) If you want the law changed to include a “Romeo and Juliet” provision for similar-aged partners, you got your wish: the statute was changed after this case.
(4) If the fifteen year old says it was consensual now, then I credit that. Sure, she may be under all kinds of pressures from people in the case and from the culture in general; that’s true of all decisions about sex in patriarchy. But to respect the agency of young women, if she says that at 15 she wanted to give blowjobs to some high school classmates, then I take her at her word.
(5) Wilson got a blowjob from an underage girl in a room where at least five men gang-raped a seventeen year old who was too drunk to know what was happening. That’s an inherently coercive environment, so I’m not interested in calling Wilson a martyr. I’m willing to say let him out if the girl that he was sexual with says it was consensual, because I think all SR statutes ought to have a Romeo and Juliet provision; but calling him a martyr in those circumstances is going way, way too far.
(6) the codefendants get no sympathy from me. One codefendant, while this case was pending, impregnated a twelve year old girl. To me, that speaks powerfully against any argument that the gang-rape of the drunk 17 year old was anything other than the callous abuse of a helpless victim.
Such a complex topic, I understand and appreciate the points made here in comments. But if anyone made him a martyr it was the prosecutor and the media structure: no room for complexity there. To contrast his evil caricature we come up with an all-star innocent. How else do you fight this in our all too real world? Nuance?
It is clear that the environment that night was bad. Certainly you can justify punishment. But not THAT punishment. And as to Romeo and Juliet, I see racism in the fact that they changed the law because of Genarlow but did not include him in the changed law. He’d still have served 2 years time! Even the (white Republican) guy who wrote the law has said that Genarlow should not have been prosecuted under it.
I see prosecutorial over reaching that should be investigated from outside of Georgia! The latest dumbfounds me: the girl’s mother not only says the punishment was too severe, she also said she was threatened by the prosecutors that she could face legal trouble for “neglect” as a parent if she did not cooperate. Please read this important piece in the AJC today.
Just to be clear, folks, I am in no way claiming that punishing Wilson for consensual sex is okay because in a separate incident he probably raped someone. Obviously, I don’t want the law to work that way. Sorry if my post was unclear on this point.
“That decision was cut and dry,” says Manigault, adding that she and the other jurors watched the tape as many as 10 times during the trial and deliberations to gauge whether the 17-year-old girl was able to consent to the sex. “The girl may have been on something but she was coherent enough in the video to respond directly and correctly to a question she was asked,” says Manigault.
MARIE MANIGAULT, JURY FOREMAN: When we viewed the tape, there was absolutely nothing in there that showed us that he in any way encouraged this person, even invited the person to come.
Verbally lynching an innocent man does not further the cause of feminism in any way. There are numerous cases of drunken gang-rape of unconscious women at parties. This is not one of them.
Complaining about this makes you no better than the MRAs who complain about Mary Winkler killing her abusive husband and getting “only” three years for it.
“It’s also hard not to suspect that the system would have found a way to be more merciful — or the Attorney General would have given this appeal a pass — if Wilson weren’t Black.”
Georgia State Attorney General Thurbert Baker is also black.
Just to be clear, folks, I am in no way claiming that punishing Wilson for consensual sex is okay because in a separate incident he probably raped someone. Obviously, I don’t want the law to work that way. Sorry if my post was unclear on this point.
Well then what is your point? A careful examination of the facts has led you to conclude that the jury was wrong on the rape charge. You’ve taken some reading on the case and construed it to mean that the jury has a rather old-fashioned view of what rape is. Tossing in a “(perhaps)” and a “probably” is really just an appearance of equivocation, so you can avoid accusations of coming to your own conclusions about the trial…which you did, so the accusations would be correct. You say your post is “unclear”, but it’s not. You strongly imply that we shouldn’t feel that sorry for this guy because in your opinion he’s a rapist, and so it’s really not that great of a travesty that he’s been locked up for ten years for getting a blow job. If that’s not your point, then why did you even write this?
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