This is absolutely shattering.
In short, the situation is that a Florida woman, in order to deal with her 13 year old daughter ‘having sex with older men’, shaves her head and forcibly pierces her genitals, so as to make sex more painful for her daughter. The problem is (or at least, one of many many problem is) that the ‘older man’ she was having sex with was her mother’s 30 year old boyfriend . . . and rather than deal with this as ‘oh god, my boyfriend committed a horrible criminal violation on my daughter,’ she apparently dealt with it as, ‘my slutty daughter is trying to take my man.’
The prosecutor, fairly reasonably (IMHO) pushed for a greater crime than child abuse, and the jury acquitted.
Or, as La Lubu put it in comments:
Shit, damn, motherfucker. Lemme see if I got this straight—
1. Boyfriend rapes 13-year old daughter.
2. Mom does not call police on boyfriend; mom blames daughter.
3. Mom has daughter’s head shaved, in the hopes that boyfriend will find daughter too ugly to fuck.
4. Boyfriend continues to rape daughter. For years.
5. Mom has friend “pierce” daughter’s genitalia, in such a way that it will make it even more painful for the daughter when mom’s boyfriend rapes her again.
6. “Piercing” gets infected.
7. Child protection finally called in.
8. Piercer goes to jail.
9. Mom put on trial for the piercing, but not for allowing the rapes? WTF, Chuck?
10. Mom acquitted.
11. Finally, an arrest warrant is put out for mom’s rapist boyfriend.
Christ, this poor girl. This makes me very angry. My fists are clenching and I am seeing red. I want to break something. As other people mention in coments, possibly the worst part is that now it’s likely that the daughter will be sent back to live with her mother.
Her mother who blamed her for her own rape. Her mother who shaved her head. Her mother who violated her. Her mother who held her down as a needle was pushed through her genitals. Her fucking mother.
A while back, in one of our discussions of Male Circumcision, I made the point that I consider nonconsensual and elective alteration of another person’s genitals is unacceptable, period, whether you’re the parent or not. As chance would have it, at the time, I compared circumcision to piercing your child’s genitals against their will. There were some people who argued that nonconsensually piercing your kid’s genitals is actually no big deal.
I wonder where those people are now, and I hope they’re ashamed.
I’m curious – I reread that thread, and I didn’t see anyone say that the piercings “would heal.” I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just can’t find the comment. Can you point it out?
You’re right. I thought that that was a claim that had been made, but that specific claim (that it was okay because it would heal) was not, and I’ve edited the post.
Ginmar covered this a bit ago: http://ginmar.livejournal.com/1228378.html
Some things puzzle me. From the local paper account [http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/oct/25/jury_continues_deliberate_fate_naples_mother_charg/] it sounds like the prosecution didn’t want to do this case on the big charge, and were basically told by the judge to go to trial or have it dismissed.
I’m surprised that getting a kid that young a genital piercing is legal in Florida.
I’m surprised that they have a jury of six on a felony charge.
I’m surprised the jury wasn’t allowed to convict on the lesser charge of “abuse” rather than only being offered “aggravated abuse”
Was the fact that the girl was having sex with the BF proved at trial? How many of the events in your timeline were proved in court? I’m happy to stipulate that your account is correct — but truth, and truth as admissable in evidence, are quite different.
As to the verdict. I hate to second-guess juries from media accounts. Having served on one, it’s amazing how different a case looks from the jury box than from the breakfast table. I’m uneasy assuming that the jury were bigots, or neanderthals. I haven’t seen the precise wording of the statute or the jury charge; I suspect it would be illuminating, since it sounds from the account linked to above as though the act might not have quite met the actual requirements for conviction.
The charge, as I understand, requires malicious intent. Intent of any sort is very hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, there was testimony by the child and her brother that she consented. If the child consented to a legal proceedure, I can see that creating reasonable doubt.
It’s a rotten state of affairs — particularly since there was a guilty plea that the DA and Defense had agreed to, that was thrown out by the judge.
It’s possible that the jury was not allowed to hear evidence about the mother’s boyfriend raping the girl.
It’s possible that the jury was not allowed to hear evidence about the mother’s boyfriend raping the girl.
Why would this be? (That would boggle my mind—-I mean, isn’t this the same judge that didn’t want to take the plea because it was too lenient? How could the sexual abuse be considered irrelevant to the case?) From reading through the limited amount of newspaper information I was able to find online, it seems that the case originally came to the attention of child and family services because of the infection, and during that investigation, it was discovered that mom’s boyfriend started raping the girl when she was eleven.
Wouldn’t CFS caseworker(s) be a part of this case, under average procedures? Wasn’t there a CASA person present?
Mind boggling. It really does make you wonder just what evidence the jury was allowed to hear.
I’m stunned and horrified. I don’t understand how mothers could do this to their daughters, but I think it’s not all that uncommon (Mother blaming “slutty daughter” aka CHILD for seducing boyfriend/husband). My best friend in college was assaulted by her adoptive father for 10 years (from 5 – 15) when she finally got the courage to tell. Mom blamed daughter for it all, including their crappy economic position after the father went to prison (thank God). It’s really no surprise the daughter ended up pg and married to a 22 year old abusive bastard a year later.
Sigh. I just can’t comprehend. I love and adore my partner and I don’t worry about him doing anything despicable to our daughter, but if I had even the smallest hint that something is going on he’d be lucky if I didn’t kill him.
That’s pretty messed up.
I don’t pretend to have any familiarity with the case or the relevant law, but I could meander a guess about why the rapes might have been excluded (not necessarily correctly) – as part of legislation enacted to protect rape complainants, most (if not all?) states have laws that make all sexual history of a witness inadmissible, period. In some cases, it might seem like it doesn’t make any sense for that to be the case, but the laws are pretty strict. But like I said, this is a guess, I don’t really know.
Tammy Meredith, the piercer, will be going to jail for a year on aggravated child abuse charges. I’m not sure if that’s because piercing a 13-year-old kid’s genitals is illegal across the board or what.
—Myca
The piercer, as I understand, was convicted because she had no legal right to piece– she was unlicensed.
As to why the jury wasn’t presented evidence of the abuse — It would be hard to prove the mother knew about the rape, so you couldn’t get her for covering it up. And otherwise, it isn’t clear how it’s relevant to the mother’s guilt or innocence. Courts don’t like to show juries irrelevant evidence; the worry is that the jury would be “biased” by it.
Nope.
She was charged with aggravated child abuse and, in return for her cooperation, plea bargained down to both child abuse and a charge of operating a body piercing service without a license.
Link.
Nope.
The jury was presented with evidence of the rape, and the evidence seems to indicate that the mother had knowledge of the rape prior to shaving her daughter’s head and piercing her genitals . . . which the daughter says was nonconsensual.
Link.
—Myca
Ah, I didn’t understand that the “without a license” was the result of a plea deal; figured it had to correspond to an actual offense. Thanks for clarifying that.
I generally think of myself as a fairly neutral legal commenter, but I really don’t get this.
The most I can think of is (brace yourself) that the jury bought into the consent thing. Which wouldn’t surprise me.
Let me put on my handy “hat of insanity” for a moment and pretend to be a juror: we’ve got little problem that 11 or 12 year olds can have sexual desires, right? We may not like it, but 12-year olds do it. And we as parents need to try to stop it for their own good, right?
(Both of those views in their “sane” existences are visible in this thread: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/10/19/children-fucking-children)
OK, “hat of insanity” off.
I really don’t get it. Mostly: 1) it seems clearly rape to me. But 2) Even if you’re crazy enough to think it’s consensual, wouldn’t the thing to do to get rid of the boyfriend? And 3) Even if you’re crazy enough to think it’s consensual AND to want to keep the boyfriend.. oh hell, I can’t imagine this one It. Is. REALLY. Fucked. Up.
Oh, absolutely, she should be in jail for allowing it. However, it’s hard to prove the knowledge and intent. And I’m not sure that that was the crime the jury was returning a verdict on. It sounded from the press reports like only the piercing was in question, and there might be reasonable doubt about the precise intention the mother had.
There seems to be absolutely no question that she knew that her boyfriend was raping her daughter. Although in her sick sick mind it went something more like, her ELEVEN YEAR OLD daughter was seducing her poor innocent 30 year old boyfriend. Then, the child begins to get “wild” and she decides that she needs to do things to mediate her acting wild. Starts with putting her on the pill and I’m certain other restrictive punishments we might consider decent (except for the whole allowing you boyfriend to rape your daughter thing) – stuff like groundings… (I’m totally speculating on this part here). Then, when that didn’t work and the girl gets older and is still acting “wild” (i.e. acting out because she’s been repeatedly raped by her mother’s boyfriend and she’s doing nothing to stop it except punish HER), she decides to shave her head. A humiliation I doubt anyone who has not been a 13 year old girl could *really* understand the true ramifications of. When THAT didn’t work, she decided to pierce the daughter’s genitals – mom’s story is that the daughter agreed to it as a “good faith effort” to show her mom she could be trusted.
Excuse me while I vomit. Profusely.
I’m not often an advocate for blaming mothers for everything and letting male perpetrators off the hook… and I DO sincerely hope the boyfriend stands trial and is put away, but I gotta say, I personally feel like what the mother did in this case was FAR worse than the original perpetration by the boyfriend. I can’t even begin to fathom the kind of long term emotional damage she has caused that poor girl. HOW do you figure out how to be whole when your mother BLAMES you for your assualt by her boyfriend, and punishes you for it in such harsh, violent ways.
I just am so sick. I’m going to go hug and kiss my baby girl now.
as part of legislation enacted to protect rape complainants, most (if not all?) states have laws that make all sexual history of a witness inadmissible, period
No, they don’t. It’s pretty pathetic that your’e trying to hijack this thread into a screed against rape-shield laws.
Some while back, Disgusted Beyond Belief meandered
As it happens, there’s a nice table online of what various state rape laws say. It sounds like in Florida, this would have been admissable, since only “consensual” behavior is inadmissable.
mythago, I didn’t see the quoted comment as foreshadowing a screed. I’m new here, is that an unusually controversial subject here? I’ve never actually heard anybody complain about rape shield laws– and I tend to run in circles farther to the right than many here.
Ari, yes, there are. Generally they consist of anti-feminists wailing that rape-shield laws bar all kinds of relevant evidence, and implying that uncounted numbers of innocent men are railroaded on false rape charges because scheming bitches hide behind rape-shield laws to keep out evidence that would prove their perfidy. Of course, this requires some distortion of what rape-shield laws generally say and what their intent is.
Mythago – nice to see you don’t jump to conclusions or anything. Sorry, but your reaction is the sort of thing that would place you, as a feminist, in the same box I’d put many MRAs. I just had to say that. That said, here’s what I meant by remarks about laws the prevent ALL evidence of past sexual relationships sometimes leading to absurd results:
In some cases, this keeps out evidence of other crimes that are very relevant – for instance, I’ve seen it keep out the fact that a witness was caught raping a 3-year old, something in the context of the case was rather relevant because it gave that witness a reason to lie when testifying against another defendant (to avoid and deflect blame for that act). Somehow, I don’t think the laws were enacted with the intent to protect witnesses who rape toddlers. In fact, that is a rather absurd result. That is my problem with those laws – and I think they are symptomatic of the way they were passed. All of the rules of evidence are set by the courts over a long deliberative process, taking into account how the law has developed over the years. But the rape-shield laws were enacted differently – it was a political hot potato that was rammed into the rules of evidence by the legislature without any of the usual procedures – and so now while they can and do work as intended, they also have a bunch of unintended, sometimes rather horrible, side-effects, like the one I mentioned above.
I’d be interested to hear more about that example — can you point us to a citation? That sounds more like the usual common-law rule about not bringing up irrelevant prior convictions to besmirch the defendant than a rape-shield law.
I’m also puzzled, because the National Association of DA’s table I linked to above shows all state rape laws refer to either “the complaining witness’s” or “the victim’s” prior activity. None would shield a defendant. And I suspect evidence of a prior felony conviction suggesting bad character would be exempt in every state.
“Mythago – nice to see you don’t jump to conclusions or anything. Sorry, but your reaction is the sort of thing that would place you, as a feminist, in the same box I’d put many MRAs. I just had to say that.”
No, you really didn’t, and you can avoid doing it in the future.
“In some cases, this keeps out evidence of other crimes that are very relevant – for instance, I’ve seen it”
Are you a lawyer?
DBB wrote:
This is an extraordinary enough claim so that I’d like to see it backed up with a citation to a news story. If you have a citation describing the specific case you’re talking about, feel free to post it in this thread.
Beyond that, however, I’ll remind you that the checkbox at the bottom of the page is there for a reason. Since you’ve written things like “I want to say that I’m not a feminist,” you should not be posting in this thread, or in any thread marked feminists-only.
So unless you have a citation to offer me — and I strongly suspect you don’t — please do not put any further comments on to this thread. Thank you.
I’m with Ari: I can imagine a variety of reasons that a prior conviction of the defendant would be kept out, but those stem from a general rule against prior bad acts and not from rape shield law.
Rape shield laws, generally speaking, shield the ACCUSER’S history, and prevent it being used to attack the accuser.
Amp – you have essentially set up an impossible situation if I am to respond at all. First, the thread note does not say you have to be a feminist to post – you can be pro-feminist, and in the sense that I fully advocate the equal rights of women in all senses of the word, I am pro-feminist.
I cannot offer a citation because I cannot give any more details than generalities about the case because I have to keep it confidential. To answer someone else, I am a lawyer, and this is a case I have directly worked with, so that’s how I know it is true. And this case is the reason I first posted in this thread – the case posted about for this thread reminded me of this case of mine (which is disturbing on many levels) for obvious reasons.
In my case, the judge, I think, made a mistake, but he was following the plain language of the statute, which leaves no room for an exception like the one in my case. So the only escape clause would be a constitutional argument. It remains to be seen what will utlimately happen with that.
And I am sorry if I said anything inappropriate regarding my feelings about what mythago said, but at the very least, I think mythago owes me an apology for the rather offensive things said – I should not have let my offense get the better of me, and I am sorry about that, but it was still very wrong and disgusting equating me with those rather profane things, based on nothing I said, but instead based on some form of sick projection.
Let me be very clear. I agree with the idea behind rape shield statutes, I just wish they had been implemented better. In an ideal world, they would not be needed at all because the general rule keeping out irrelevant evidence would be enough to keep out irrelevant sexual history, but unfortunately, it did not work out that way, so something more was needed.
Oh, and Ari, this was a complaining witness.
Now, in closing, if you think that my unequivical support of equal rights for women does not sufficiently make me pro-feminist enough to post here or in any similar thread, then I will not do so ever again.
In other words, you’re offering an amazing claim that you can’t back up in any way at all. Maybe it’s true; nonetheless, you can’t reasonably expect us to consider a claim you can’t substantiate as if it were credible.
“Pro-feminist” has a specific meaning within feminist discourse that you don’t seem to be aware of. If you can’t say “I consider myself a feminist” or “I would consider myself a feminist, except I don’t think men can be feminists, so instead I consider myself pro-feminist,” then you shouldn’t be posting in any of the “feminists and pro-feminists only” threads. Sorry for the confusion.
Disgusted, I certainly don’t mean to ask you to break confidentiality — but can you point us at the controlling statute? Even tell us what state?
Did the anti-FGM law come into play here? Should it have? Could it still?
How would this case be viewed differently if the mother had done the piercing herself? Is the piercer less culpable since she was merely the agent of the mother? Is the mother less culpable because she didn’t do the piercing herself?
Finally, if something similar happened to a young boy, could there be any legal recourse whatsoever?
To answer someone else, I am a lawyer
Then you know that claiming there are rules of evidence that bar “all sexual history of a witness, period” is both sloppy and false. For a lawyer to be so vague and to misstate the law in such a way suggests that you are not just ill-informed.
To recap, your claim is: “most (if not all?) states have laws that make all sexual history of a witness inadmissible, period.” Please point me to any state that has an absolute bar to the admissibility of a witness’s sexual history.
Sorry for the consecutive post, but since DBB has gone off in a huff, on DBB’s own blog, s/he claims to be from Michigan. That state’s rape-shield laws don’t match DBB’s claims about what rape-shield laws supposedly do. And the comments about the procedure by which rape-shield laws are passed is decidedly silly.
And what Sailorman said: rules of evidence shielding criminal sexual conduct of a defendant fall under the heading of ‘prior bad acts’.
Brick, this thread isn’t going to turn into a discussion of male cirumcision.
I apologize if that wasn’t your goal, but we’ve seen that particular sidetrack just too often.
If you’d like to discuss circumcision, though, feel free to do so at the post I linked to in my last paragraph.
—Myca
I just watched this last night. http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Aileen_Life_and_Death_of_a_Serial_Killer/60033282?trkid=2361637
Whatever they put in the water at Wesleyan, which produced Joss Whedon & Dave Wallace, they should give some to Florida. It’s unfair.