Here is a quote from the case: “In the Becker case, the 18-year-old former East Longmeadow High School student was originally charged with two counts of rape, which could have netted him 20 years in prison. He would later submit to facts sufficient for a guilty finding on two lesser charges of indecent assault on a person age 14 or older.
Prosecutors wanted him to serve two years in jail on the lesser indecent assault charges, but Estes ordered the case continued without a finding. If Becker stays out of trouble with the law, stays away from drugs and alcohol and stays away from the victims, the case will not go on his record as a conviction, and he will not have to register as a sex offender.”
The rest of the article: http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/08/who_is_thomas_estes_judge_in_d.html
Title of article: “Who is Thomas Estes? Judge in David Becker sexual assault case under glare of spotlight following ruling”×:
“Putting this kid in jail for two years would have destroyed this kid’s life.” Said the defense lawyer.
What about the victiims?
The victims were also my students. This was very painful chapter in my teaching career and in our high school. I care about all of my students–those who have been done wrong and those who have done wrong. I want what’s best for all of them. But knowing the kids involved, I am relatively happy with the outcome.
What is now happening in the national press is fairly disgusting and distorting. I can’t speak for Thomas Estes, though he actually seems to have taken into account a psychological report on whether or not jail time was necessary or not. The defense attorney said what defense attorneys say. The DA’s office was not well-represented in the quote department in the media. These cases are notoriously hard to prosecute. Everyone had been drinking.
There are significant differences between Brock and David Becker. David was a three-sport athlete. No one but the newspaper cared about that. He’s not some arrogant jock who thinks he owns the world. David was immediately sorry for what he did. (The newspaper reports that he sent an apologetic text message).
There are incorrect details in the articles as well. The school resource officer is no Michael Ingalls, though he seems to have been the one to do the investigation. It was reported that David was known as “Dave the Rapist.” Someone may have called him that, but he was not known as that. Kids talk to me. No one had heard that.
Some of these differences are apparent in the articles–at least one of the victim impact statements asked for no jail time. There are other details I know that were not reported by the Republican, which published an article that was grossly prejudicial and might discourage victims from coming forward. The victims themselves were approached by police who heard rumors of these events.
I don’t want to say there’s more to the story. What’s missing is context. People are using real events to make a political point. Reality is being sacrificed.
are that in this case, there were two victms insted of one, and David Becker got no jail time, while Turner got six months.
The judge is being witch-hunted, but I’m not sure the outrage is 100% justified. I would agree that 2 years probation is not quite enough punishment, but I’m not so sure that jail time and sex offender status would fit the crime either.
Rape is rape, and it is always wrong, and never the fault of the victim, but when determining a punishment you still have to take all the facts of the case into account. In this case, it was apparently digital penetration. One of the victims wrote a letter stating that she felt that jail time wasn’t necessary, and neither showed up at the trial. This guy didn’t do anything outrageous like film his crime, and he doesn’t have a history of doing this kind of thing either. It sounds like lots of alcohol was involved.
I think that if the judge gave him a year of house confinement, thereby delaying his college career by a year, that would have been a more appropriate punishment.
The people who are outraged about this basically want him to be sent to prison so that he can be raped repeatedly, and they want his life to effectively end. Apparently some vigilante internet commenters went to the kid’s facebook page, found which college he was supposed to attend in the fall, called that college, and got his admission revoked. That type of street justice seems a little wrong to me.
I am outraged. But, NO, I don’t want what you describe. I don’t want that for anyone and I don’t think prison has to be a place where lives are ruined and people are raped repeatedly. That’s just as wrong as anything else about this case.
The outrage comes from the assumption of a mercy: the notion that we should care about this kids future when in fact, in the past he committed several crimes. The pattern, apparently, continues: a white boy, a “star athlete” is given less than a slap on the wrist for actions that have an affect on the lives of others, and the expectation of mercy is both assumed and smugly accepted. That’s a privilege. It’s even worse when you compare it to the apposite pattern of so many black men being imprisoned wholesale and in bulk, and with nary a care for what prison will do to their lives… and then again there are those black men executed without even a trial, never mind having committed a crime at all.
This is exactly what is meant by ‘Black Lives Matter.’ The affirmative case that we must care about their lives and futures as much as we care about the lives and futures of white college-bound athletes. Why mercy for this kid, and his less-than-stringent ruling is just that, and yet mercilessness for others? Extending further privilege to this man who did something wrong is a slap in the face to those who’ve not been extended privilege and have only known privation.
Nor are we expected to extend mercy to the victims of this mans crimes. They are, in fact, mostly absent from the story.
More than a little wrong. A lot wrong. But that’s on the vigilante, and I’m not going to use draconian stupidity on the part of some internet troll to excuse, or even gain sympathy for, this man who committed crimes.
Watching this story go from a community crisis to a national witch hunt has been at turns sad, confusing, and disgusting. I know David pretty well, not outside of school, but outside of class. I also know his brother and his sister.
This story reminds me of Jack Nicholson’s famous words: “The truth, you can’t handle the truth.” The fact is, as a society we can’t handle the truth of what actually happened. First, we get our info through a flawed newspaper report that touts the fact that David was a three sport athlete. That was generated by the press. At school, we kept laughing at the headline. We couldn’t understand why anyone would think of him that way. I think the implication was he was some big man on campus. When the paper looked to see what they had about him, they found news stories that mentioned him. What the paper did was stereotype him, which set him up to fit a national narrative.
David definitely benefitted from being a white, middle-class kid who could afford one of Springfield’s better defense attorneys. Here Masslive distorted reality again. They have several quotes from the defense attorney who says what defense attorneys are supposed to say about their clients. There are almost no quotes from the DA’s office in the paper. There may be a mundane reason for this–the reporter or ADA couldn’t connect for whatever reason–but it also may be that the DA didn’t have a great case or didn’t agree with the outcome.
I agree that this is an example of white privilege, not something necessarily undeserved, but a privilege not extended to poor kids of color who lack the legal resources to get a better outcome. The investigation came about because local police heard a rumor, not because the victims came forward. In some places, there would have been little or no cooperation with the police.
Now, we have a national movement to excoriate a judge who may or may not have made a bad decision because the way the story was reported made it fit a national narrative.
New York Times article reported that prosecutors recommended two year sentence – MassLive did not look at green sheet or have this information.
The victims did not appear for trial as there was no trial. This was an admission to sufficient facts (in which defendant admits to the facts that would support a conviction – in this case it seems admitting to sexually assaulting two unconscious women) and then a CWOF – continued without a findings. No witnesses are called – and this is usually all set in advance.
It may be that DA did not have a great case – but just as likely that defendants admit to sufficient facts and take a CWOF when the defendant does not have a great case and knows that there might well be a jury conviction.
Hard to make judgments without having been privy to all the facts – but also hard to make a judgement even it someone knows the people involved. How many domestic violence murders does one read about where so many people who knew the perpetrator say they are totally stunned and surprised that X could do this.
People make mistakes – but there are plenty of young men who get drunk and do not sexually assault others. Attempting sexual relations with an unconscious person cold well be seen as more than a simple mistake.
Was this a plea deal? Why was there no trial? Did both sides leave it up to the judge? Can you explain?
The DA said there were mitigating factors that would make the case difficult to prove. By unfortunate chance, I was privy to an investigation into a more egregious example of the same crime, though force was involved. The DA didn’t even bring a case because of the same factors, primarily alcohol. My experience with that investigation tends to confirm the difficulty of trying these cases.
My friend is a former chief of police in Western Mass. I asked him what he thought would happen based on the facts in the newspaper. He predicted no jail time.
People were stunned. Teachers, kids. We were all in shock. I was more credulous of the charges than some of my friends who were more skeptical. The PD came and took him out in handcuffs. He had no idea this was going to happen.
This was not a plea deal – as the DA was asking for 2 years.
What this appears to be either a plea to a lesser crime or it could have been a what is known as an admission to sufficient facts – in which defendant admits facts. It was unclear from the earlier articles – but the one to which you most recently linked makes it seem like it could have been a guilty please. In some cases a guilty plea or an admission to sufficient facts could be accompanied by a plea deal. But, as what appears in the instant case, it might be left to the judge to make a sentence after the admission to sufficient facts.
Again – without have reviews a case file – not of this can be said with 100% certainly.
I would note again – please and admissions are not perfect predictors of how strong a case is – and can often mean totally different things. the DA felt that mitigating facts made it hard to prosecute but they would have gone forward. (Also hard to prosecute does not necessarily mean innocence). A guilty plea or an admission also means that the defendant might feel that a conviction is inevitable. Or it might mean that the defendant still feels s/he is innocent but does not want to role the dice with a jury.
Unless one has read all the pleadings, spoken to victims, spoken to defendant – it is really hard to have an opinion (and even with that – it may still be hard!)
The process information is interesting to me. The first Masslive article was really awful. It was very graphic. I would say too graphic. I have friends who were unfortunately rape victims who thought that kind of reporting would discourage, not support victims. It was based the report filed for an indictment. At first, I thought the police leaked it.
I’m not blaming AmberPaw here–the topic had to come up.
But I’m disgusted with how a complicated situation with the only information coming from local, very limited, sometimes flawed, press reports has led people to be judge and jury on the defendant and the judge. For political reasons, I would have thought that Estes would have given David a longer probationary period. I don’t know how that would affect his college applications, however.
Sorry, Mark, but most of the stories of campus rape I read about happen to good kids who go to drunken parties and do the unthinkable. Their families are outstanding citizens, the future of the kid ought to not be put in jeopardy, and so on.
Why is this case any different?
Could it be, maybe, that MOST such alleged rape cases ought to be treated similarly, with probation, rather than incarceration? And without use of the dreaded sex registry list (which is such a terrible legal instrument that it might not even pass constitutional muster)?
I think it is important that men learn the lesson that you can’t have sex with someone who can’t consent to having it. It is also important for them to learn the lesson that “no means no” and there is no such thing as “playing hard to get” when you’re engaged in sexual behavior.
On the other hand, it would be absurd to criminalize any sexual contact with someone who has alcohol in their body. It would also be absurd to require affirmative consent prior to each level of sexual contact, otherwise considering it assault or rape. I can’t get on board with the argument that a woman may not want to do something sexually but she goes along with it anyway, but it is still rape – that’s an area where women need to change their behavior and learn how to say no.
That leaves a lot of grey area in so-called acquaintance rape situations (not this particular one – it is pretty clear that if you penetrate a sleeping woman, it is rape).
The question is, how do you make men (or, I suppose, even women) take the issue of consent seriously but also recognize that there is such a large grey area which would suggest leniency (or even no punishment) is deserved in some cases?
That discussion appears to not be happening with respect to this case. The guy deserves punishment, but most of the public sentiment seems to suggest that he deserves to spend at least two years in prison, with the incident following him for the rest of his life, not only by being on a sex offender list, but by people affirmatively letting his employers and acquaintances know of his deed in the future, content to know that when you Google this guy’s name, “David the Rapist” will come up forever.
> …it would be absurd to criminalize any sexual contact with someone who has alcohol in their body.
Sorry, but I disagree. Being drunk increases the seriousness of the crime – rather than be any excuse.
And in this case, we’re talking of drunk teenagers, with the girls assaulted being passed out. That is exactly the kind of behavior that increases the risk of being indecent assaulted, or worse, raped.
I said “it would be absurd to criminalize any sexual contact with someone who has alcohol in their body“. I didn’t say “falling down drunk”, I didn’t say “passed out drunk”. I said “has alcohol”.
That means if you go to dinner with your wife, she has a glass of wine, you have sex, you go to jail. She had alcohol in her body, so her inhibitions were lowered, thus her consent may not have been honest.
That means if you go on a date with a woman, she has a couple of drinks, you wind up at her place and you have sex, you go to jail, because she has alcohol in her body and her ability to consent may have been impaired.
That means if you are in college at a party, and you get pretty drunk, and there is a woman there, and she is also pretty drunk, and you start making out, and you start groping her (nothing else), and she doesn’t tell you to stop, you go to jail anyway, because she was drunk and her ability to consent was impaired.
See the grey areas? The mere presence of any amount of alcohol can’t eliminate someone’s ability to consent.
So now we wade into the “they were both drunk and had sex” territory. Both parties judgement is impaired. How do you sort that out? Sure, if the woman says “no, I don’t want to have sex”, that is a clear line. Sure, if the man is sober, then you can say that he is required to know better. But I can’t in good conscience say that a woman’s consent is impaired by being drunk while a man’s ability to interpret that consent as impaired still exists even though he is equally as drunk.
an excuse than a complication in 1) investigating the circumstances of a crime 2) proving beyond a crime took place beyond a reasonable doubt.
is a big difference between what we read in the papers and what actually happens. I don’t mean that my take is authoritative in this case, but the press is certainly not. Anyone who has ever been in a news story knows how the media (intentionally or not) distorts things. As selectman, I’ve had my share of these experiences. The fact is, all of these cases are different. They share some similar elements. If you ignore the differences, then they are identical.
My friend who was a police chief and has been an instructor for law enforcement for decades told me months ago that the kid would not see jail time based on what he read in the paper. He was right. He usually is when I ask him what will happen to someone in a certain legal situation.
As Jas says, you can’t decide legal questions without the proper information. As I wrote previously, I was privy to a case where a high school girl was attacked the same way in a much more forceful manner. The DA investigated, but didn’t take it to court. Drunk victim. Drunk perp. Drunk witnesses. I am also aware of a former coach who was tried a few years later, but within the statute of limitations for statutory rape of a player. He got 5 years probation, and (I think counseling), and the possibility of being listed as a sex offender at the end of probation. The sex was not forcible. So there are two cases that show similar crimes with similar results.
If Masslive hadn’t made a big deal about the kid being a 3 sport athlete, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I think it’s good that the press brought this to light, Mark.
Either the guy should have not escaped with easy probation for two years, with the impossible-to-check requirement that he won’t get drunk or do drugs. Or the general public’s expectation that punishment for indecent assault automatically translating to years of prison, and life time of sex registry listing is unreasonable. Tertium non datur.
Generally, I like the press to err on the side of speaking up, rather than keeping things under wraps. But, sometimes, there is difference between reporting and reality.
In this case, one clue of such difference comes from a Boston Globe reader comment: “The real flaw here is that the DA decided to leave this case in District Court and did not indict him. Had there been an indictment for rape the case would have gone to Superior Court and would have been tried as a felony. Instead the DA decided against that and kept it in District Court where it was considered a misdemeanor on the same level as shoplifting. A lot of blame to go around here and not all of it should be focused on the judge.”
The newspapers would have been a lot more closer to the truth had that been actually reported.
The DA’s spokesperson addressed this, saying that
I think this nuance is being lost on people, and I think that the outrage being stoked here also is ignoring that situation. The petition to recall the judge states that “Judge Estes is essentially letting a known rapist free on a college campus”. That implies that the signers of this petition either want to stop this person from ever attending college. Is that a reasonable punishment for a first offense?
Did you intend that to be as hilariously profound a statement as it came across?:)
It’s a new Yogi Berra rule.
media covering the issue. Then we would know nothing at all.
I am bemoaning the quality of the reporting. The first articles were written by a stringer that doesn’t know the community and lives in Worcester. The first article was almost pornographic in detail.
That’s a good quote. I agree that would be good to know. Unfortunately, most reporters don’t know much about the legal process.
But it just came to me.
It is not true to say that “in the past he committed several crimes”. These two incidents occurred simultaneously. One lapse of judgement, one incident. Maybe that will make a difference to you – it would make a difference to me if he did this on two different occasions, but as Mark explains, and the article states, no one seriously claimed otherwise.
When I referred to to prison rape, I was speaking of the general comment sentiments of the more ardent posters on the Masslive article. I appreciate that this doesn’t describe the majority of the people who are unhappy with this decision though, but more than a few posters suggested that he should go to prison where he would be violently raped in return, and quite a few more stated that he will always be a threatening sex offender and that this incident should follow him to his grave, and it would be justice for him to always be known as a rapist. There isn’t really anyone calling for moderation in the frenzy.
I understand that what he did was rape. I am really having trouble understanding what seems to be a implication that all rapes are equal, or equally bad. I have tried to play this incident in my head a lot of ways, trying to look at it from the victim’s perspective, but I just can’t equate an incident of digital penetration by an acquaintance (which I presume must have stopped when the woman woke up) with an incident of a stranger pointing a gun at a woman and then raping her.
I am not gay – but the only way I can comprehend the concept of rape as a tool of power, not sexuality, is to think of a similar incident happening to me by another man – though I think that in the East Longmeadow case, the incident was less about power and more about drunken sexuality.
If I was 18 years old and I woke up in my college dorm to my roommate digitally penetrating my anus, I would sure as hell be freaked out about it. I would not want to be anywhere near him anymore, I would want the college to move him right out. I would probably even support the idea that he should be expelled. However if he was drunk, that would mitigate things a little bit in my mind. If I was also drunk, that would mitigate things a little bit more. If we both passed out in the same bed together, it would mitigate things a little bit more.
On the other hand, if he was sober and I was drunk, then it would make it worse to me. If he didn’t stop when I said “what the hell are you doing”, that would be the line that would cause me to believe in a serious punishment like probation. If I found out that he had done this to other people, I would really want a more serious punishment like jail time. (This brings up a good point – would I want to know if my assigned roommate had digitally penetrated another roommate in the past, meaning that he would be branded for life, or is keeping that confidential an opportunity for him to redeem himself?)
Those mitigating circumstances don’t mean I would ever want the situation to happen, or that I would think it was any less wrong, but it would change how I felt about what kind of person he is and what kind of sanction he deserved.
And although I strongly believe that the perpetrator being drunk is not a license to rape, and that it should not be used as a defense to say that a rape didn’t occur, I think that it still has to be used to understand the totality of the situation because alcohol makes people do stupid things, things they would never do when sober.
The East Longmeadow guy got a sanction – 2 years probation. It isn’t much, and it isn’t enough in my opinion. I am just surprised that people are calling for this guy to get many years jail time plus 20 year sex offender status. I’m surprised that people want this incident to follow him around for the rest of his life, preventing him from getting a job, going to school, having a life. It was a first time offense.
For a first-time offender, and for what he did, that doesn’t seem fair to me. It seems overly harsh. I think the judge made a mistake, but the degree of that mistake, to me, is a year of house arrest versus two years of probation, and that is within a margin of error.
I would love it if someone could explain this to me rationally.
I’m not sure what difference it makes if the kid was a three-sport athlete, or what the DA had to say. The only relevant fact is, in fact, that he raped two people. That is, as things go, a fairly brutal and violent crime.
The evident reaction to the effect of “oh, gee, what a nice kid, he shouldn’t have to have his life ruined, etc.” is a little off-putting. He raped two people. He is a rapist. Having your life trajectory significantly altered is often what happens when people are convicted of violent crimes.
It is indeed an outrage that certain violent crimes get the “We can’t wreck his life for a mistake” reaction, while others most certainly do not.
only relevant fact. There are usually mitigating factors. Like the fact that he apologized by text message the morning after, showing remorse though he expected no punishment. I suspect the DA wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about prosecuting this case and worried about a stronger outcome.
Rape is assault. The word conjures up a predator waiting in the bushes to attack a woman and forcibly rape her. In this case, three kids were sharing a bed, and he digitally penetrated two girls. (This is in the paper). That is, in fact, rape. It is, in fact, a crime, but it’s not what what people think when they hear the word.
I won’t pretend to speak for the victims, both of whom I know. One of them wrote an impact statement requesting that he not be jailed, and I’ll leave it at that. Neither reported the crime either, though they cooperated with the police after.
The question comes down to what is justice? People want the punishment, not to fit the crime, but to fit their outrage. That’s not justice. That’s sick. Would jail time and sex offender status be justice? Based on the psychological report that the judge based his decision on, those two punishments were found not necessary to protect the public. Was the punishment commensurate to the damage done? I refer you to the victim impact statement. Should he have been punished more to make a point? I don’t think so.
Why doesn’t the state modify its rape laws to say that yes, you’ll get jail time, and have to register as sex offender, as a life long outcast… except if you are an apparently good citizen, college bound, and the family has good social standing?
Social standing ought to count for something, no? The law is for the nobodies out there!
(By the way, what kind of good social standing does this fellow’s family have if he goes to drunken parties that end up with two girls being indecently assaulted?)
law works. Laws are interpreted and guilt is decided after looking at evidence, mitigating and aggravating factors.
I was being sarcastic. Yes, that’s not how the law should work!
between Brock Turner and my student. David was immediately apologetic as indicated by text messaging. Brock Turner was smug and laughing:
AND in some of the comments.
Digitally penetrating those who had passed out is wrong, and something I find disgusting. If you were this young man, you would not want me on your jury.
Where were the parents? How did kids this age get that drunk and wind up in bed together without supervision? Good question.
Again, girls should be safe from penetration, digitally or otherwise, drunk or sober by those around them – especially by “friends”. Period. The acceptance as to this by a teacher and that somehow a text message that sounds apologetic makes it all okay – that horrifies me. What if this 3 sport athlete had digitally penetrated two passed out 14 year old male athletes or had fellatio with THEM?
I’ve avoided commenting on this thread so far because I hear both points of view. Still, I think you’ve made a compelling argument in this comment.
With all due respect to Mark, I just don’t see how the digital penetration of two young women who are passed out can be defended or excused. I’m sorry, but in my view this is why we have laws about consent.
I think this comment also highlights an aspect of the clergy sex abuse scandal that goes unmentioned too often. Even if the celibacy practices of the Roman Catholic church tend to select homosexual men with conflicts about their sexuality (a premise that only some have argued), statistically speaking it seems apparent to me that there is almost surely a larger number of young catholic women who have been similarly abused over the years — a population that we don’t talk about at all. The most generous estimates I hear about men who prefer other men are about 20%. That suggests to me that there are likely to be about five times as many female victims of clergy sex abuse as male, since ordained clergy in the Roman Catholic church are exclusively male. Unless we are to believe that ordained heterosexual males are somehow better able to control their behavior than their homosexual brothers (a premise I reject), then we should see more female than male victims of abuse. I suggest that those female victims exist — we just prefer not to see them.
It seems to me that our society got truly concerned about clergy sex abuse ONLY when it was our young men who were the victims. I’m not sure anybody cares about young women forced to give blowjobs or allow “digital penetration” by the priests they have been told to respect.
Where?
Editors: Feel free to delete my comment without compunction!
I don’t think anyone has argued that this wasn’t rape. I think the difference in opinion lies with the severity of the punishment.
The people who created the petition to have the judge removed want a very severe punishment. They believe that this guy should have to register as a sex offender for 20 years. They do not believe he should be allowed free on a college campus. They want his name to be synonymous with “David the Rapist”. This is what their petition says.
Tom, do you think that this person should be permanently prohibited from being “free on a college campus”?
Do you think that he should be a registered sex offender for 20 years?
Do you think that when he applies for a job, he should be required to tell his employer that he is a convicted rapist? Or that, when the do a background check on him, it will show up as “David the Rapist”?
Do you believe, as the petitioner stated, that he will never stop raping? If so, then maybe he should be sentenced to life in prison?
Do you think that the wishes of the victims – one of which sent a victim’s statement asking for no jail time – have no bearing here?
Is there no room in punishment to look at the entire set of facts? Rape can happen in many different ways. Is saying “rape is rape” implying that they are all the same, and should all get the same punishment. It wouldn’t matter if he had taken pictures of him doing it, it wouldn’t matter if he used his penis instead of his finger, it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t stop when they woke up and confronted him, it wouldn’t matter if he was drunk or sober, it wouldn’t matter if he did this with a group of friends. None of that should matter in sentencing because “rape is rape”.
That’s the part I really don’t understand.
I don’t think it is fair to say that anyone has “accepted” anything, but there is a certain tone that I still find a bit off-putting. That tone is one that seems to really want to shift the discussion into the passive voice “mistakes were made” mode rather than the active voice “A did B to C” mode.
There is a tendency to want to put this into the “kids put themselves in a bad situation, with tragic consequences” category, kind of like a late-night car wreck after a party at which there was drinking. I’m not sure that this is right, because it glosses over the violent nature of what appears to have happened.
I’m not sure that I would care much about the victim statements– there are undoubtedly many pressures on those kids to minimize what happened– after all they were drinking too. But that is just the sort of things that get activists talking about privilege and “rape culture.”
I don’t know what would be appropriate, and I’m glad I’m not the judge. But what appears to have been the result here is pretty minimal and designed to minimize long-term consequences to the perpetrator. In cases of violent crime such as this, I don’t necessarily think that that outcome is optimal.
agree with everything you said.
If I wasn’t clear prior to this, I don’t think the girls were responsible for their own assault. If I were a judge, I might have considered that longer probation was in order at the very least. I tried to avoid discussing the appropriate punishment because my perspective differs. I know some things I can’t say.
I was eating lunch with three of my friends. Just came back. They’re opinion was about like mine. One said, “They’re making him out to be a monster.” They are all women.
I don’t read amberpaw’s comment as being as hostile as you seem read it.
I truly do understand your perspective.
Perhaps an aspect of this that bears mention is that a crime like rape is a tragedy for the perpetrator as well as the victim, especially for a perpetrator with no prior history. The same is true for a first-time DUI offense. Still, in my view the answer is NOT to avoid punishing the perpetrator. As tragic as the situation is, two young women were raped.
Another sad reality of such situations is that crimes like this are seldom discovered the first time they occur. EVERY first-time DUI offender says that they never drive under the influence, and that they were just “unlucky” to be caught. Statistics say the exact opposite — first-time DUI offenders most often have been frequently driving under the influence without being caught for an extended period. We don’t have that many cops on road. The likelihood of being pulled over for DUI the one and only time a driver has been drinking is VERY small.
My own perception, fair or unfair, is that this was likely not the first time this individual acted out in appropriate ways with young women around him. I fear it will not be the last. Any young man who does this to two young women who are passed out has serious issues, and those issues make that young man a threat to every woman.
I’m sorry, but that’s just how I see it.
Should have read “acted out in inappropriate ways”.
Hopefully we’ll be able to edit comments soon.
horrifies her! That’s not hostile? She doesn’t have to agree with me.
And where do I defend the perpetrator? Where do I defend his behavior or endorse the punishment?
…but I too cringed at the articular line you quoted. In general I’m loathe to pass judgement on cases where I don’t know all facts and circumstances. I DO think it should be obvious as a matter of law that not only does no mean no, but also the absence of a yes should be presumed to mean no, as well as that if someone lacks the capacity to consent then no consent has been given. Rapes that are not what I call “mugging rapes” (whereby someone attacks a woman and forces himself on her) will always be difficult to prosecute given presumption of innocence, at least until we accept the premises I mentioned above. Otherwise, there is still a lot of room for reasonable doubt about whether an act was wanted.
I really am a better proofreader when it counts!:(
Over and over I have been appointed to represent young women subjected to such behavior – and seen what it does to thei8r lives and how they see themselves. Is my response personal? Yes. Is it emotional? Yes. Is it real? Yes. Is it “hostile” – no. It is truly nauseated, upset, saddened, and what I see is a total lack of concern for those digitally penetrated when passed out, a total privilege to a male who likely has similarly behaved and will similarly behave. Was there a requirement of counseling? No. Was a forensic psychologist given access to evaluate how predatory and narcissistic this 18 year old who would treat “friends” like objects, as no better than hamburgers for him to eat? Not that I see. Where are the boundaries? What is being taught? The lesson that women placate, men harvest those women – and yes, that continues the culture of women as objects to be consumed at will and with no – or minimal consequences and shamed out of holding those who invade and use them, who cannot or choose not to observe the boundaries of decency and kindness. May none of your daughters have such “friends”. I too have much I cannot say, except that I will add I expect the young man to be a pornography user, and to have been desensitized and stimulated by pornography, which in my work I encounter as an addiction with horrific consequences. In the Elizabeth Smart case, she in fact stated that pornography was part of what….made her terrible ordeal occur. See http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/08/21/kidnapping-survivor-smart-says-porn-made-ordeal-even-worse.html While I hope I am wrong, my experience after more than 30 years in family law is such that I am certain this young man was inspired by porn and needs help not free rein on a college campus.
I agree with this comment and uprated it.
I do think it needs to be said that while pornography may well be a common factor shared by a great many, even a majority of, abuse and rape perpetrators, it does NOT follow that those who enjoy pornography are rapists.
Even if this young man was inspired by porn, some apparent pathology differentiates him from his peers who also enjoy porn and who do NOT commit the crimes that this young man admitted to (nobody seems to dispute the awful and horrific facts of this case).
Milk is not a “gateway drug”, even though 98% of heroin addicts drank milk as children.
Clicked to see latest comments though, skimmed one here, and see that porn is being attributed as causal for a horrific act. Yeah, this Gail Dines SWERF carceral feminism can get pretty anti-science.
this further with you if you want to email me. I think we’ve coming at this with different goals and different perspectives. For the sake of reaching an understanding, I would talk on email where I can tell you things I won’t put on BMG.
If you’re interested, markbail@comcast.net.
So often quite a bit of discussion occurs some days between my comments. Sometimes I am away and not on line at all, and some days I am on the road. My intent was to call out what is called “rape culture” and the prevalence of degrading media and desensitizing pornography, and the impact this has especially on juveniles. In my opinion, when one of these cases is prosecuted at all [and only a minority ever are due to how traumatized victims are, and the way women are socialized to be ashamed when I think they should be angry and willing to hold assailants accountable] – a forensic evaluation should always be done of the assailant, and clinical intervention required whether during incarceration or during probation that includes cognitive behavior therapy or something of that nature.
As per my email in response to Mr. Bail, yesterday I was again appointed to represent a victim of similar events and behaviors, age 13. I will not encourage Mr. Bail to divulge information he should not divulge, as I am likely more aware of legal consequences to him and others than he could possibly be.