Bartolome Esteban Murillo
Prodigal Son 1670
This is going to be a hard post to write.
You know when you start something, or even before you start something and you’re saying to yourself “Oh boy, this is going to hurt”? Like that.
It’s a sad comment on the state of the world that we are becoming used to mass shootings. The Aurora shooter captured our attention only by doing something different. “A movie theater? That’s new. That’s original.” Sometimes I feel like I’m in a pitch meeting at Fox.
But it’s not really Aurora that makes this hard.
There was another news story this week. There were many others, but one caught my attention. A teenage girl, who had been ordered as part of a plea agreement not to name two boys who assaulted her when she was passed out drunk, nevertheless posted both their names on Twitter. The judge found her in contempt and charged her. She could get 180 days and/or a heavy fine. Her attackers have not yet been sentenced, though they will be.
Let me make this clear. She’s the victim. They are the perpetrators. That is not in question. I don’t know the full details of the attack, but I believe her story. Why wouldn’t I? It’s not like this kind of thing doesn’t happen all the time. Lately the blogosphere has been alight with female bloggers, many of them YA writers or reviewers, admitting that they are survivors of rape or sexual abuse. These posts were hard to write too I imagine. They are hard to read.
Yeah, okay, I’m a survivor too. I don’t want to go into that. This post is about something else.
I fell into reading about the case of the teenage girl, and the comments on what she’d done. She got nearly universal support. People wanted to contribute to her defense fund, to pay her fine, celebrate her bravery. She’s a hero. The sentiment can be summed up thus: “They ruined her life so she should ruin theirs.”
Well.
I have a couple of things to say about that. The first thing this: please stop telling young women that getting raped ruins their lives. If we keep saying this they will believe it. Look at it this way, statistics tell us that one in four women will be raped or sexually assaulted. Look around you. One in four of them, women that you see at school, at work, at church, at the playground with the kids, in the supermarket, at the library, in restaurants, at the doctor’s office, at the gym, in the senate or in congress, on TV or in movies, or music, famous women or the woman next door , one out of four has been raped. Do these women look like their lives are ruined?
I think sometimes there is a logical fallacy associated with this, something along the lines of all wolves are dogs, a beagle is a dog, therefore a beagle is a wolf. While it is true that the overwhelming majority of women with “ruined” lives (homeless, drug addicted, incarcerated etc.) have been raped it does not follow that rape ruins all rape survivors, or even that it was rape that ruined the lives of the women who are “ruined”.
The idea rape “ruins” women is a holdover from a time we are well shot of, a time when women were expected to remain virgins to “marry well” and be successful wives and ladies, nothing more. Of course sexual assault has continuing effects throughout a woman’s life (or a man’s), but please stop using this rhetoric: “they ruined her life”. This is harmful to young women. It has to stop.
Here’s the second thing I have to say and this is where it gets hard. I don’t believe this young woman’s life is ruined. She has stuff she needs to overcome, things she needs to heal surely. I can’t know the exact journey she has ahead; every person is different in how they deal with this. I do know this though: she will have the support of a strong and determined sisterhood of survivors and feminists, and the support of the community at large. Generally speaking, our society no longer stigmatizes rape victims. No jobs or fields of study are closed to her. Few men and no women would be unsympathetic to her if she wants one as a romantic partner. If she wants to, she can marry and have children, adopt, become a foster parent, a girl guide leader or a minister of religion (not a Catholic priest of course; don’t get me started on that).
Those boys did not ruin her life; but I’m pretty sure they very nearly ruined their own.
Eventually in the comments of the one news story I read, a commenter did what I so hoped they wouldn’t and posted the boys’ names. I couldn’t help myself. I Googled them. Their names were unusual enough that Googled together I was sure I would find them. I thought I might find some other blogs or comments on the case, on the attack, on the victim’s actions. I didn’t. I found them both on the page of a champion junior sports team. Each player had a bio and a photo. Both boys were handsome, healthy looking young men. One of them specified in his bio that he wants to be a doctor.
Urgh.
This stupid boy has one thing going for him. In his state, since he is a juvenile he will not be required to register as a sex offender. He has pled to a felony sex offence, but his record, like most juvenile records will likely be expunged when he turns twenty-one. He is not required to register. He dodged a bullet that eviscerates boys just like him every day in other states of the USA and in other countries where juveniles ARE required to register, sometimes for life. He won’t be going to medical school with his age mates, that is almost certain, but after he turns twenty-one he has a chance. Should we give him this chance? Or should we “ruin his life”? Examine your feelings on this. What if he is destined to be the doctor that saves your life, or the life of your child?
“But,” you protest, “what he did was unforgivable.” We hear this word a lot in the media: unforgivable.
The young woman was wronged. She wanted vengeance and, feeling that the courts hadn’t meted it out for her, sought it herself. She was celebrated for this, for publically and permanently labeling her attackers. The media praised her strength and bravery. She took matters into her own hands, she made them hurt, she made them pay. This is viewed as heroic. What I’d like to know is how far would we let her go? Would we congratulate her if she killed her attackers? What if she arranged to have their mothers or sisters raped? Or their daughters? At what point do the vengeful sentiments we accept and celebrate become another unforgivable act?
Because here is something I’m almost sure of. The Aurora shooter had vengeance in his heart.
Yeah. Maybe I’ll come back to that.
What is the purpose of criminal justice? There was a time, and there are still places in the world where rapists were and are dealt with by the family of the victim. This was and is called “retribution”. Why do we have so many words for this in English anyway? “Revenge”, “retribution”, “vengeance”, “vindication”, “vendetta”, “retaliation”. Is this like the Inuit and their eleven words for snow? Does revenge form such an important part of our lives, our understanding of the world?
Is American criminal justice revenge? Yes, I believe it is, and increasingly so. Thousands of children are tried and convicted as adults every year in the USA. They are sentenced to long terms in adult jails where everyone knows they will be beaten, raped or even killed. Some lawmakers and pundits seem to delight in this idea, because these children, for “what they did” deserve it. In the United States today, over 2,500 individuals are behind bars for life without the possibility of parole for crimes that they committed as juveniles. These kids are forced to finish high school (its own kind of torture) but many are denied any further education or treatment. “Why bother?” is the justification. “They’re never getting out. Why rehabilitate them?”
In what way is this not revenge, cold and brutal?
Adult offenders are regularly given spitefully long sentences for relatively minor crimes, and of course, some men are executed. No, let’s call it what it is. Some men are killed in retribution for what they’ve done, sometimes despite the fact that their victims’ families have spoken up against it, despite the fact that they have become exemplary prisoners, role models, staunchly anti-gang and anti-violence and/or deeply religious.
This is the moment I’d like to remind you that almost 100% of criminal offenders, especially violent or sexual offenders have been victimized one way or another themselves, usually as children.
The boys in the story above may not have been victims of physical or sexual abuse but I think there is a fairly good chance they were raised by passive mothers and aggressive fathers. I’m pretty sure this male aggressiveness was reinforced by playing competitive contact sports, and yes, by violent video games, music and movies. I’m pretty sure the adults around them discussed sex as a forbidden and wicked wonderland, while simultaneously tolerating, or even encouraging the competing and mixed messages about sex from the media, older kids, their peers, teasing girls and goading boys. They were discouraged from showing any emotions apart from bravado, lust and greed, but those three emotions were celebrated. I’m pretty sure they were drunk too. Who knows where they got the booze.
It takes a village to fuck up on this epic scale. It really does. But offenders often end up facing the music alone. That’s the way it goes. We create them together then we punish them alone. The punishment is intended to ensure they don’t do it again. In many cases it doesn’t work (though juvenile sex offenders have the lowest recidivism rate of almost any offenders). In some cases, such as life without parole or death penalty it certainly does work. They never offend (on the outside anyway) again. Vengeance is served.
But what does this vengeance do to us?
Let me come back to my experience. I’m not giving details. It is neither the best nor the worst of stories; let’s leave it at that. It happened. Do I want revenge?
No. No. A million times no.
My life was not ruined. I have a wonderful life.
I don’t want revenge. I forgive.
When people get shot in the USA, if it is not an accident, it is almost always motivated by revenge. Gang shootings are revenge. Premeditated murder is revenge. Massacres, like Aurora and Columbine are revenge. Even innocent shop keepers who are killed during bungled robberies are the victims of revenge. Those thieves steal and shoot because their lives have been one abuse after another and someone needs to pay. Even the hapless burglar who gets shot in the back, running off with someone’s DVD player dies because of revenge. Are those “stand-your-grounders” shooting, killing for a $39 DVD player? Of course not. They shoot because they are angry and scared. They have been harmed and they want revenge.
Violence begets violence, they say. No. It doesn’t. Vengeance begets violence. The difference between the abused kid who ended up killing a convenience store clerk and the abused kid who became, oh let’s say Oprah Winfrey, is forgiveness. Successful people forgive the world for the abuses they suffer. Look at Gandhi. Look at Nelson Mandela. Look at Aung San Suu Kyi. Look at the countless successful Holocaust survivors, Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees, exiles from Stalin or Mao, Saddam Hussein or Pinochet. They succeed because they forgive. A vengeful heart is a broken heart that can never heal. A vengeful heart percolates violence like a pot on a stove. And it boils over. And someone gets burnt.
ALL the mass shooters in the world, insane or not, were acting on vengeful thoughts.
Suicide is an act of revenge.
Jesus tells us (I know, funny right? I’m quoting Jesus) much about forgiveness, particularly that we must forgive not “Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” (Matthew 18:22) In fact forgiveness is one of the central tenets of the Christian faith. This is why I find the vindictiveness of not just the American justice system but the American people (one of the most Christianized nations on earth) so perplexing. Seven times seventy is 490. Are criminals given 490 chances to be rehabilitated in America? No. They are lucky to get one chance. Almost no one gets more than three.
Some juvenile sex offenders don’t even get the one chance. They make one appalling mistake and they pay with their lives. This is what that young woman wanted. I don’t fault her for wanting it. She was hurting, angry, confused and felt betrayed not just by the justice system but by two boys she thought she could trust. She should have been able to trust them. She did the right thing by reporting the attack. It’s possible the boys didn’t really think they had done anything wrong. It’s possible they might have done it again. Hopefully being arrested and charged will show them the error of their thinking. Hopefully their own remorse will serve to rehabilitate them and help them grow into moral men. Hopefully they will get the treatment they need in remand or in the community.
Do they need to be punished? If punishing them will deter them from re-offending, then yes, I guess so. Except we know that punishment doesn’t work like that. Incarceration and registration only ensures that men become outcasts and deviants. Outcasts and deviants have no disincentives to re-offending. Is this a disincentive to other young men who might be inclined to offend this way? I really doubt it.
Will we feel better if the Aurora shooter gets the death penalty? Will that bring his victims back? Will it lessen the sorrow of their loved ones?
No. It will make a murderer out of a public servant though.
An eye for an eye? Or seventy time seven? It’s time to choose.
Rant over.
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What a well-written, well-considered piece. By speaking of vengefulness, you get right to the heart of the matter. Applause.
Thank you for your comment. With the silence on this post I was scared everyone was too offended to comment. I feel so strongly about this especially since today I got a hit on the blog by someone searching “how to get revenge on a juvenile sexual offender”. I just wish I could talk to this person, probably a her. She’s hurting, but revenge won’t help.
I looked up this post after reading your other one.
I applaud the thought and understanding you put into this. What my own opinion is I’m not sure, because I have very conflicting feelings about this. When I read that that boy wanted to be a doctor, all I could think of was that horrible story about the woman who was raped by her gynecologist. Maybe it was only the first time this kid was caught in a sexual offense, and maybe he would have assaulted others in the future. On the flip side, maybe he just made a terrible, terrible mistake.
Whether or not the girl did the right thing by publishing her attackers’ names, I’ll leave up in the air. It’s the same question I faced when a friend began dating a man I knew to be a rapist. He had raped the last woman he’d dated, another one of my friends. He said he was sorry, he felt shame; he even settled on an academic penalty between him, his ex, and their university if she agreed not to take it to the police. But did his new girlfriend deserve to know what he’d done? Should we tell her? Did she know already? Did he deserve to have his new relationship ruined? Did she?
I can’t blame people for wanting revenge, especially when you consider how difficult it is to get a conviction for rape. This girl probably felt like the justice system had betrayed her and she had to take matters into her own hands. I think people seek revenge in an attempt to find closure. I think this usually doesn’t work. Constant anger and hate are exhausting. Enough is enough.
However, I also believe that “turn the other cheek” (to quote Jesus) can too easily become “turn a blind eye.” Aack. I’m not sure. There’s got to be an acceptable meeting point between “turn a blind eye” and “taking your pound of flesh.”
I think the pound of flesh still needs to be taken, maybe just in a different way. I believe in restorative justice (read this for example: http://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/gyrobase/the-business-of-forgiveness/Content?oid=2156259&storyPage=1). In the case of rape, many convictions fail because the victim is scared to face her attacker in a confrontational setting (a courtroom), many perpetrators refuse to confess because they know the only chance they have of saving their future is an acquittal. Who wins in this kind of system? No one.
As far as your friend and her new boyfriend goes, I can’t comment without having the details. I guess we have to ask ourselves if so many college age men are doing this, what are we doing wrong with raising them and socialising them. Do you think he’s an evil man? Then yes, tell your friend. Is he a normal guy who made a terrible mistake? Then maybe not. But I’d like to understand how mistakes like this can get made.
Personally I’m sickened by the idea that having sex with a seemingly willing drunk girl is now considered rape in some cases (I don’t mean an UNCONSCIOUS girl – that is clearly rape). How drunk does a GUY need to be before he’s not responsible for his actions? Drunkenness is never an acceptable plea for sexual assault (or any crime). That seems a little unfair. Especially in a college culture that elevates binge drinking to a practical religion.
I don’t know how date rape happens in the absence of violence (when there is violence, bruises etc. the cases are easier to convict) That’s not my experience. What I have heard is that in some cases girls are afraid of being hurt or beaten up so they submit. I wonder where this fear comes from, at least in the cases where the guy has no history of violence towards her or anyone else that she knows of (surely she wouldn’t date him if he did). I DO know that men’s tempers can turn on a dime (I HAVE experienced this) but should we walk through life constantly at the mercy of the potential for male aggression? Ready to lay down and take it at the first sign of anger? Can I not reserve a small amount of judgement for a girl who didn’t resist? We want girls to stop being so passive and yet we accept their passivity and all its consequences because, of course, we can’t blame the victim. It’s kind of a catch 22.
I guess what I;d really like to know is if your friend really thought this guy would hurt her or kill her if she resisted. If so, then yes, you should tell the new girl. If not, then what was it that made her submit? I’m genuinely curious about this – not being judgy or rape denially – I just want to know how this works in the moment.
Your story made me think of this anyway: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/fashion/14love.html
Make what you will of that.
Bringing this back to my main area of interest, YA literature, what I would love to see in a book is an all out brawl rape (or non-rape as the case might be) wherein the girl beats the bejesus out of the guy with a lamp and screams bloody murder. Instead we get these variously drunk or timid (often both) good girls who are too scared to fight back. This is where the fetishization of rape victimhood comes in, because good girls don’t throw hissy fits, not even when someone is raping them.
I’m about to get flamed, I know it, but it’s late and I’m tired and I tend to lay out all my cards when that happens.
Well, I’m not going to make apologies for any kind of rape. If someone, woman OR man, doesn’t want it and makes that perfectly clear, then it’s rape. Also if a man gets a woman drunk/high/intoxicated while he stays sober so that he can then take advantage of her state, yes that IS coerced rape. Also I think if you’re a huge guy raping a girl who is obviously upset, crying and begging you to stop — well.
Frankly, rape is a violent crime. How can you blame her for not fighting back? How would she know that the rapist wouldn’t get violent or even kill her? No one is telepathic. If it was a stranger then she’d have no idea of his history w/ violence. If it was someone she knew and previously trusted who raped her, I’m sure she never thought he would do THAT either. How would she then be able to know if he’d be violent? Everything she thought she knew about him just went out the window. What if you’re raped at gunpoint — are you supposed to fight back then? I still remember the high school health class where we, at 14, were told that if a man held a gun on us and told us to take off our clothes, we should submit to the rape and then call the police because it’s not worth dying for. We were also given a list of things to say to deter a rapist, like “I’m on my period,” “I have AIDS,” “I’m pregnant,” etc. Anything before getting violent because — as the policewoman teaching the class pointed out — if someone is already attempting to rape you then you have no idea what else they might be willing to do. “Get out alive with the least violence possible” is basic survival instinct.
Rape doesn’t have to destroy women — why many prefer the term “survivors” to “victims” — but it can. I’ve seen it happen. Many people live with PTSD for the rest of their lives. I can’t blame them wanting their perpetrators to suffer similar life-long consequences, although I don’t believe revenge supplies the kind of closure they’re looking for.
As for my friend, I let her make the call. He & the new gf haven’t been together for a while now. I don’t think he was dangerous; he was just drunk and high and he thought she wanted it. Apparently he continued thinking she wanted it even as she was trying to fight him off. *sarcasm*
I also object to some of your points in that they seem to place all the responsibility for stopping rape on women. MEN can stop rape — “My strength is not for hurting.” Society can stop glorifying ideas about sexuality that lead to rape apologizing and the idea that a man has a “right” to get some whenever he wants, whoever he wants it from. Yes, we as a society are partially to blame, as you said. But blaming society is too easy; a large part of the blame rests with the perpetrators as individuals. There are plenty of people who grow up in our society and *don’t* become rapists, after all. Figuring out where that line is, and when and why it is crossed, is the hard part.
I don’t want to make apologies or excuses for rape. I only want to discover the reasons. Reasons aren’t excuses.
I think looking at motivation gets me personally pretty close to a good understanding. Rape is often described as a crime of violence, as you say. They say it is about power, not sex. It is motivated by anger, hatred of women and a desire to humiliate.
You say you “don’t think he was dangerous.He was just drunk and high and he thought she wanted it.” And he didn’t stop when she fought him. Okay. I understand what happened. Still not sure why she didn’t bite him, or scream etc, but I think there might be a kind of “submission reflex” in these situations that maybe no one wants to talk about. But here’s my question. Did he hate this girl he raped? Did he want to humiliate her? Does he hate women?
Date rape is definitely part of a systemic sexual dysfunction in our society. And some date rapes ARE motivated by hate. But many others are motivated by lust. Male lust is a very strong motivator, especially with young men and triply so with drunk young men. This is biologically determined and driven by evolution (sexually aggressive men have more offspring). We can’t get to the root of the problem until we understand the difference and interplay between anger and lust.
What you say about what the police officer told you girls troubles me, because it is confusing the two very different scenarios of “stranger with a gun” rape and “drunk guy at a party” rape. Yes, there is a small chance that drunk guy at a party is a homicidal pervert, but there is also a small chance that your professor is, or your priest, or the guy carrying your grocery bags to your car. Are we teaching girls to submit to all these men at the first sign of sexual aggression because they should fear for their lives? ‘Let a guy rape you with the minimum violence possible”?!?! How fucked up is that? And what does that teach men? That being aggressive jerks gets them laid? If they just scare the girl a bit she’ll put out willingly?
I disagree that blaming society is too easy. I think it’s too HARD. It’s much easier to point the finger at a rapist or murderer and say “Evil! Throw away the key!” Much harder to look at ourselves, our friends, our parents, the media, the church and schools and ask “what are we doing wrong that so many men are making such bad choices?”
From my perspective, anyway, part of the problem is the way rape is depicted in YA books and the media in general. But don’t get me started on that.
I’m going to reply on a completely different side topic because I don’t think we’re going to change each other’s opinions on this.
So, back to revenge.
Revenge doesn’t have to be violent or destructive. The best revenge is not letting bad things or people ruin your life.
Sometimes you need an antagonist to “fight” against in order to motivate yourself. “I’m going to prove the teacher who said I’d end up in a cardboard box wrong by being awesome, even if I never see her again.” If you turn it into constructive instead of destructive energy, anger can be a fantastic motivator for change and perseverance. And eventually you find yourself working towards success for the thing itself.
Completely agree. Living well is the best revenge. BUT I still believe it is spiritually and emotionally unhealthy to be driven by “sticking it to” someone else, even non violently.
Not that I haven’t done it (read my post about Mrs Crooks for example). In the end I think the best thing we can say to survivors of crime is that it is not about their attacker anymore, it is about them and their recovery.
Here’s my final question, hopefully you can either answer, or at least it might make you think. You say a police officer spoke to you girls (at 14) about how to survive a rape etc. Did someone on that day speak to the boys about how to NOT rape someone? Not WHY – they know why surely, but HOW. How to avoid situations where they are likely to make such a horrendous mistake? How to understand what consent is (or isn’t)? How to control the extremely strong drives their bodies possess?
On the topic of revenge. I was drugged and gang raped at 17 by several men, and never reported it to the police. I was raped again by a stranger just 3 months ago, over 20 years later, and the rapist attempted to murder me. He was caught quickly, confessed and is facing a lot of jail time. Do I feel revenge for him or any person who has raped me? I don’t. I actually don’t care if he spends a day longer in jail. You may ask why. I feel this way because I am alive. Yes, I struggle today, but my life is NOT ruined. The DA is offering him 40 years as a plea. Do I mind if the DA offers 40 years or 40 days. . . No. I had to run to several civilians before someone was willing to help me and call 911. Too, I was treated so, so horribly by the investigator and his side officer who came out to interview me. I believe that society and law enforcement gets revenge against itself for ignoring and berating and humiliating rape victims. I believe that is one of the reasons why victims do not want to come forward. I’m acually way more hurt by society’s and the police’s actions than I am the rapist’s/attempted murderer. Do I want revenge against society? No. Society and the police reep their own revenge upon themselves through their sick handling of the topic of rape. Now who seeks revenge against whom? I don’t seek revenge, but society and law enforcement unknowingly seek revenge against themselves by ignoring how to treat victims AND rehabilitate rapists. I would never report a rape again. I don’t need my rapist to go to jail for me to feel whole again and I don’t need vindication to achieve that.
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