Montana judge defends 30-day sentence for rape

[frunk]

Except that we've said children of the age that this girl was, cannot consent. I think then you have to call that rape.

I'm not sure I understand that logic.  If it was strictly an issue of her being unable to give consent wouldn't it be illegal for the girl to have sex with anyone?  Generally teenagers are permitted to have sex with each other, but not adults.  How are they better able to give consent with someone else who also can't give consent?

To me the concern is the abuse of authority (which any adult presumably has over teenagers) that is the overriding concern.

[Syt]

I don't think that teens are permitted to have sex; it's just not criminally punished.

[frunk]

I don't think he's a serious risk to accost children on the street, he's a risk if you give him positions of authority over children.  It's not that it's a lesser crime (I could see arguments for more severe punishment), it's that it's different.

FYP

And since he's an adult, he will always be in a position of power over children. He will be a risk, as is shown by the fact that he was warned off by school administrators four years before he took advantage of this particular child.

I think he would be fine in a preschool, elementary school or all male high school, so I think that's too general.  It's his abuse of power over teenage and (potentially) adult women that's the danger.

[frunk]

I don't think that teens are permitted to have sex; it's just not criminally punished.

Why aren't we criminally prosecuting these teens for rape?!?!?

[grumbler]

Why aren't we criminally prosecuting these teens for rape?!?!?

Because it would be a foolish waste of resources?  Why should we criminally prosecute minors for teenage sex "rape" when we generally don't for other crimes?

[DGuller]

Statutory rape is one of those cases where the legal system's need for black-and-white comes into direct conflict with common sense.  So for the sake of everyone involved in prosecution and judging of such cases, we pretend that teenagers are mentally retarded, and are totally unable to comprehend the consequences of their actions.  There is no middle ground between an adult being able to give consent, and a woman being physically restrained and held down while penetrated.  I guess it makes it easier for prosecutors to sleep at night after putting away some guy for many years for such "rapes".

[Ideologue]

There is a bit of a middle ground.  Stat rape is rarely punished with the severity of forcible rape.

[Eddie Teach]

we pretend that teenagers are mentally retarded,

And parents of teenagers tend to be the most vociferous proponents of that view. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Statutory rape is a can of worms. I'm fine with the legal line we've drawn, that if someone is under the age of consent then legally they can't give consent. I understand why the law has to draw lines like that.

At the same time, in ages past people at the ages between 14-16 were very often self sufficient adults. Even as recently as the 19th century it wasn't all that common for young males in Western cultures to "leave home" to seek their fortune. They might apprentice someone or take up work somewhere and be under the watch of an employer/mentor, but they were on their own making adult decisions. I think we do tend to "infantilize" the typical teenager in America, up to the point that many parents consider their 22 year old college seniors to be "kids."

I think there are some 15 year olds that, even in our culture, have not been so infantilized and are more akin to teenagers in the past who were more self sufficient and out there making their own decisions. There are good reasons to prohibit sexual contact with them, but I do think we should recognize statutory rape is a hard line drawn on an issue that morally and ethically isn't actually as clear cut--but I'm fine with the fact we "do have to draw the line" somewhere.

Let's also be honest, adult men used to regularly be married to women around age 16 and it was acceptable for them to have sex with them. (In most cultures when married to women younger than that, you wouldn't begin sexual activity until a certain age or until first menstruation--which tended to happen much later in the teens before modern diet and lifestyle.) So to act like someone is a pedophile because they find a fully sexually mature 16 year old attractive is a stretch.

[CountDeMoney]

Interesting, non-traditional angle from some ex-legal chick.

The unintended consequences of laws addressing sex between teachers and students
By Betsy Karasik, Published: August 30

Betsy Karasik is a writer and former lawyer.

There is a painfully uncomfortable episode of "Louie" in which the comedian Louis C.K. muses that maybe child molesters wouldn't kill their victims if the penalty weren't so severe. Everyone I know who watches the show vividly recalls that scene from 2010 because it conjures such a witches' cauldron of taboo, disgust and moral outrage, all wrapped around a disturbing kernel of truth. I have similar ambivalence about the case involving former Montana high school teacher Stacey Dean Rambold. Louie concluded his riff with a comment to the effect of "I don't know what to do with that information." That may be the case for many of us, but with our legal and moral codes failing us, our society needs to have an uncensored dialogue about the reality of sex in schools.

As protesters decry the leniency of Rambold's sentence — he will spend 30 days in prison after pleading guilty to raping 14-year-old Cherice Morales, who committed suicide at age 16 — I find myself troubled for the opposite reason. I don't believe that all sexual conduct between underage students and teachers should necessarily be classified as rape, and I believe that absent extenuating circumstances, consensual sexual activity between teachers and students should not be criminalized. While I am not defending Judge G. Todd Baugh's comments about Morales being "as much in control of the situation" — for which he has appropriately apologized — tarring and feathering him for attempting to articulate the context that informed his sentence will not advance this much-needed dialogue.

I do think that teachers who engage in sex with students, no matter how consensual, should be removed from their jobs and barred from teaching unless they prove that they have completed rehabilitation. But the utter hysteria with which society responds to these situations does less to protect children than to assuage society's need to feel that we are protecting them. I don't know what triggered Morales's suicide, but I find it tragic and deeply troubling that this occurred as the case against Rambold wound its way through the criminal justice system. One has to wonder whether the extreme pressure she must have felt from those circumstances played a role.

I've been a 14-year-old girl, and so have all of my female friends. When it comes to having sex on the brain, teenage boys got nothin' on us. When I was growing up in the 1960s and '70s, the sexual boundaries between teachers and students were much fuzzier. Throughout high school, college and law school, I knew students who had sexual relations with teachers. To the best of my knowledge, these situations were all consensual in every honest meaning of the word, even if society would like to embrace the fantasy that a high school student can't consent to sex. Although some feelings probably got bruised, no one I knew was horribly damaged and certainly no one died.

On the other hand, awareness of sexual harassment was also much lower. Pretty much every woman I know has been sexually harassed in at least one, and usually many, of her jobs and/or academic settings. I was fired from a waitressing job in Boston in 1979, during my first year of law school, after I refused to sit in the manager's lap like the other girls. I would have much rather seen that sleazebag dragged through the legal system than certain teachers I considered friends despite their sexual relations with students that today would land them in jail.

The point is that there is a vast and extremely nuanced continuum of sexual interactions involving teachers and students, ranging from flirtation to mutual lust to harassment to predatory behavior. Painting all of these behaviors with the same brush sends a damaging message to students and sets the stage for hypocrisy and distortion of the truth. Many teenagers are, biologically speaking, sexually mature. Pretending that this kind of thing won't happen if we simply punish it severely enough is delusional. If anything, to return to Louis C.K., the indiscriminate criminalization of such situations may deter students struggling with sexual issues from seeking advice from a parent or counselor.

If religious leaders and heads of state can't keep their pants on, with all they have to lose, why does society expect that members of other professions can be coerced into meeting this standard? A more realistic approach would be to treat violations in a way that removes and rehabilitates the offender without traumatizing the victim. The intensity of criminal proceedings, with all the pressure they put on participants, the stigma, the community and media scrutiny, and the concurrent shame and guilt they generate, do the opposite of healing and protecting the victim. Laws related to statutory rape are in place to protect children, but the issue of underage sex, and certainly of sex between students and teachers, may be one in which the law of unintended consequences is causing so much damage that society needs to reassess.

[sbr]

Meri is gonna be PISSED.

[Berkut]

Meri is gonna be PISSED.

Yeah, nuance and context and anything other than "OMG THAT MAN RAPED HER UNTIL SHE DIED!" is clearly signs of some serious defect.

[Berkut]

This is such a good example of how people can use language to deceive.

We really should have a different word for "rape" when we are talking about consenual sex between people where one of the people (if not both)cannot give legal consent. It is in fact very different from the traditional definition, and even obviously so.

But the argument seems pretty reasonable. Rape is when someone forces someone else to have sex with them when they don't want to. Legally, a minor cannot give consent for sex, therefore sex with them is by definition not consensual, therefore why not call it rape?

Here is why: because the word has a specific meaning in general use, and it almost always means forcible sexual contact by someone who uses force or the threat of force to make someone have sex who does not wish to. From a non-legal standpoint, the term rape is not typically used to refer to sex between people who both wish to have sex, but where one of them is legally restricted from consenting.

How this story has been reported is a *perfect* example of the problem. There was a CNN article on the story the other day. And within the story, the "journalist" reported that the accused "raped Rambold on three occasions". Now the guy is not only a rapist, he is a *serial* rapist!

That is technically completely accurate from the strictly legal sense. Sex with her was statutory rape, he admitted it happened on at least three occasions, therefore from a strictly legal perpspective, he "raped" her three times.

But of course this isn't a legal article, and the author didn't bother to, at any point, make it clear they were using the legal definition of the term. Instead it is just "he raped her three times".

You could describe the exact same thing by saying "He and Rambold had sex on three different occasions" and it would convet the precisely same information, and in a much more accurate manner that is not likely to mislead anyone as to what exactly happened. And the funny thing is that some people would be angry to see it described in that way. Because it is NOT as misleading as it could be, it does not suggest something that is not true, it does not get people outraged and signing petitions to remove the judge.

The desire to lie "in a good cause" is distressing, and the ability to use language to say one thing while conveying something else is, IMO, rather dangerous.

If this man's actions deserve him going to jail, then they do so on the basis of what he did, not on whether or not we can call it something that suggests something else, that is certainly a good reason to put him in jail. If a teacher having sex with a student is a criminal action, it is criminal even if we call it "sexual conduct with a a minor" rather than "rape".

[Ideologue]

Concur, although as discussed last week I was a lot more annoyed to see the word "assault," for which even the legal definition is unsatisfied, at least so far as I could tell.

I propose a redefinition of the term "seduction."  It has something of a negative connotation but not nearly so much as rape, it is not used in torts anymore, and it would make Drakken look bad.

It may sound too lenient, though--at least until you start sending people to prison for fifteen years on a seduction beef.

[Ed Anger]

Meri is gonna be PISSED.

Hail patarichy!