Ohio, the heart of it all

[derspiess]

Ooh honey you couldn't afford it!  <airsnap>

Plus, I wouldn't want to catch a social disease from you.

You are a social disease.

[garbon]

Ooh honey you couldn't afford it!  <airsnap>

Plus, I wouldn't want to catch a social disease from you.

You are a social disease.

Wow. That's really rude.

[CountDeMoney]

Trumpeters are.

[derspiess]

[DGuller]

Ooh honey you couldn't afford it!  <airsnap>

Plus, I wouldn't want to catch a social disease from you.

You are a social disease.

[Malthus]

Another purpose of zoo enclosures is to prevent the gorillas from flinging shit at the audience ... 

[DGuller]

Another purpose of zoo enclosures is to prevent the gorillas from flinging shit at the audience ... 

[Jacob]

Another purpose of zoo enclosures is to prevent the gorillas from flinging shit at the audience ... 

I guess we need a zoo enclosure for derspiess in this thread.

[derspiess]

He started it.

[derspiess]

Another purpose of zoo enclosures is to prevent the gorillas from flinging shit at the audience ... 

The gorillas are way too far away to make the throw, even with a cutoff man.

[Ed Anger]

Hey, the Stanford dumpster rapist is from Oakwood,Ohio. I'm not surprised. Rich racist pricks.

[derspiess]

Per a buddy of mine who for some reason took his daughter to the zoo today, there are more than 20 different media outlets on hand for the re-opening of the gorilla exhibit.  Plus protesters outside the entrances. 

[CountDeMoney]

Hey, the Stanford dumpster rapist is from Oakwood,Ohio. I'm not surprised. Rich racist pricks.

Just for you, Ed.

In Brock Turner's home town, we're raising kids who are never told 'no'
I live in Oakwood, Ohio, the home of the Stanford sex offender. Communities like this one have a dark side.
By Kate Geiselman June 8
Washington Post

OAKWOOD, Ohio — An alternate version of the Brock Turner sexual assault story has been spinning in my imagination since last January, when I first heard of his arrest.

In my version, he recognizes that what happened on Stanford's campus behind that dumpster was rape. He comes to understand that intoxication is not consent. He takes responsibility for his violent "action" that irreparably harmed another human being, instead of blaming them on alcohol. Rather than spending a year and a half honing his story, making excuses and lawyering up, he pleads guilty. He looks his victim squarely in the eyes and says, "I'm sorry. I had no business putting my hands on or in you after you were no longer able to give consent. I should have helped you to safety instead of running and lying about why I did. I will do everything I can to spare you any further pain. I will spend the rest of my life educating young people about consent and sexual violence."

Then he serves his punishment — perhaps even a sentence mitigated by his understanding of the crime, his taking responsibility, even his character references — because he gets it. He bears the weight of his guilt, and in doing so eases the burden of his victim.

But that's not what happened. And because I live in the community that spawned Brock Turner, I have known on some level for many months that my version would never be reality.

Oakwood, Ohio, is about as idyllic a Midwestern community as one could imagine. The streets are tree-lined, the houses charming. The kids walk to school and go home for lunch. The schools are nationally recognized. In fact, the nickname for Oakwood is "The Dome," so sheltered are its residents from violence, poverty and inconvenient truths. I have lived here for over 20 years.

Communities like this one have a dark side, though: the conflation of achievement with being "a good kid;" the pressure to succeed; the parents who shrug when the party in their basement gets out of control (or worse yet, when they host it) because "kids are gonna drink;" the tacit understanding that rules don't necessarily apply. The cops won't come. The axe won't fall.

Yet now it has.

Invariably, when I tell someone who knows Dayton that I live in Oakwood, they will assume that I am rich, narrow-minded, a Republican or some combination thereof. If most residents were just the stereotype, though, I would not have been happy here as long as I have. For the most part, I have loved raising my kids here. But I have struggled, too. My closest friends and I have a long-standing joke about needing to remember to "lower the bar" around here — about not falling prey to the pressures to conform and compete, not buying the line that the schools or the kids here are special. Most of us understand our privilege and good fortune. Many do not.

There is an Oakwood in every city; there's a Brock Turner in every Oakwood: the "nice," clean-cut, "happy-go-lucky," hyper-achieving kid who's never been told "no." There's nothing he can't have, do, or be, because he is special. Fortunately, most kids like this will march into their predictably bright futures without victimizing anyone along the way. Many will do good in the world.

But it's not hard to draw a straight line from this little 'burb (or a hundred like it) to that dumpster at Stanford. What does being told "no" mean to that kid? If the world is his for the taking, isn't an unconscious woman's body? When he gets caught, why wouldn't his first impulse be to run, make excuses — blame the Fireball, or the girl or the campus drinking culture? That is entitlement. That is unchecked privilege.

When the news of Turner's arrest broke a year and a half ago, it was met in this community with a fair amount of shock and denial. Before details emerged, the whispered sentiments at Starbucks and in the aisles of the local grocery were compassion for his parents and hopes for a fair trial. In light of his conviction and sentencing, though, I find that I'm hiding from social media and avoiding conversations on this subject, lest I have to listen to someone defend him. I don't want to hear anyone start in about the nice family or the good kid. My kids went to high school with him. I ran the community center swim team he was on. No, I don't "know" Brock Turner like his friends or neighbors do. But I do know what he did, and so do we all, based on the unanimous verdict of a jury and two eyewitnesses.

We now also know exactly what his victim suffered, and we know that he doesn't own any of it. Neither do his apologists. Letters of support — his father's and at least one of his friends' — are making the rounds online, and they are shockingly tone-deaf. His father has blamed alcohol and promiscuity. His friend said, "Rape on campus isn't always because people are rapists." That either of these letters cut ice with the judge is just further proof of how broken the system is.

I thought the outrage over this story would start before now, but it took a victim's statement going viral to bring it the attention it deserves. At every turn, I've thought of how things could have gone differently. I've wondered if all of this was the attorney's doing — that Turner and his family were manipulated into denial because their lawyer told them there was no other alternative. But his father's letter and his own lame "apology" make it seem clear that they truly believe that bad timing and alcohol — not Turner himself — were to blame.

Ultimately, there is no happy ending to a story like this one, not in the version I imagined months ago or in the one that actually came to pass. I take some solace in the fact that the victim's brave, eloquent statement has brought more attention to rape culture than any single indictment or verdict could.

It's cold comfort, to be sure.

[Ed Anger]

Hehe. Also, don't drive while black in Oakwood.

[CountDeMoney]

Morning Mix
Hidden room, bloody freezer, handcuffs found in student slaying probe

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/29/ohio-man-arrested-for-killing-20-year-old-had-hidden-room-with-bloody-carpet-lined-freezer


The room was hidden inside a barn, behind tall hay bales, on James Dean Worley's three-acre property west of Toledo, Ohio.

Its furnishings were chilling: restraints attached to the walls and a freezer lined with blood-stained carpet.

Almost as chilling were the contents of Worley's truck: zip ties, a ski mask, two sets of handcuffs, rope, tape and recording equipment.

Scattered around his property were more rope, tape, zip ties, handcuffs, firearms and ammunition, alongside several video recording devices and film, according to an arrest warrant released Thursday and obtained by the Toledo Blade.

Worley was arrested last Friday and has been charged with the abduction and aggravated murder of 20-year-old University of Toledo student Sierah Joughin. The judge has ordered him to remain in jail.

Authorities believe this may not be the first abduction allegedly committed by Worley.

"Worley fits the profile of a serial offender and could potentially have additional unknown victims who could have been kept at the above described location," Sgt. Matthew Smithmyer of the Fulton County Sheriff's Department, said in court documents obtained by the Toledo Blade.

With long brown hair — sometimes curled, sometimes straightened — and a white, toothy smile, Sierah Joughin looked like many young college girls with their lives ahead of them. She loved horses and was a member of the University of Toledo's business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi, according to her obituary.

On her Facebook page, she shared videos of cute, floppy puppies, recipes for no-bake chocolate peanut butter bars and messages encouraging beginners to try a barre workout.

Her profile photo showed her and her mother, Sheila Vaculik, their arms wrapped around each other, smiles on their faces.

Tuesday, July 19, Joughin went for a bike ride around her hometown of Lyons, Ohio, a tiny hamlet of 562 people about 30 miles west of Toledo. Out there, the flat landscape stretches on endlessly, punctuated periodically by cornfields.

Perched on a purple bicycle, clad in neon yellow tennis shorts and shirt and bright teal shoes, Joughin was a flash of bright color amid all that green.

Her boyfriend, Josh Kolasinksi, rode slowly alongside her on his motorcycle, People magazine reported. Eventually, it was growing late, and the two parted ways. They assumed they would have much more time together — after all, they'd been dating since middle school.

Joughin didn't come home that night. Or the next. Or the next.

"We are struggling and trying to stay hopeful," Tara Shaffer Ice, Joughin's aunt, told People the day after Joughin's disappearance. "We just want her to come home safe and [whoever has her] to just leave her where she is and let us have her back."

"It's the worst nightmare I've ever experienced," Ice added.

"I just want her to come home," Vaculik said.

She never would.

After three days of searching, police found Joughin's remains resting in a shallow grave in a cornfield just a mile away from Worley's property, on July 22.

That same day, police arrested 57-year-old James Dean Worley, crediting "old-fashioned police work" for the collar.

Police originally questioned Worley while they were canvassing houses near his property. He told them he had been riding his motorcycle at the time of Joughin's doomed bike ride, but that his motorbike had broken down. He claimed to have lost his helmet, screwdriver, sunglasses and fuses when he pushed his motorcycle into a nearby field, presumably to work on it.

All of those items were found near Joughin's bicycle. Human blood coated the helmet.

The court documents released Thursday and obtained by the Toledo Blade show that, after arresting Worley, police searched his three-acre property.

In addition to the hidden room, outfitted with restraints and a freezer lined with bloody carpet, they found several pairs of women's underwear.

One pair was bloodied.

Sgt. Matthew Smithmyer of the Fulton County Sheriff's Department wrote in a statement he knows "based upon his knowledge and experience that these types of offenders will often keep trophies."

The property was also littered with hidden cameras.

If convicted, this wouldn't be Worley's first time in prison for abduction. The details behind his first imprisonment are eerily similar to those in Joughin's case.

On Independence Day in 1990, the sun bore down on 26-year-old Robin Gardner, who was sweating as she rode her bike through the endless rows of tall cornstalks. Obee Road was still, quiet. It was peaceful.

That peace was shattered when a red flat-bed truck zoomed by her.

Gardner kept pedaling anyway.

Suddenly, the truck re-appeared, slamming into the back tire of her bike.

She was thrown from it and rolled into a roadside ditch. Worley jumped out of the truck and ran over to her, asking if she was okay.

After she said "yes," he struck her on the back of her head and dragged her out of the ditch and across the road to his truck, threatening to kill her the entire way.

He reached inside the car and produced handcuffs, as she screamed.

He forced her into the truck.

"I was screaming in the cornfield at the top of my lungs — a blood-curdling scream, a scream I didn't know I had in me," Gardner told the Toledo Blade.

Using "every ounce of energy," she scratched and kicked her way out of the vehicle and away from Worley. Once back on the road, she ran toward a motorcyclist who had stopped after witnessing the scuffle.

Though he, too, was a stranger, Gardner hopped on the back of the bike, and the two sped off.

Gardner may have gotten away, but the incident lingered in the form of a concussion and a skull fracture. In fact, it still lingers — the emotional scars she suffered from the near-abduction have yet to heal. She even ended up moving to an urban area, because the rural countryside now frightened her.

"I can't walk in the woods alone, I can't hike, camp, bird watch," she told the Associated Press. "I get very afraid if people aren't around to help me if I'm in need."

This case brought those memories flooding back to Gardner.

"It's like this guy strikes when the corn is high," she told the Toledo Blade. "My heart hurts."

Worley was sentenced to four to 10 years in prison. He entered in November 1990 and was paroled in December 1993.

Worley didn't stay out of prison long, though. He returned in 2000, this time for the illegal manufacture or cultivation of marijuana and having weapons while under disability, according to the Toledo Blade. He was released in 2002.

Adding to the suspicion that Worley has abducted and killed more women is a frightening statement he made to a court-mandated therapist after his original stint in prison. He said he "learned from each abduction he had done and the next one he was going to bury."

Gardner certainly thinks he did.

"Of course, I think he's done it before and after me," she said.

Worley is currently being held in the Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio without bond. The Associated Press reported that Worley has declined interview requests from the media and that Worley's attorney said Thursday he had not seen the warrants and could not comment. It is not clear from media reports if Worley has entered a plea since being arrested a week ago.

Joughin's family has established a scholarship fund in her name to benefit one graduate of Evergreen High School, her alma mater, each year. Thus far, the crowd-sourcing campaign has raised more than $36,000, according to its Web page.