Yesterday, Mulch, a member of gotVirtual.net, posted a forum thread called 90 Days? in which he referenced an NYDailyNews.com article, "Queens special ed teacher pleads guilty to statuatory rape for videotaped sex with boy, 15" and appeared to imply that he felt 90 days in jail (and 10 years probation and a $1,000 fine) for statutory rape (two sexual encounters with a 15-year-old boy) was an insufficient consequence of the crime committed. Side note: She, Christine Williams, was also required to surrender her license to teach and to register as a convicted sex offender.
More here and here.
Some of the comments in the thread were reminiscent of the ones commonly heard after the 2004 story of Debra Lafave, an attractive blonde teacher in her twenties, having sex with one of her 14-year-old male students, including vaginal and oral sex...and sex at the school, i.e. "Good for him!" etc. or, alternatively, "How would we have reacted if she had been an unattractive woman or a man?"
From Wikipedia:
"There was widespread skepticism as to whether a man guilty of statutory rape would have received similar treatment.[7][9]"Lafave was charged with two felonies and plead guilty but served no time because the boy's mother wanted him spared the trauma of a trial after she found out it would be televised. Lafave was sentenced to 3-years house arrest, seven years probation and sex-offender therapy. She was also ordered to stay away from children and register as a sex offender. Lafave suffered further unpleasant results of her actions when photos of Lafave nude in stirrups in her jail cell, taken by the police officers responsible for her, surfaced and the officers were investigated...one later also investigated and arrested when he got caught in a prostitution sting operation.
From Wikipedia:
"John Gillespie, the lead detective who requested the nude photos of Lafave, was arrested before the trial in an unrelated prostitution sting.[14]"Lafave says her behavior was influence by the fact that she has "bipolar disorder, hyper-sexuality and poor judgement during manic episodes."
More here.
Christine Elliott, a 26-year-old English teacher, plead guilty to assaulting a minor after kissing a 15-year-old boy, having him touch her intimately and sending him inappropriate text messages, which, of course, the parents discovered when checking his cell phone. Elliott has yet to be sentenced, but could be facing up to two years of jail time and the obligatory registration as a sex offender. Read more here and here.
From dailymail.co.uk:
"It comes after police in Texas arrested another two teachers for allegedly having sex with their students last week.
Angela New, 39, was jailed after she allegedly slept with an 18-year old from her school a month before he was due to graduate.
And April Alexander, 26, was jailed after being accused of having sex with a 16-year old student on more than 25 occasions.
The arrest of the two women follows the jailing of mother Brittni Colleps, who allegedly staged a sex orgy at her home while her serviceman husband was away on duty.
In addition, today disgraced Florida teacher Debra Lafave - who made headlines in 2004 for having sex with one of her 14-year-old students - was pictured for the first time since she became pregnant with twin boys."
Kokoro Fasching, another gV member, posted this article, "Music teacher jailed for sex with 15-year-old pupil" in the 90 Days? thread on gotVirtual.net. The article describes a male teacher, Matthew Bartlett, 31, seducing the then 14-year old student after she came to him for advice.
From http://www.telegraph.co.uk:
"He plead guilty to ten charges of sexual activity with a child.
Jailing him for four years, Judge Richard Griffith-Jones told him: ''He didn't make her pregnant, he didn't have an STD and he didn't coerce her by bullying her.
''But if you take someone who is depressed and very mixed up and then bathe them in praise you don't need to coerce them.
''You took advantage of her.'
Bartlett was also sentenced to a further two years to run concurrently after admitting a charge of inciting the girl to carry out a sex act."More here.
This afternoon, colleen Criss, another member of gotVirtual.net, posted a forum thread called, "Girls treated as commodities, child prostitution trial told" about the trial of nine men aged between 21 and 59 alleged to have abused, raped and prostituted seven teenage girls, one as young as 13. The forum thread takes information from a BBC News article also entitled "Girls treated as commodities, child prostitution trial told" and dated June 14, 2011.
That discussion unfortunately went nowhere as most of the members of that forum now have troll and old cross-forum drama fatigue.
The stories in the MSNBC Undercover piece are alarming, as one might guess, but equally so for the depiction of the lack of resources available to the families fighting to rescue their daughters.
One of the stories featured is that of Shauna Newell. She was 16. She was in school, befriended by another teenage girl. Met the girl's supposed father. Introduced the new friend and the supposed father to her mother. Got permission to hang out with the girl and left with the girl. She was taken to a house, given a glass of water and woke up hours later, bruised and disoriented, while two men held her down and one raped her. She was kept for three days during which time she was drugged, beaten, raped, bitten, tortured, threatened and so forth...continuously. She was also sold on the internet for $300,000. She overheard snippets of the negotiations. I'm not quite sure what they thought they were selling as the girl had not been given anything except that one glass of water and a ridiculous amount and mixture of drugs. She was dirty, bruised, torn, bitten, broken, bleeding, dehydrated and infected and her organs were beginning to fail.
Newell's family frantically appealed to the police and got next to nothing. What they did get was one officer who gave them a heads up that he was about to call in to check on a lead - a phone number - and that it might be worth their while to basically eavesdrop. They did. They wrote the phone number down and began their own exhaustive investigation with the help of friends and neighbors...but not local authorities...depending, perhaps, on who you hear the story from, I guess. The mother even received a brief phone call from her daughter pleading for help, but they were not able to persuade anyone in law enforcement to assist them. They did, however, get help from a member of the KlaasKids Foundation formed by Marc Klaas, Brad Dennis, which the family described as being critical to the success of the rescue effort.
From http://today.msnbc.msn.com:
"With law enforcement unwilling to act, Brant and Newell’s siblings started their own search. They were fortunate in that Brad Dennis, an investigator for KlaasKids, was based in the area because the Florida Panhandle is an epicenter of human trafficking."From http://www.inweekly.net:
"Shauna was rescued thanks to her mom, the Escambia County Sheriff's Department and the KlaasKids Foundation—that's where Dennis joined the hunt. The sheriff's office asked for Dennis' help, and he organized search parties, posted flyers and asked questions. He finally got a name of someone who knew who Shauna was with."
"'(Dennis) has been finding a lot of U.S. citizens and that is scary," Rodriguez says, pointing out that trafficking affects citizens as much as immigrants. "We have been slammed. This is our office where we have the most victims right now in the state of Florida, so it is scary.'"
"When Dennis encounters someone who may be a human trafficking victim, he gets them physical, emotional and legal help. After identifying them as a victim, he works to get them certified, which enables the government to help stabilize their immigration status, rebuild their life in the United States, and receive federally funded benefits like a refugee."The grassroots investigative/rescue group formed by family and friends eventually tracked down the location of the girl and liberated her from her fleeing captors. (She was found in a car at a gas station. Her captors had stopped for gas in the process of taking Newell out of state.) She was bloody, bruised and disoriented. She had hand prints on her neck, bites on her breasts and blood dripping down her legs.
From http://today.msnbc.msn.com:
"After three days of being raped and beaten and drugged, Newell was dirty, bloody, bruised and barely alive. She was airlifted to a hospital and had to be resuscitated twice. In addition to her serious injuries, she had been infected with an STD."From http://www.inweekly.net::
"When she was rescued after four days of rape, abuse, starvation and water deprivation, Shauna had lethal amounts of cocaine, crystal meth, marijuana, the date rape drug and ecstasy in her system, so much she had to take Life Flight to West Florida Hospital. No one thought she'd survive."
"The medical evidence tells the truth on her behalf: internal bleeding that went on for days, ripping in the muscles up around her bladder. And she had a sexually transmitted disease called trichomonas from all the tearing in her vagina."Her attackers were not arrested or prosecuted or held accountable in any way for the crimes they committed against her. She even saw one of her rapists at the beach one day and another one in traffic on another day.
Marc Klaas pointed out his frustration over the fact that the victims of these kidnap, rape and trafficking crimes are often considered runaways first (at time of capture) and hookers second (after the assaults)...and therefore criminals rather than victims in urgent need of rescue all while pimps are revered in popular culture. He also said that the government money available to trafficking victims in the United States is only available to foreign and not domestic victims and even then only after certification.
From http://today.msnbc.msn.com:
"'It turns upside down,' Klaas explained. 'First of all, many of these kids are missing children. But what happens is when they’re trafficked, they’re turned into hookers; they’re turned into prostitutes. So we find this situation where we find these young victims, these young girls that all of a sudden are being treated and looked upon as criminals.'"From http://today.msnbc.msn.com:
"Her family continues to lobby for national legislation that will provide aid for Americans forced into the sex trade similar to aid that is provided for girls and boys who are brought into the country and forced into prostitution."
Klaas seemed hopeful that Senate Bill 3061, sponsored by Biden, would be passed, but it appears common issues that plague some bills, including incomplete or badly written clauses or sections, attachments to other bills, financial support, politics, etc. have prevented this bill from being passed and put to good use.
More here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Another story highlighted in the MSNBC piece was about a father in Toledo, Bruce Johnson, trying to rescue his 14-year-old daughter after she had been kidnapped, raped and held and prostituted for ten days. He was able to determine her location, drove there with his sister, called the police, was told he was a low priority, waited over half an hour, could no longer contain himself and entered the building. He was attacked by the male occupants of the building, led by pimp, Derek Willoughby, taken outside and beaten within an inch of his life while frantic neighbors called 911 repeatedly for help. Another half hour went by and neighbors began calling 911 again. They were told there were no available units. Eventually the police arrived. Bruce Johnson, suffering from severe concussions and multiple other injuries after being beaten with a rock and a tire iron, was arrested for breaking and entering. The charges were later dropped. Johnson, his daughter, and her cousin who had also been kidnapped and victimized, survived.
More here.
It does make me wonder about...the rest of the story.
All of these stories describe incidents that occurred in the United Kingdom or the United States. All of these stories include victims under the age of 18 and criminals over the age of 21. Forms of coercion vary from attractiveness, position of power, promises and enticements to drugs and extreme violence. Results for the perpetrators range from basically nothing (remember the man on the beach?) to 90 days in jail and 7-10 years in probation and registering on the sex offenders list to significant prison time.
Many questions are raised, both by the stories themselves and the comments in the comments sections and forums discussing the stories.
❐ Are the authorities as ineffectual as they are portrayed in the media stories?
❐ How do authorities effectively determine the difference between a runaway who is still reasonably safe and independent and a child who is being victimized?
❐ Do we have the resources to deal with the problem of sexual abuse of minors?
❐ Is there a difference between an attractive teacher in her twenties having sex with an apparently willing 15-year old and other types of sex offenders, and if so, what are the differences?
❐ Is 90 days in jail and ten years of probation a reasonable sentence for statutory rape? Why or why not?
❐ Is there an antiquated, imbalanced or detrimental cultural or societal view of gender differences for victims and perpetrators and do we need to advance beyond that?
❐ Are there degrees of sexual abuse of minors and therefore should there be levels of responses and consequences?
❐ What are the emotional, psychological, spiritual and physical effects of sexual abuse of minors on those minors? What are the variables? And how do we know?
❐ Is there a cultural element to sexual predation of children?
❐ Is prejudice expressed in assumptions about the names, races, ethnicities, countries of origin, religions, sexual orientations and genders of the perpetrators?
❐ Does sexual trafficking of foreign victims get more attention than the sexual trafficking of domestic victims in the United States and at the detriment of the domestic victims?
❐ Why is sexual trafficking and the sexual abuse of minors so prevalent?
❐ How do we stop or stem the tide of sexual trafficking and the sexual abuse of minors?
❐ Is there something parents can do to protect their children?
❐ Do parents need parenting courses?
❐ What happened to S. 3061?
❐ What can people in the community do?
❐ What can we do?
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