Kevin Sampsell struggles with the question of what to do when you know the person who did a very bad thing.
A dear friend of mine was raped in the summer of 2011. It was by a man she knew. They were at a bar together, though not on any kind of date. He had tried to kiss her there and she pushed him away. Sensing a shift in the mood, she told him she was going to leave. Her car was parked a few blocks away and the man said he would walk her to it. But then he grabbed her and pulled her into a church parking lot as she tried to fight him off.
She called me two days later and told me about the incident. I could tell that she was in pain, emotionally and physically. At the time, she would not tell me who it was because she was trying to take legal action. She only told me it was someone I knew.
♦◊♦
I’m trying to remember the first time I knew about rape. I probably heard the word as a kid but couldn’t fully imagine it. Eventually, seeing movies like The Accused, Blue Velvet, A Clockwork Orange, Deliverance, and Man Bites Dog all gave me fictional yet visceral examples of what rape was. When I saw the rape scene from 1974’s Death Wish, where Charles Bronson’s wife and daughter are attacked by muggers, I remember feeling the same kind of rage that Bronson’s famous character, Paul Kersey, unleashes later in the film. Revenge is so sweet in the movies.
But those were not real of course, and luckily, I did not know about real life stories of rape. Perhaps I thought they were as common as four-leaf clovers.
♦◊♦
One time I was in a relationship that seemed to be in a constant state of flux. We had both been in other relationships mere days before we became a couple. Our sex, which happened perhaps too early in our relationship, was good, but we still felt a little like strangers to each other in bed. Once, we were having sex and she froze up, stopped moving, and lost all expression in her face. I asked her if something was wrong and she asked me to stop. I stopped and rolled off of her and she told me that she felt like I was treating her like an object, that I wasn’t being in tune with her. It was frustrating for both of us, but I stopped when she said stop. A couple of weeks later, the same thing happened but this time she told me to “go ahead and finish.” I paused for a second and thought about what was being asked of me. It wasn’t “Stop” but rather “Finish.” I could not continue. So I stopped, and, after some awkward silence, we talked about what she needed me to do to feel more comfortable during sex. She told me about a time when she was raped by an older boy when she was a teenager. It was something that would disrupt her inner-peace for the rest of her life.
This “go ahead (or hurry up) and finish” scenario has been used as a joke in comedy for a long time, whether it’s the old married couple complaining about the sex act itself or an annoyed female character faking an orgasm to get her partner’s stamina to taper off. But if I had gone ahead and “finished,” what would that make me?
♦◊♦
When my friend was raped last summer, it was the first time that I had experienced that kind of violation to someone close to me. I understand that “experienced” is probably not the right word. Language can be a weird and stupid instrument in this conversation.
Let me tell you a few things about my friend: She’s a single mother of a small boy. She’s the kind of person who goes to shows and readings and buys every CD and book on sale to show her support. She’ll buy you a drink before you even see her approaching, smiling with your fresh drink in her hand. She laughs easily at your jokes and will offer you a ride home or to run an errand with you if you’re ever in need. She has a soft spot for sentimental pop music, bawdy humor, and “old lady poetry.” She’s beautiful but doesn’t like her photo taken because a photographer once told her that her features were unbalanced. She once told me that she loved her boyfriend because she felt safe and he would never be violent with her.
It’s been over a year since the incident and justice for my friend has been slow. She did all she was supposed to do—she went to the hospital, she filed a police report, she took her clothes off so they could photograph the injuries, and she got a lawyer. She even went to the police station days after that horrible night and spoke with her rapist on the phone as detectives listened in. He wasn’t certain how to respond to her questions. At times, he was remorseful and said he knew he did something wrong. At other times, he said he thought they were “playing a game.”
The detectives on the case heard all of this phone conversation and yet didn’t, for some reason, feel like they had a solid case against the rapist. At the heart of this situation is the issue of consent, and since he wouldn’t admit that he committed a crime (perhaps in his mind, he thought he had consent, even though she said No and asked him while he was doing it what he was doing), it would become a case of He Said, She Said in court, which is not as winnable as other attacks of this nature. In fact, on the totem pole of rape, acquaintance rape ranks at least fourth on the priority list. The most winnable cases for victims usually are: if a stranger rapes you, if it’s a gang rape, if there is anal penetration, and if the attacker is a different race.
A few days after telling me about the rape, she told me the name of the guy. It was someone I knew only slightly, in a peripheral way—I had met him in person once or twice and we were “friends” on Facebook. She told me a few weeks before that he wanted to go out with her but she wasn’t interested in him as boyfriend material. I may have said something like, “He seems like a decent guy.”
I waited for days, weeks, and months after, to see if she would get any kind of justice at all. She was told not to block him on Facebook but he blocked her. I thought about blocking him on Facebook, but I wanted to keep an eye on him, so to speak. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t drive to his house and confront him, I couldn’t post fliers in his neighborhood (or where he worked) announcing what he had done, and I couldn’t contact his teenage daughter or his girlfriend (both of whom probably had no clue that he had committed rape). I checked in with his Facebook page occasionally, seeing if I could detect what his life was like. He didn’t seem to post on his page much, but he did post a Leonard Cohen song a few days after the rape. It was Bird On a Wire, and he said something about how his life was like the song. As passive aggressive as it sounds, I wanted so badly to post on his Facebook page: YOU ARE A RAPIST AND PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE SHOULD KNOW THAT. A couple of months after the rape, I noticed that he started to post on his Facebook page more often and joke around with friends there. He seemed okay, like he didn’t have a worry in the world. Like he got away with it.
But the case was still being considered. Even though every time I spoke with my friend about the legal side of the rape, it was excruciating and baffling. The sheer number of rape cases makes it hard to get into a court, I understand, but I feared that the passing of time would make her memory fade.
But if you’re a rape victim, how do you heal? Do you try to forget as quickly as possible or do you try to remember every little detail until justice is served. My friend didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter. She was haunted by the incident and would not leave her house. She was too frightened to be around other people and even paranoid when speaking on the phone. She could not go to work. She could barely read or write or watch movies. She cried every day. Her life shut down.
On top of the mental and physical trauma, she was also stuck with the hospital bill to pay. She had ruined her clothes and a $360 purse was torn off her shoulder during the attack. All of that stuff can’t even be cleaned or repaired—it’s locked up in police evidence. This is a situation where a designer bag becomes a drop in the ocean. Collateral damage.
♦◊♦
My dad was a rapist. I did not know this until just four years ago. After his funeral in 2008, I learned some of the more shameful details of his life. The God-fearing Catholic that I grew up with, who hardly showed affection or pride in his children, had raped my twenty-four-year-old half-sister one night when I was three years old.
Contrary to some beliefs, my half-sister became pregnant. She was not in a good condition to have a baby. She had recently been released from a mental hospital where she had shock treatments. My mom took her to get an abortion.
This was something that my mom and dad kept from me and my four older brothers for the rest of his life. But looking back on it, even though I didn’t know about this rape, it was obvious that our family was poisoned by its aftermath. My mom accepted this violence for some reason and has carried it with her for over forty years. Again: collateral damage.
♦◊♦
I was unsure about writing this. I wasn’t sure if being a man would make this story less relevant. How could I know what rape does, what it feels like, or how it looms like a threat over millions of women?
At a friend’s house with my wife recently, I found myself the only male in a room with four women. We talked about the subject of rape and its sudden politically-awkward spotlight in the media.
I listened to them as they talked about uncomfortable situations they’ve been in. One of them walks with her keys poking out of her fist. One of them would walk down the middle of her neighborhood street while walking home late in Boston because she didn’t want to walk by bushes or places where someone could be hiding. One of them crosses the street when she hears someone walking behind her at night. One time when she did this, the man behind her, whose features she couldn’t see, asked her if she was afraid of black men. She wasn’t. She was afraid of any men in the dark.
♦◊♦
My friend waited over a year for her rapist to go to trial. The District Attorney wouldn’t take her case and it went from being a state case to a civil case. Investigators working for the rapist checked my friend’s background, contacting her ex-husband and an ex-boyfriend, most likely hoping to discredit her. In the end, there was a cash settlement. I’m not sure for how much because she can’t disclose details. In a civil case, the incident doesn’t go on the person’s record. My friend’s rapist doesn’t have to tell anyone that this happened. I’m still unsure if his girlfriend or his daughter knows anything about what he did. This settlement is basically hush money.
There were times in the past year when I spoke to my friend and she sounded on the verge of giving up and letting it go. “Maybe he’s an okay guy,” she said. “Maybe I’d be doing more damage to others.” After the settlement, she equated the monetary figure to being like an expensive prostitute. But of course, even prostitutes get raped.
Recently, I was out with friends and one of them mentioned that she had worked at the same place, a local college, that still employs the rapist. I asked her if she knew him and she exclaimed, “Oh, I love him.” When I frowned, she asked, “You don’t like him?” When I explained to her what had happened, she instantly became dark and angry and said she didn’t want to be friends with him anymore.
A few months prior to this conversation, I felt compelled to tell another friend who actually saw the rapist semi-regularly at work and in social settings, and was also friends with the victim. I was speaking to her on the phone and when I told her what had happened, she shouted out numerous times: No no no no! She was shocked but perhaps not entirely surprised. She told me that he had behaved aggressively with one of her friends too, someone whose physical attributes were nearly identical to my friend. We concluded that it was probably not his first (or last) time that he would attack someone.
These conversations (and the existence of this essay) may make it seem like I’m meddling in someone else’s business. Maybe I am. But this is someone’s life that has been affected—a good person who has had something horrible and irreversible done to her. No amount of cash can take erase the deepest trauma—the feeling that you’re not safe. If the police, the courts, or the lawyers, can’t help my friend (or other rape victims) find some justice or closure, maybe getting the word out about the rapist—warning people about him—is the best we can do.
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photo by kasrak / flickr
Your perspective as a man on this subject is incredibly important. Men challenging themselves with these issues, grappling with the anger, the shame-by-association, the need to make it right and the powerlessness to do so is all part of our society’s movement through rape culture to the other side – to compassion, to interconnectedness, to oneness. I watched the impact on my father when both his girls – me at 6, my half-sister at 16 less than a year later – were sexually assaulted. He felt like he wasn’t a good man, wasn’t a proper father because he couldn’t protect… Read more »
Thank you for this
burn the witch (rapist)
Kevin Sample good on ya! We are not an assembly of parts where the “justice system” is the mechanic’s shop. We are community. We ALL must have healthy and continuous cradle-to-grave communications and friendships – which by definitions – includes trust, honesty, safety. We are born with an innate desire to see others happy that results in our suffering if we experience otherwise. For anyone who doubts that, you need to read more science headlines. Would that we could be clear enough in our thinking to understand it is a good thing to communicate when we know another is in… Read more »
Sadly, from the timestamps, it’s obvious that Mr. Mike has difficulty sleeping at night and we know why.
Polly, you are disgusting.
Jumping to conclusions here, don’t you think? You can’t really tell very much based on a time stamp. Perhaps because of his work schedule he has time to write at night and not during the day. Maybe that’s when the server posted the message, not when he finished it. Maybe the message was held up in moderation and it’s the moderator keeping late hours. Maybe he lives in a distant time zone and he’s actually writing in the middle of his day out there. Maybe he’s up because he’s taking care of an infant who needs feeding at 2am and… Read more »
I honestly think it should be legal to a) publicly post rapists names and b) I think they should have a full on registry…they have it for child molesters why not rapists.
I think most people here agree. There are a few who disagree and there are some, like me, who have no problem with it for convicted rapists. A few (or maybe just one) would like the registry to include convicted false accusers.
If by rapist you mean “convicted rapist,” then I’d tend to agree. If you mean a blacklist of everyone who was ever accused or rumored to be a rapist, then I’d say there’s a risk of libel or slander, which is and ought to be against the law. Unless you’re saying you wouldn’t mind being on the rapist list yourself if that ever happened by accident. I know I’m not a rapist and would not want to end up on such a list by accident. If you’re wrongly on that list, how would you ever get off of it? It’s… Read more »
As a male survivor of child sex abuse, incest, and physical/emotional/verbal abuse for years, I had to relearn how to be a person when I escaped home. My handicaps and psychological problems from the abuse are extensive. As often happens to a person raped as a child, I have also survived rape as an adult. The damage is unimaginable to anybody who hasn’t experienced this horror, though those who try to understand, empathize, and give help and support to a victim are priceless to us. What I cannot understand are people who make excuses for rapists and pedophiles, or who… Read more »
Very good.Thanks
Even if it might be uncomfortable, if you really worry about this, as you are saying in your text, I would confront the guy and tell him what you know and what you think about him and his behavior. I would tell him upfront that he needs to seek therapy. That you are watching him and that a few other people are as well. No doubt, people can be “good guys” in one way and rapists in another. This is why all of us need to intervene and put a clear limit to this behavior. Since he doesn’t have the… Read more »
It’s not meddling. The author has a moral obligation to let as many people as possible know about this guy. To be blunt, this rapist scumbag deserves to have him life ruined. He deserves to live in shame for the rest of his days. He deserves a lifetime of pain and misery. And the women around him have a fundamental right to know that he’s the worst kind of sexual predator–the one that disguises himself as a trusted friend. Outing him as what he is–which is simply telling the truth–could save many other women from going through what the author’s… Read more »
Kevin, I want to thank you for being a better man than I am. I appreciate so much of this dialogue appealing to our higher nature. Except in the extremely obvious cases I had always looked at rape as something abstract with a million shades of gray; just something my circle of friends worried about being thrown out by an upset woman who threatened to extract some measure of revenge for feeling used or slighted by a man. This was until I learned that this violation happened to my sister nearly two decades ago. I was disorientated, offended and most… Read more »
Guthrie, You are mischaracterizing the original piece. If this was written by a victim, then I would have all the sympathy in the world. It was not, however, written by a victim. This was written by someone who sought to excuse their own vigilantism, and I am forcing people to confront that reality. Look at the comments of people on here that disagree with me: you cuss at me, someone else accused me of committing my own sexual assaults, there have been ad hominems galore. Why? Because there is no legitimate defense of vigilatism, and there can be none. So… Read more »
What vigilantism? He’s not doing anything more than repeating the story to others who are involved with this guy in some way. You’re making it sound as if he’s out to assassinate the guy.
Great piece by one of Portland’s literary lights. Probably goes without saying, but I enjoyed the title’s great play on a linguistic construct. As to the issue itself, I’m no expert, but with social media being what it is, the perpetrator in question is all but identified, if not de facto then in the cosmic, karmic sense. Yikes.
This story is rough for me to accept. I, too, would want the rapist the pay, but not at the expense of him being free to rape others and the survivor silenced by cash. How about when she hears about his next victim? He has access to students on a college campus? He isn’t outed by name here or anywhere else that I know of, and while I have heard this story here and one other time from a friend, I don’t know the name of the rapist or the survivor. How do we protect our community? How do we… Read more »
Thank you for writing this article and sharing how you navigated a difficult situation. Thank you for starting a conversation among good men about this issue that really is theirs to discuss. Thank you for drawing a stark contrast between the defensive stance of “Mike L” (see comments) and the sensitive and responsible (not guilty, but responsible, as in “able to respond”) approach you are offering as a different pathway. Many good men are surprised at how much the specter of rape haunts women, including women who’ve never been raped. Like your friends, I’ve walked – since a teenage self-defense… Read more »
I was very surprised by comments made by Mike …so much that I would leave a comment on a site… Forgiveness is offered for the sake of the victim/s so that they may move on… It is not absolution for the perpetrator.. They must seek their own peace… There are consequences for all actions good or bad and they often have a wave effect… That is part of the natural process… The victim/s through no fault of their own have a “life sentence”…. Why is that ok for the innocent but for the perpetrator we can say ” that’s ok… Read more »
I was raped at knife point by a stranger when I was 15. The man who did it had also raped several other women, none of whom would give evidence in court. It’s probably because I was a minor that the police were so supportive of me, and they really wanted to get that guy. I am thankful for that. But I also don’t believe in the system of revenge as justice. The man that I put in prison with my testimony must have either spent those years in solitary, or was tortured, raped and maybe killed by other inmates.… Read more »
I really appreciate that you included your personal experiences in here. Almost all men will get angry about rape, but many are using a very specific definition (violence, screaming, alleyway, stranger) which excludes the vast majority of rapes. There are a lot of men who supposedly hate rapists yet still think they are entitled to use the bodies of women they care about. My ex-boyfriend who raped me is one of them. So often I hear discussions on rape and get the impression that no one involved would care about what happened to me, because it’s not rape to them.… Read more »
I don’t for a second think this is not an essay for a man to write. Of course men should consider and deliberate. I can’t congratulate you for not being a rapist, but I can for caring about it. So much of our rape culture places responsibility on women – how they dress/act, their sexuality, their experience, how they must avoid rape. No one tells boys how not to be rapists. No one says, prevent rape by NOT RAPING PEOPLE. Well… maybe they do more now. And this essay is part of that. I’m sorry for your friend’s horrible experience.… Read more »
How about also telling women and girls not to rape? That is quite common if you properly define rape. According to the latest CDC (US government) survey, 4.8% of all men have been “made to penetrate” and 79.2% of the perpetrators were women. Examples of “made to penetrate” are: a woman who has sex with a man who is passed-out drunk, or a woman who forces a man to have sex with her through violence or threats of violence. There is some confusion due to the fact that their definition of rape excluded “made to penetrate” and only included men… Read more »
Having had many dealings with the court system (divorce and child-custody/welfare) I know that it is almost impossible to get a conviction without a video tape or a confession. It is no surprise to me that this woman accepted a settlement when it appeared that she could not show in court what actually happened. I applaud you for speaking about it here so eloquently and especially for warning others. Rape is no “accident.” An accident is when I put a pair of red socks in with the whites while doing my laundry, turning the whole load pink. Rape is not… Read more »
I have been the single divorced mother raped by a friend, who also had a girlfriend and who does not have it on his record despite admissions to police. I appreciate every friend who stuck by me in the great friendship divide that reporting such a crime creates and I applaud all who warn others of his past. To my knowledge he has tried once more but she’d heard the warnings and got out. I too felt the same way about the crimes compensation money I received. Keep warning women – my child is now 16 and he encountered her… Read more »
Is there still any merit to the concept of innocent until proven guilty? Is there no room for the word “alleged” when it comes to rape? There may be a difference, or maybe at least should be a difference, between shunning someone who’s a “rapist” and shunning someone who’s “accused of being a rapist.” It is highly unlikely that a woman would falsely accuse someone of rape, but it is not entirely outside the realm of possibility. What is it about rape accusations that make them unique in this way? At the very least, I would hope there are degrees… Read more »
“Innocent until proven guilty” is a legal standard, not an absolute standard. If the author knows and trusts his friend, then that is sufficient to believe what she says and to act as if it is the truth in his everyday life.
I get it, and I really don’t want to sound like an ass. I don’t know why I’m such a stickler about this, but I guess I was hoping for more overt language. Part of me wanted the author to claim his beliefs and own his conclusions about the rapist. He made some decisions and came to some conclusions based on what his friend told him. I kept reading and reading looking for the place where he says he knows that this acquaintance is a rapist because ____. Maybe this is just splitting hairs, but I was hoping for a… Read more »
@Wellokaythen: You say “It is highly unlikely that a woman would falsely accuse someone of rape, but it is not entirely outside the realm of possibility. What is it about rape accusations that make them unique in this way?” Actually, virtually every study indicates that false accusation aren’t rare at all, even the most feminist friendly studies put it at around 8% which is no where near rare AND False accusations of rape are about 4 times as high as false accusation other violent crimes, i.e. murder, armed robbery and assault. What’s unique about FAR (False accusations of rape) is… Read more »
“Actually, virtually every study indicates that false accusation aren’t rare at all, even the most feminist friendly studies put it at around 8% which is no where near rare AND False accusations of rape are about 4 times as high as false accusation other violent crimes, i.e. murder, armed robbery and assault.” I always thought that 8 – 10% was the incidence of false reporting for other crimes, but maybe I misunderstood the data. I tend to agree that false reporting for rape would be higher. Originally (and I still think to some extent) that it would be due to… Read more »
Kevin, I think you did all the right things. Warned other women that are near him. Supported your friend as best you could.
There just isn’t a lot of options in cases like this.
I think warning other people who know him is the best thing you can do. Think about it: if you knew someone was a thief, you would tell your friends not to let that person handle their wallet or purse, or stay at their house, right? Maybe you are “meddling” in this man’s life, but maybe he forfeited the right to a meddle-free life when he decided to be a rapist. Maybe your meddling will save lives. Maybe it will prevent him from doing it again. As a woman, I would want to know if someone I worked with or… Read more »
Well done. And yes I think our society should start shunning rapists. They more than deserve it.
I find Mr. Sampsell’s behavior in this piece extremely troubling. Our society has a justice system for a reason. In this instance, a certain amount of justice was exacted: some kind of monetary payment was made. The victim did not need to accept a settlement, the victim could have forced the case to trial and put everything in the public record. The victim did not choose to do this. Enter Mr. Sampsell. In his mind, the rapist has not paid enough. He must continue to pay, months and years after the attack. He must pay even after he has literally… Read more »
You want him to forgive this guy? Maybe he ought to fess up to his crimes publicly, apologize for his actions, and get some help. Until then, he’s some dude who had to pay a little money for taking something priceless away from at least one lady and God knows how many more in the future. You don’t even know if he is going to do it again! And you want forgiveness! I have a wife who was attacked by a would-be rapist. He was not successful, but if you think that I would hold back from demolishing his face… Read more »
Your response is littered with flaws, I’ll try and address them. “You want him to forgive this guy? Maybe he ought to fess up to his crimes publicly, apologize for his actions, and get some help.” See, here you are demanding a level of justice that the victim does not. This is a kind of dangerous self-righteous attitude that is used to justify everything from picketing funerals to carrying out suicide bombings. “You don’t even know if he is going to do it again!” Here you are making the false assumption that he would do it again. In reality, sex… Read more »
Serious question: How much punishment is sufficient? Once a person has been put in prison for years, put on the sex offender registry for life, cut off from employment and polite society, and had his face smashed in… Has “justice” been served then? Can the rape victim’s life get back to normal? If not, then what? I don’t think men in general are ready to have a serious conversation about this. We take our cues from Law and Order SVU and think about it terms of monsters and revenge and righteous bloodlust. Meanwhile, the victims themselves, and women in general… Read more »
Jenner Jenner, I really appreciate this comment. I would argue that some forms of rape really can be mistakes. Consider the scenario of acquaintance rape where BOTH parties are intoxicated and the woman actually said yes, but was too intoxicated to give consent. This is literally rape: there was no real consent. Yet, especially in the face of a spoken “yes,” it’s easy to see how a mistake is made. But whether you agree with me or not, I think you are correct: we need to have a real discussion about how much punishment is too much, because clearly “punished… Read more »
I’m sorry. Chasing a woman blocks and then ripping her handbag and her clothes to bruise her and forcefully put your penis inside her vagina is NOT A MISTAKE.
He is a sociopath who needs to be incarcerated.
But yes, there may be some forms of “iffy consent” that are considered rape that could be considered a mistake. Sure. But the point of this story is that this man forcefully raped someone. He does NOT deserve our forgiveness. It is not ours to give. It is hers and hers only and all I can say is that I’m grateful I have not crossed paths with him. The point of this story is that it DID happen to her and he got off scott free. And you’re here saying he should be forgiven because he was ordered to pay… Read more »
Joanna,
The world is even more “fucked up” when people like yourself crowd our prisons with endless jail terms, set up sex offender registries so that the few who are paroled end up homeless, and then top it off by denying gainful employment to the rest.
Your right not to forgive ends when my tax dollars need to start paying for it.
Mike, lemme just address a few things. My father is a psychologist who works with sex offenders appointed to him by the court. He has a nearly unheard of success rate with the men he works with. Some of them by my father’s own admission are very low risk for repeat offense, some shouldn’t be there in the first place, and others are seriously frightening individuals who don’t even realize what they did was wrong. I am very knowledgeable about this and I am not sure what my exact position is on the sex offender registry. I think pedophiles should… Read more »
Evan,
Frankly I don’t find your remarks convincing. You never met the man in question, and you cite your father as evidence, but seem to lack his experience and formal training. Even trained psychologists know better than to diagnose someone they have never met.
I’m sorry, but your theory is overreach and speculative at best.
You appear to have no idea what a victim goes through, or are at least completely downplaying it. Many victims take settlements because the trauma is too great to carry on a prolonged criminal trial, in which they have to be severely scrutinized, remember every possible detail of typically the most traumatic event in their lives, and even then there’s no guarantee that the one who assaulted them will receive sufficient punishment. Many legitimate cases are dismissed when they go further, because they lack evidence. That doesn’t mean they didn’t happen as the victim described. Just because the courts decide… Read more »
Mike, you never met the man either. Yet you seem assume he’s a regular guy and deserves our forgiveness and our willingness to overlook his past behavior just because he paid a fine. Who’s jumping to unfounded conclusions?
@ Jenner, Jenner,
“How much punishment is sufficient?”
Good question and one worthy of debate. I always thought that it was strange when I’d see some rapists get sentenced to terms three or four times longer than some people convicted of manslaughter. That doesn’t even consider the “extra” punishment of the sex offender’s registry.
Um, I don’t know how carefully you read the study you linked to, Mike L, but rapists have the highest violent felony recidivism rates. I would also add that this study looked for convictions in the first 5 years after release into the community, not over the person’s lifetime, which is surely more relevant in this particular situation. Finally, rapes like the one discussed here would not be taken into account at all, given the lack of conviction.
But the claim is NOT that sex offenders have low general felony conviction rates, it’s that the sex crimes themselves have low levels of recidivism.
The difference is between:
He might rape again. (which was the claim made)
And
He might commit some crime in genera.l (which was not the claim made)
I’m so sorry that you made this mistake, but it is fundamental.
The study you cited dealt with sex crimes of all types, not with acquaintance rape. The 2002 Lisak&Miller study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/11991158/ is much more on point. It found that guys who get away with it, as this rapist did, average 5.8 victims each.
The circumstances recounted by Kevin Sampsell describe a repeat rapist’s pattern remarkably well.
I admire Mike L’s attempt to not let emotion cloud the issue. However, his response is “littered with flaws” of its own. His emphasis on the “justice” system and appeal to the fact that “justice” has been exacted equivocates on two clear senses of justice. Legal “justice” is quite different from moral justice. This is understandable, of course, given that we often talk about “criminal justice systems;” but, to conflate the issues here and say we should forgive because “justice” has been served is to overlook the obvious objection that there is something still wrong with this picture. Of a… Read more »
Oh yes. My words for Mike L’s god would be even harsher.
Nick,
Your response is cute, but unconvincing.
You begin by appealing to “moral justice” which is not only I’ll-defined, it’s clearly arbitrary. We have a justice system because we don’t want arbitrary definitions of justice. I’m not equivocating, I’m pointing out this reality.
Second, there is nothing confusing about a deontological argument: it’s an argument that appeals to arbitrary standards instead of reason. That’s why it’s used by all the world’s major religions. We need reason in public policy, not arbitrary morality.
You say that “moral justice” is “ill-defined” and “clearly arbitrary.” Aren’t the conditions for which one person ought to forgive another the same?
I see no reason why the author has any responsibility to forgive the rapist.
Sounds like you are struggling with a ‘terrible mistake’ of your own, Mike.
Sabine,
are you accusing Mike L of rape?
Yeah, it’s called an “ad nominee attack” and it’s what people resort to when they’re out of reasoned arguments.
Welp, that’s embarrassing, obviously that should have been “hominem” and not “nominee” despite what autocorrect thought.
Sounds like you hit the nail on the head, Sabine. Notice he doesn’t address your post? Rape is not a “mistake”. It is a conscious, violent attack against another person that happens to involve some form sexual assault. Forgiveness? Who the hell are YOU Mike L to decide when or even whether a victim needs to forgive?
Wow. So, according to you guys, if I’m not on here commenting 100% of the time (because, you know, I have a life and stuff), then I’m a rapist. Real mature. I’m a law student in the SF Bay Area, and I spent a semester last year working in my school’s criminal justice clinic. I’ve seen, first hand, how destructive the California penal system is. The total overcrowding, the lack of healthcare, punishments that never end, ending up homeless because no one will hire a sex offender, it’s madness. I have compassion for my fellow humans, regardless of what they… Read more »
Mike L, I have no reason to believe you are a rapist. But based on your comments here, you appear to be a rape apologist.
Mike If you are a law student then you should realize the main flaw of your own argument. You say that the victim accepted a money settlement and if that was not enough she could have pushed on with a trial. You say you are compassionate, but seem to have little to no compassion for the victim, or at least exhibit a complete lack of understanding of how victims are affected by rape and other similar crimes. What you miss is that she pursued a civil case because she could not pursue a criminal one. As a law student you… Read more »
Sabine,
My only mistake was asking people to forgive.
I guess that’s just beyond some of us, and we’re all poorer for it.
When I was raped and I sought guidance from my Catholic churches (in my hometown, in my college town), who literally PREACH forgiveness even THEY didn’t preach forgiveness SOAKING in condescension. “Mistake”?? WHAT? How can you think that about RAPE? A mistake is running over someone in a foggy night, shooting your husband in the moment you find him in bed with another woman, going on a date with someone like this guy. It is NOT chasing someone down several blocks and dragging them into a parking lot and RAPING THEM.
I’m never going to agree with you. Sorry.
@ Mike L
“See, here you are demanding a level of justice that the victim does not.”
That’s incorrect from the article “she filed a police report,” She demanded the level of justice that he’s talking about, possibly something even more severe if he had been given a prison sentence. She didn’t get it, but that’s not the same thing as not demanding it.
John,
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the author is calling for something that sounds an awful lot like stalking and harassment and then making pretend that this is “justice.”
The author specifically calls for following the perpetrator around for an indefinite period of time and alerting all of his coworkers to his transgression. This is not something that the victim is doing, this is something that the author of the article is taking it upon himself to do. This is also clearly something that does not belong in civilized society.
Getting the justice system to prosecute rape cases can be an extremely long and tiring process. And, in some cases, the victims who try to get the accused brought to jail face harassment from the police. The money she received in the case will never compensate for what was done to her, but, hopefully, it will help to pay for the counseling that the victim clearly is in need of. Given all the other problems the victim was facing, she probably needed the money to survive (reread the article, “she could not go to work.” Sorry, but, the rapist scumbag… Read more »
I’m sorry you lack the capacity to forgive, your life would be better if you could learn how to.
“Our society has a justice system for a reason,” indeed, but not the reasons you probably think it does. The justice system is designed to provide plausible cover for the lie that violence is an aberration and that the state cares about all of its subjects or citizens. The justice system is designed to maintain a status quo where violence against some groups is routinely ignored and violence against authority or other groups severely punished. “When does it end?” For this man, it probably will not end until his death, if then. Nor will it end for the woman or… Read more »
I’m sorry but you hav such a twisted view of the justice system that it’s not worth debating it.
Your arguments only follow if you accept a series of propositions which are, at best, questionable. Your views of the justice system are clearly more informed by cynicism than fact, and this is leading you to faulty conclusions.
“The justice system is designed to provide plausible cover for the lie that violence is an aberration and that the state cares about all of its subjects or citizens. ”
“Karma and vengeance are probably both closer to justice than the law shall ever be in such matters. May you realize soon how very clueless you are, Mr L, in the gentlest way possible.”
Violence is an aberration. The justice system is a spectacular success. I think your completely clueless. And I am not sure why you think vengeance is such a great idea.
Let’s get a few things clear: This was not “date rape”. They weren’t on a date. The victim clearly refused the perpetrator’s advances and removed herself from the situation (or so she thought). There is no grey area, there was no implied consent, no “few too many” to know better. This wasn’t a regrettable sexual experience — it was a rape. Violent, forcible, coercive — whatever words you need to hear to understand this was not a mistake or accident. It was a deliberate choice he made to stalk her down, physically overpower her, and RAPE her. Denying someone’s volition… Read more »
Hear! Hear!
Thank you, Chloe, for such an informed, reasoned and yet still passionate and empathetic response.
Chloe,
It’s cute that you tried to discredit the research I posted without sharing any of your own. Sort of like the creationists who point out all the “problems” with the theory of evolution and yet have no evidenc for their own beliefs.
Please let me know if you ever have hard evidence. Until then, I’ll stick with what can be proven.
Mike — I don’t need to produce evidence to refute this report, as I’m not taking issue with anything contained within it. I simply used the report you cited to discredit your own statements as you have grossly misinterpreted the report. This is what you don’t seem to understand: This guy = rapist never convicted Offenders in the report = convicted sex offenders who have been released from prison (rapists being one of several categories of sex offenders included in the study). The report you cited is an analysis of “the impact and effectiveness of current sex offender sentencing policies”… Read more »
@ Mike L “In this instance, a certain amount of justice was exacted:” I think that civil courts are more geared to ensuring that people receive restitution rather than justice and that’s why many of the people here believe that there was no justice. There might have been some restitution paid. “The victim did not need to accept a settlement, the victim could have forced the case to trial and put everything in the public record.” In a civil case the plaintiff has to exert financial resources as well. We don’t know if she settled because she didn’t have the… Read more »
John, I appreciate your points, by I disagree for three reasons. First, I think your analysis of the civil justice system is incorrect simply because we allow for findings such as “pain and suffering” or “punitive damages.” Some claims are purely restitutionary, there’s no question about that, however, it’s difficult to claim that punitive damages are designed to be anything other than punitive, and indeed the way that they are calculated suggests as much (because they are usually unhinged from demonstrable monetary loss totals). Second, for cases such as this one it is usually easy to find a plaintiff’s attorney… Read more »
Your assement of how the civil justice system works reveals your inexperience. Revisit this after you have gotten a job in the real world for everal years. For now it is clear you are using this article as a form of mental masturbation.
Mike, there was obviously no justice served and clearly you do not know much of the justice system. In addition you clearly do not know the aftermath of rape or perhaps you don’t even care. To answer your question no it never ends it will end the day the victim is no longer going through pain and suffering and that will clearly never happen. Pictures of rapists should be posted everywhere and their lives completely ruined. Only then will they feel in their own skin what the victims will feel for the rest of their lives.