Trigger warning for discussion of rape.
Jerry Sandusky has been convicted of molesting ten boys and found guilty of 45 of 48 counts of sexual abuse. He faces the possibility of life in prison.
Justice has been served. Despite Penn State’s enabling and coverups of his crimes, despite the apologism of far too many people, despite the despicable arguing tactics of the defense (“they made it up for money?” Really? “everyone showers with kids?” REALLY?)… justice has been served.
I don’t feel pleasure at this. Although I hope it provides some manner of comfort to his victims, they will still have to endure the consequences of Sandusky’s actions for the rest of their lives. Although I am happy that he will never be in a situation where he may harm another child, I’m upset that he had the opportunity to rape children to begin with, again and again, and that it took fifteen fucking years for someone to realize that this was not okay.
Sandusky’s prosecution makes me think of all the rapists who never face this sort of punishment. The survivors who never get the comfort of knowing their attacker has been punished. The people who have been raped who wouldn’t have been if their rapists had faced the legal consequences for their crimes. The other people who, seeing that there are no consequences and that it is an ordinary and acceptable way to act, themselves rape. Most rapists are repeat rapists; most rapists never spend a day in jail. That is not okay.
[Image description: Out of every 100 rapes, 46 get reported to the police, 12 lead to an arrest, 9 get prosecuted, 5 lead to a felony conviction and 3 rapists will ever spend a day in prison. The other 97 will walk free.]
I also think about prison. I am, as many people are, troubled by our prison system: it is often implemented in a racist, sexist, classist and ableist way; it prioritizes making criminals feel pain over making them decent, contributing, non-criminal members of society; perverse incentives and the lust for profit warp the way prisons are run. While I acknowledge that even in a hypothetical utopia punishment for crimes would have to exist, and certainly Sandusky is richly deserving of it, I wish the system he’s being put in now would respect his human rights the way he didn’t respect the human rights of his victims.
While I’m looking for a million dollars and a pony, I also wish that instead of being happy because a rapist was punished we would ask why he became a rapist in the first place. How can we prevent this from happening in the future? How can we keep rapists and abusers from abusing and raping people?
Nevertheless, despite these doubts, Sandusky’s prosecution is certainly good news, the best that could be hoped for. I hope that Penn State and other colleges will take this as an opportunity to examine their rape cultures and affirm that in no circumstances will they privilege the reputation of the school over protecting children from sexual assault.
It also doesn’t say whether any of the 46 might be false or mistaken accusations, or if they already accounted for that. Not that I’d expect that it’d be a very large portion of those 46 if they didn’t.
That’s because the charts starts with “Rapes” not “Claims of rape.”
Much like most charts about burglaries measure “Burglaries” and not “Alleged burglaries” in case someone was faking a burglary for revenge/kicks/because they’re a silly woman who exists to make men’s lives hard.
…Fascinating. I was like *totally* unaware that you can divine whether or not someone remembered to estimate the effects of confounding factors and eliminate them from the equations solely by their initial choice of wording. As long as they didn’t say anything that suggests that it might possibly be in error, that’s absolute proof that it isn’t.
Ignore me, I’m just skeptical about everything.
Nothing wrong with being skeptical about everything. If more people were there would be fewer misunderstandings. As it is that infographic doesn’t really show anything as the assumption made to come to the conclusions isn’t explained. For example if 54% of rapes go unreported how do we even know they occurred? And assuming that all 12 who get arrested are guilty would appear flawed too. Those counts of rape that never enter a court of law are not subject to the same amount of scrutiny as those that do so it’s difficult to make any judgement over their validity and… Read more »
So sorry that you seemed to have missed my point and that was not that “duh, if you read the chart you will suddenly know everything about rape” but “You’re dragging an agenda into this discussion that is made irrelevant from the get go and there are a large number of mitigating factors that might be influencing the data, most of the larger and with greater effects and less often bandied about by rape apologists than false accusations; indeed, the chart itself is structured in such a way that false accusations should be left off the table and someone genuinely… Read more »
Or you could, for example, be an astrophysicist who looks at data for a living and spends large amounts of time reading scientific journals attempting to find if the data has been presented in a scientifically sound manner and will enable him to draw useable conclusions from it, or, as in this case, absolutely nothing at all. Just saying.
Fair enough.
The last line of the chart doesn’t take into account that the 3 who go to prison might have been responsible for some of the other 97 rapes, too.
One thing I want to say about the defense, though, is… The defense lawyer has to do his or her best to get their guy off, or at least as light a conviction as possible. I’m not saying that Sandusky’s innocent. I don’t think he is (though I know someone who does) and I doubt his defense does either. Despicable arguing tactics… Well, maybe? But I just don’t want defense lawyers painted as being all horrible crime-lovers. I’ve been pretty close to a few defense lawyers, and I remember one whose daughter asked him if Captain Hook was arrested, if… Read more »
I’d agree with you, in general. But I think in this case, there’s plenty to criticize Sandusky’s lawyer about. Amendola’s propensity to make (and allow his client to make) bizarre public statements that both trivialized the crime and in all likelihood prejudiced his client has brought him criticism not just from the public at large but, indeed, from fellow defense attorneys:
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2011/12/14/amendola-the-tactician.aspx
There is totes stuff to criticize in how he did his job.
I just want to make sure it doesn’t turn into criticism for doing his job at ALL.