Christopher Belter plead guilty to the sexual assault of four teens, and he received no jail time, despite breaking the terms of his pre-sentencing probation by watching pornography when he was ordered not to.
Though judge Matthew J. Murphy III, a democrat, claims to have agonized over this sentence, his ruling sends a loud message to the women subjected to Belter’s crimes: you don’t matter.
Consider another young man whose trial also recently ended. Defenders successfully argued that it is reasonable, maybe even brave, for Kyle Rittenhouse to defend property with a gun he wasn’t legally allowed to carry. One of the lessons of this trial is that Americans seem to set a high value on protecting property in this country, even property one does not own in a state one does not live in.
This should cause us to wonder. If we believe protestors and rioters who damage property should be punished by vigilantes, what does it say when a man who is guilty of sexually assaulting women is given lenience. Does it mean we value plate glass and property more than women?
While Belter walks free, these women are sentenced to live in a world where their assaults aren’t serious enough to merit punishment.
When justice is not served it can cause us to feel helpless, but if readers are outraged by Murphy’s lax sentence, there are things we can do. In particular, parents with teenage children can begin talking to their children about sex, sexual violence and pornography.
Though these conversations can be awkward or difficult, our children are looking for adults who can provide guidance and support. Belter attacked women who were 15 and 16 years old. Even if we may think our children are not ready to talk frankly about sex at this age, they may be around people experimenting with sex and experiencing sexually violence.
Sending an unequivocal message that sexual assault is wrong may help our children when they are in challenging situations. Expressing our firm belief that someone subjected to sexual violence is never to blame lets our children know that they can come to us if something happens to them or one of their friends.
As well, Belter described how he watched pornography regularly since he was seven years old. That is right: seven years old. Though parents these days seem extraordinarily concerned about what children are being asked to read in public schools, I think we have more reason to be concerned about what children are watching and being exposed to online.
Pornography teaches impressionable children the meaning of sex. In some cases, it is their sole sex educator. Parents need to know what their children have viewed on their screens, and then be courageous enough to explain how deeply disrespectful and degrading pornography can be.
Abstinence can be an admirable aspiration and choice, but there are also parents who know their children will be, or already are, sexually active. And yet too many of these parents don’t spend the time talking about sex with their children. No one would ever hand the keys of a car over to a child if all the child knows is what they learned from The Fast and the Furious franchise and things they hear from their friends. Why, then, do we leave our children to fend for themselves sexually, often with little more than pornography and peer conversations to go on?
Our silence sets our children up for failure, and worse. Though most young people will be nothing like Belter, when pornography is a child’s main sex educator, they are often conditioned to minimize their partner’s sexual agency, and this can lead to disrespect and even assault.
Sexual assault is preventable when we take the time to care about what other people want. Consider this. If we never talk about sex with our sexually active children, then how will they know how to have conversations about consent and sexual expectations with another young person, maybe someone who has also never talked about sex before. This leaves too much to chance.
Again, talking about sex can be uncomfortable for adults, but our silence can lead our children to do things that harm themselves and other people. I believe that young people are looking for excuses to do the right thing, but they’ve been set up for failure because we don’t talk to them about sex.
If you are a parent who is outraged by Murphy’s ruling and hoping to do something in response, having open conversations with your children, especially if they are sexually active or around young people who are, is one step we can take. It won’t undo the harm experienced by women subjected to sexual violence, but it an important way to begin changing the culture of silence that leads to assault and that minimizes the deep harms sexual assaults cause.
If you are uncomfortable, now is the time to start learning about how to have these conversations. Some resources that I’ve found useful are Sexual Citizens, Boys and Sex, and Brainstorm. Though your adolescents may roll their eyes, they will appreciate your openness and support.
The book Sexual Citizen uses the idea of “sexual projects” to help adolescents conceptualize what they hope for in their sexual lives. Just as many students come to college with well-defined projects—a desire to study abroad, a desire to get a certain GPA, a desire to start on a sports team—Hirsch and Khan suggest students be more intentional about respecting their sexual projects and the sexual projects of their classmates.
Though the term “project” can sound the exact opposite of spontaneous and exciting sex, I think Hirsch and Khan are correct to emphasize the ways that young people too easily consent to things they don’t actually desire when they aren’t intentional about what they want and what they don’t want. The desire to fit in, or appear experienced, or to not hurt another person’s feelings overwhelm what the young person actually wants: abstinence, or sober sex, or sex with someone who they are emotionally connected to.
If there was more space for young people to talk about sex, then we’d be better able to prevent sexual assault. Normalizing the idea that different people have different sexual projects is important. Some adolescents don’t want to have sex and shouldn’t feel pressure to have sex. Others enjoy parties and drinking and going out with friends, but they don’t want to have sex if they aren’t sober enough to fully consent to it. Though this can feel confusing to someone who isn’t used to talking about how different people have different sexual projects, if we normalized talking about these types of situations before young people found themselves in these situations (often after having consumed enough alcohol to impair their best judgments), everyone would be safer.
The women Belter assaulted, and women and men who experience assault deserve our fullest support and one way to show this support is by committing to do better by doing the work that will allow us to raise children who respect the sexual projects of others and who are empowered, through our support and open communication, to demand that other people respect theirs.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
