Rrrrrrrr.

[changeyourstars8]

As if the story about Brooke Bennett wasn't sickening enough, we have idiot writers pulling this shit:

The 14-year-old said she herself had been having sex with Jacques since she was 9, as part of the sex ring.

How goddamned hard is it to write "The 14-year-old said Jacques had been raping her since she was 9"?

We've got assholes who need to be shot in the head assaulting little girls and kidnapping them so that other assholes can have a crack at them, too, and altering their MySpaces so that mysterious 'internet strangers' can be blamed and people in the media who should know better enabling them because oh, an adult male is 'having sex' with a nine-year-old! Rape? Nah, of course not! We all know that doesn't exist. It's always a case of the slut asking for it, or the bitch lying, or the little Lolita tempting the poor guy! How was he supposed to help himself? Boys will be boys, after all!

I swear to god I am going to end up beating these jackasses to death with a copy of the dictionary.


ETA: Oh look! The latest headline! "Death penalty possible in Vermont sex-kidnap". KILL.

Comments

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

Maybe the girl didn't use the word "rape"? It's still a totally awkward-sounding sentence, as if, yeah, any nine-year-old girl could "have sex."

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

Very awkward-sounding. :-)

To the best of my knowledge, a minor can't consent to sex and it's automatically statutory rape (which is where you get all the "but I thought she was 18" things when the guy's brought into court).

This probably wouldn't have made me so mad if it weren't for repeated instances in news articles of 'had sex with' in place of 'was raped by' when there wasn't even the possible defense of quoting the victim. In which case, I really think they should've used a direct quote from the girl.

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

I think a direct quote from the girl, if she actually said that she's been "having sex" with the guy, would have been disturbing and powerful rather than awkward and enraging.

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

*nods*

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

You know, lately, it seems like my Onion iGoogle feed knows exactly what I've been talking about recently (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/raped_environment_led_polluters_on).

[abydosangel.livejournal.com]

Not to sound callous, but nobody gets 'victim blamed' like children/girls/women of Color (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080702/ap_on_re_us/girl_assaulted)..

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

"Five years? Ten years? That's ridiculous," said LaToya Bell, 22, sitting on a porch with four others who nodded in agreement. "They (are) getting time for nothing. That girl, she knew what she was doing."

Holy fuck, she was eleven!! And this guy's the fourteenth person to get zapped for what he did to her? At least fourteen people?!

She's right though, five or ten years is ridiculous, they should get locked up for life. Raping a little girl is not a one-time aberration or a 'bad decision', that's showing that you're a goddamned monster who doesn't need to be among the rest of society.

((and no, you didn't sound callous at all. I just hadn't seen that case on the main page of Yahoo news, which I'm sure ties into a much larger problem of 'missing white girls' making the media sit up and pay attention more often))

[abydosangel.livejournal.com]

The response from another WoC is what is most troubling to me.

See, the more ingrained that "You can't rape the willing and WoC are ALWAYS willing" is in society - including those who are victimized, then the easier it is to get away from explaining shit like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR0FRHd62GU), because you know - a developmentally disabled 7 year old child of Color being habitually sexually assaulted by the teenaged white boy on her bus - totally not the problem of the white driver.

But that didn't make the national news headlines, did it?

Rhetorical question....

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God. That poor kid.

I swear, the more I read of what some people are willing to do the more I want to just take all these kids and go live on a deserted island or something.

the more ingrained that "You can't rape the willing and WoC are ALWAYS willing" is in society

Exactly. I think it's tied in to that whole 'welfare queen' stereotype: "Well, you can't expect those people to keep their legs shut and that's why they keep having too many kids" (I actually heard this from somebody once. You'd think I wouldn't be surprised by people's utter nastiness anymore). It's sick.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Wait, isn't rape a legal charge? I suspect this was written as "having sex" for the same reason people in newspapers never "do x," they "allegedly do x". If Jaques gets convicted, the wording would change to rape, in that case.

[allthelivesofme.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but there's been a case recently where a rape victim was told by the judge not to use the word 'rape' in court, because that might bias the jury against the defendant, which I think is unadulterated bullshit. If it's against your consent, it's rape.

And in this case, the girl was nine. She couldn't legally give consent even if she wanted to (which I veryvery much doubt) which automatically makes it rape.

(and I'm not growling at you or anything, just growling in general)

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

I agree with you in any case, I'm just trying to explain why I think they did it that way.