The Times Magazine’s cover story this week (July 22, 2007) is about laws regarding juvenile sex offenders. The article, by Maggie Jones, covers a lot of good ground– how do we define what is “consensual” and what isn’t when both individuals are children? What is the proper treatment for juvenile sex offenders? Is the current treatment creating more lifelong offenders than it’s preventing?
Unfortunately, though, the article also manages to consistently act as an apologist for actual sexual assaults. In attempting to distinguish the acts of juvenile offenders from adult offenders as being not “as serious” and not “as bad,” a hell of a lot of absurd and offensive remarks are made.
On page five, it’s stated that “It’s not that juveniles can’t distinguish right from wrong; it’s that they don’t perceive risks and consequences the way adults do — as parents of teenagers know all too well.” So . . . we shouldn’t be as concerned about an offender who knows that what he (an extreme majority of sex offenders are male) is doing is wrong, but does it because he doesn’t understand how risky it is? What is that wink at the end of the sentence, about how parents “know” how kids can be, supposed to mean? Are we to compare molesting your little sister to crashing the family car or skipping school?
On page six, juvenile sex offenders are called “kids needing lessons in setting boundaries and creating better relationships.” Hey, you know what? Rape and molestation are not just bad relationships.
But the most offensive passage of all comes from Jones’ (she uses the pronoun “I”) musings about what should and should not be considered a sex offense:
When I heard about these juveniles, I wondered who they were and what types of offenses they’d committed. How old were they? Had they used violence or assaulted numerous children? Would they become adult offenders? I asked Mark Chaffin, one of the country’s leading experts and the director of research at the Center on Child Abuse and Neglect at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Chaffin notes that while most juveniles who have committed sex offenses are boys around 13 or 14, in other ways they are not a homogeneous population. Though a small percentage — no one knows how many — will become adult rapists or pedophiles, the vast majority, 90 percent or more, will not, Chaffin says. Most have not committed violent assaults or abused multiple children repeatedly. Usually they have had sexual contact — from fondling to oral sex to intercourse — with a child who is at least two years younger than they are. Also, many of the juveniles have been sexually abused themselves, and as a consequence, they act out sexually, typically for a transitory period.
Some, whether they have been abused or not, are what therapists call “naïve experimenters” — overly impulsive or immature adolescents who are unable to approach girls or boys their own age; instead, they engage in inappropriate sexual acts with younger children. Others are generally delinquent juveniles for whom sexual abuse is just one of the ways they break laws, and according to studies, they are much more likely to commit a property crime than they are to commit a second sex offense. They are from working-class, middle-class and upper-middle-class homes, from intact families as well as very broken ones. There are also a number of children — how many is unclear — who are adjudicated for what some therapists would say is “playing doctor” or normative “sexual experimentation.” These are broadly considered to include sexual acts that are spontaneous, intermittent and “consensual” (legally, children under 16 usually cannot consent to sex) between youths within a couple of years age. Similarly, there are the so-called Romeo and Juliet cases, like the highly publicized one in Georgia involving Genarlow Wilson, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a party when he was 17. There have also been court cases of 12- and 13-year-old boys who grabbed girls’ breasts or buttocks in school hallways and were adjudicated as “sex offenders.”
First things first: I think that most reasonable people think that the case of Genarlow Wilson has been horribly mishandled and that he should not be in jail. I know that he, unfortunately for him, is every rape apologist’s favorite example of how rape laws are “too strict.” So: no, I do not think that Wilson should be in jail, I do not think that a 17-year-old having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old should be considered rape. However, rape apologists, that does not give you an excuse to downplay the consequences of actual rape.
And there sure as hell seems to be a lot of that going on here in this passage. This may come as a shock, but actually, all sexual assaults are violent. There are not, contrary to what Jones implies through asking how many of the offenders “used violence,” violent and non-violent sex offenders. There are some who use extreme violence- punching, threatening with a weapon, tying up, etc. But any instance of forcing yourself on another human being, particularly sexually, is violence. Failing to leave bruises does not make a sexual assault non-violent. Otherwise, we wouldn’t call it sexual assault.
As for adolescent boys who grab the breasts and butts of girls in the hallways: they are sex offenders. They have committed sexual assault. There are no quotation marks needed, thank you very much. And I’m so fucking sick of people excusing this kind of behavior. Do I think that, on it’s own, it is an offense worthy of placing one on the sexual offenders registry? No. Do I think that it is an assault that should go to trial? Well, I suppose that’s up to whether or not the victim wanted to press charges; if she wants to, then hell yes it should. If not, that’s her choice. But either way, no matter how minor of an offense it happens to be, regardless of what the proper punishment is, it is sexual assault.
If there is in fact simply an issue of impulse control among young sex offenders (and this is something I question), we have only ourselves to blame. We can only point the finger at our own culture, which deems sex too “dirty” to talk about, to the point where we’d rather have young people force themselves sexually on others than teach them that masturbation is okay. In our fear of recognizing children as sexual creatures, we’ve turned them into creatures who don’t understand boundaries, who don’t understand consent, and who don’t understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy outlets for their sexuality. Maybe, instead of refusing to acknowledge that children have genitals and teaching them that there’s nothing worse than touching them, we should teach them that sexual exploration is natural, as long as it’s with yourself or with someone of a comparable age who is as eager about experimenting as you are?
I find this article to be really sad and unfortunate. What could have been an important piece about the occasional over-zealousness and more frequent limitations on how we define sexual assault in this country, a piece about whether our goal is to punish or rehabilitate, a piece about the age at which a person can reasonably held responsible for his or her actions, has instead fallen into the trap of asking why the hell we take sexual assault so seriously in the first place. It has fallen into the trap of suggesting that we take sexual assault too seriously, when in fact we don’t take it nearly seriously enough. It has managed to conflate the few irrational, bullshit laws that unreasonably define statutory rape to include consensual sexual acts among youths of similar ages with actual sex offenses committed by youths. It has managed to ask whether or not these kids committed “real” sex offenses when the fact is that yes, the vast majority of them did.
I definitely agree that the laws regarding sexual assault in this country need to be seriously reconsidered. But can we please find a way to keep rape apologists out of the conversation?
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Though a small percentage — no one knows how many — will become adult rapists or pedophiles, the vast majority, 90 percent or more, will not, Chaffin says.
My ass. Okay, so maybe I’m just horribly jaded here, but I tend think that they do reoffend in far higher numbers than are being measured. Most sexual assault victims don’t report their attacks, and since when has not being told your behavior is wrong made someone correct it? Does he think the offenders just hit 18 and magically realize that hey, assaulting people just isn’t okay? Funnily enough, human brains don’t really work that way.
Actually, the writer is a she. Which makes all rape apologies all that much more depressing.
Thank you for pointing out that ALL sexual assault is violent. There’s really no need to distinguish there. And I had the same reaction as you did to her dismissing boys who grab girls at school. That’s totally an offense of a sexual nature, which DOES make them sexual offenders! No need for quotes, there! It’s completely irresponsible to imply the tired old “boys will be boys” message in an article about sexual assault. It’s just unacceptable. Always.
From the excerpt posted on the website, it would seem that the quotes were necessary around “sex offender,” especially when the author claims the 12 and 13 year old boys were adjudicated as such. This seems more of a legal commentary than excusing the offense. I don’t know that grabbing a girl’s buttocks in junior high school should be punished by “sex offender” status by law, i.e. categorized with rapists, pedophiles, etc., if indeed this is what the article is implying. This is not to say that the act is excusable, I agree that “boys will be boys” should not hold water as an excuse of any kind. Also, I read the excerpt over again, and I fail to see the rape apologist aspect of it; it read like a summarization of a psych study of sorts, identifying trends in family life, age groups, common environments, etc., though again, I make my comments only from the portion of the Times article posted here. I do not think that sex crimes can just be blanketed with the term “violent.” By that, the type of violence needs to be identified in such analysis from Jones, at the very least to better understand the so-called pathology behind the act. True, all cases of sexual assault are violent, this should not be a point of debate, but rather we need a better system for codifying and categorizing it; “emotional violence” is not something that the law has a very good handle on; they do “physical violence” much better, though the two are often inextricably tied.
A man forcing his penis inside of a woman’s vagina, or inside of a woman/man’s mouth, or inside of a woman/man’s anus is not merely emotionally violent. It is physically violent.
Also, the rest of the article does not have quotation marks around the phrase “sex offender” every time it is used, even when it relates to a specific case. Therefore I do not see how it could be merely a legal issue.
I agree with what you’re saying, and I hope there was no misunderstanding on my comment earlier, but there are offenses that also fall under “sex offender” status that do not involve any of the acts you have mentioned. Plus, coercion or statutory rape for instance is not violent in the sense that forcible rape is considered, as in rape through the use of physical force, i.e. punching, beating, or threats of death. There are two tiers of violence in the second instance, that of “physical” violence used to facilitate “sexual” violence. I only use the terms as such so that I am clear on how I am differentiating the steps involved in the act itself. I would agree with you that sex offender needs to be used more judiciously so it is clear whether it is being used in a legal sense or as a description. Like I said, a boy in junior high school who grabs a girls butt, though there is no excuse, should not be considered under the same umbrella of “sex offender” as a serial rapist, for instance, though both are clear instances of sexual assault. Keep up the great work on your blog, this kind of commentary is certainly necessary.
I agree. I expressed in the post that I do not think the two are on the same “level” of sexual assault. And I think that it’s an important conversation to have.
In the paragraph following the section that I quoted, the writer says that it’s “easy” to classify the hallway assault, and conversely also “easy” to classify rape, with the gray area being in the middle. I think that everyone agrees that rape is the most extreme end of the sexual assault spectrum– using the hallway assault as the converse example presents the view that the assault is as unextreme as it gets, and therefore not very important.
I don’t think that it’s easy to classify that type of sexual assault, personally. And I think that it still needs to be done.
A possible solution would be to use the “degree” system of “first, second, third, etc.” degree sexual assault, and if we are to list offenders in a public area make sure that we also list the “degree” of the offense so that rape and unsolicited groping are both taken seriously, but recognized as different levels of violence. That solution, of course, also has its own issues (which is why it’s only a suggestion), such as who decides what type of assaults fall under which categories, and how we educate the public to reliably understand what the terminology means. And parts of what I’ve suggested are already probably in place, if not fully in place, in some areas.
Also, thank you for your comments.
Oops, I need to read more closely and not assume things. Thanks for the correction Cara!
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