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| Open your eyes (image by LukeDavison via morgueFile) |
Outrage! Shock! Horror!
And totally dismissal. Because
while a now 52-year-old man kept a developmentally disabled woman captive for
14 years in his back yard, using her as a sex slave and abusing her, it’s all
cool because, you know, she’s family.
Yeah, that’s right.
Not a problem. Not a big deal.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
The total and complete waste of human life is going to serve 22 years in
prison. (Will he really, though? Or will he get out early for “good behavior”?)
The big deal here, the truly horrific part, is that the
woman escaped in 2012. Yes, two years
ago. Two years! But the authorities never said anything to
the public because, well, according to the chief of police, “…we did not release
any information up to this point about the case because the crime was
perpetrated within the family by a very close family member…there was no reason
to believe there were any non-family members who had been victimized…”
So, yeah, he did horrible horrible things to a woman who
couldn’t fight back for over a decade, but since she was family, it’s not worth
mentioning. Now, the chief did also say
that the victim was “…very fragile and we did not want to jeopardize her
welfare or the case in any way.”
The woman was 13 when her relative took her in 1998. For all that time, he kept her in a shed in
the backyard. She did not attend school,
and he did landscaping work with her in the backyard. A neighbor said that she thought something
wasn’t right, but apparently, she didn’t bother mentioning it. And the other relatives also apparently didn’t
notice something wrong with her vanishing, but, the article mentions, one of
them picked her up. So how did she
contact this relative? Did this relative
know and not do anything about it? Or
did they suspect but not act?
The plea deal that is getting him 22 years, by the way? Yeah, he’s pleading guilty to “one count of
forced lewd acts on a child and two counts of forcible rape.” Yes, three counts of crimes that spanned
fourteen years of this woman’s life.
This article reminds me of something I read many years ago
by a wonderful crusader and author named Andrew Vacchs. Back in 2005, he published an op-ed
about how easy it was for family members to get away with incest. At that time, sex with a child under age 11
was up to 25 years in prison. Unless, of
course, it was a family member. Because then
it’s just a class E felony, one that is considered “an offense affecting the
marital relationship” and the person who commits the crime (yes, raping a child
falls into this), they can just get probation.
Because incest, you see, is considered a “nonviolent crime.” I shit you not. A non-violent crime.
Why is it that we are so quick to forgive people who commit atrocious
acts on their own relatives? Their
children? Their nieces and nephews? Their grandchildren? Why do we think this is okay? Because, really, if we didn’t think it was
okay, then these crimes wouldn’t be so easily hidden and swept under the
rug. These rulings wouldn’t happen.
We need to know about these things, and we need to do
something about them. Me? I’ve applied to be a child advocate.
“Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become
your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior.
Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep
your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values
positive because your values become your destiny.”
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