K's Mumbo Jumbo

After eight years, rape victim 'needs to get over it'

sanityscraps:

survivorsupport:

manticoreimaginary:

An Invercargill man convicted of raping a woman in 2004 is angry she was upset by his appearance outside her house on Sunday and says what happened is in the past and she needs to get over what happened.

Craig Crofts moved next door to the woman in 2011, which outraged the community and spurred the justice minister to propose an amendment to the Harassment Act.

Crofts had moved from that address but on Sunday was seen outside the woman’s house by her partner, who said Crofts was at the end of the driveway.

On Sunday, the woman said she was traumatised knowing that Crofts was back in the area and she did not want to leave her house.

There was “no particular reason” he had chosen to walk down that street, he said. As he was walking past the woman’s house, her neighbour had called out to him. He had said hello to the neighbour, but he did not stop at the end of her driveway, he said.

“It’s been eight years - it’s in the past. It’s a public area and it’s my right to walk down the street. I don’t want anything to do with her. I got over it; she needs to get over it, too.”

ASDJSKHFKJDHGKDJSFGHDSFJKGBHHDJXFK HVGKJSDH FUCKING MEN

I recommend that the survivor to get a restraining order. 

True fact: abusers always think lightly of the abuses they’ve committed. They might not even remember them, but you, the survivor, always will.

It doesn’t seem that he is over it. I mean… living in the same neighborhood when he could be anywhere else. And it sounds like this fucker is still a public threat.

(via dancing-painted-bears)

490 notes

[tw: rape, steubenville] Steubenville Rapist to Appeal Because His 'Brain Isn't Fully Developed'

Since his defense strategy, claiming that a 16-year-old rape victim wasn’t “so” drunk, has failed, the lawyer for one of the two Steubenville football players convicted of rape plans to appeal a guilty verdict, and is now claiming that the 16-year-old rapist’s brain wasn’t “developed” enough and his client should not have to be on a sex offenders list for life. Walter Madison, the attorney for Ma’lik Richmond, went on Piers Morgan Tonight on Tuesday, explaining why he would appeal Sunday’s verdict by 37-year juvenile court judge Thomas Lipps, and especially his sentencing of Richmond to at least one year in a rehabilitation center and the requirement to register as a sex offender. You can watch the video below, but here’s the key “logic” from Madison: 

I don’t believe that a person at 75 years old should have to explain for something they did at 16when scientific evidence would support your brain isn’t fully developed … when evidence in the case would suggest that you were under the influence.

[…]

“We have the right to appeal and that is a right we will be exercising,” said Walter Madison, Richmond’s attorney.

To review: Madison is arguing that a 16-year-old’s brain is not fully functional enough to determine whether raping an unconscious girl is a bad decision. This comes after Madison made news during his last media tour, when he insisted before last week’s rape trial that the Jane Doe victim’s silence and unconsciousness amounted to consent. He said before the trial that the girl “made a decision to excessively drink… and leave with the boys,” and that an Instagram photo of the girl being dragged by the then-suspects “doesn’t suggest that a person is substantially impaired.” The defense team for Richmond and Trent Mays then went on to argue in court that the girl’s level of drunkenness should determine consent.

Also, as Judge Lipps reminded the perpetrator and his family before delivering the sentencing (which may not include extra time in juvenile detention or a lifetime on an offenders list based on behavior), if Lipps had decided to try Richmond and Mays as adults, they would have faced first-degree felony charges and much harsher penalties.

And finally, just to be clear: neuroscience says that teenagers have “underdeveloped decision processing centers,” which is why teens take risks like stealing or doing drugs. Though, science doesn’t say that you can blame the rape of an underage, unconscious girl on this kind of poor decision making.

[read more]

(via abaldwin360)

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New York Poised To Pass ‘Rape Is Rape’ Bill To Update Definition Of Sexual Assault

thepoliticalfreakshow:

As anti-choice politicians seek to narrow the definition of sexual assault to “forcible rape” or “legitimate rape,” lawmakers in New York State are taking the opposite approach — and actually may be prepared to advance a billthat would expand the definition of rape to encompass additional acts of sexual violence.

Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas (D) first introduced the legislation last year after Lydia Cuomo, a Bronx schoolteacher who was raped by a city cop, discovered that her assaulter wasn’t going to be charged with “rape.” Since Cuomo’s rapist didn’t vaginally penetrate her, his crimes fell outside of New York’s current definition of rape — but Simotas’ bill seeks to change that by widening the state’s rape statues to officially include forced oral and anal sex. Cuomo traveled to Albany on Tuesday to use her own personal experience to help advocate for the proposed legislation, urging state lawmakers to make sure an outdated legal definition won’t continue to deny survivors the justice they deserve:

Cuomo wants to use what happened to her to spur lawmakers to act this year. The legislative push is also part of her healing process. […]

Last week, she recounted how she sat nervously with her family in the 15th-floor office of the district attorney that day last March when she found out the 12-person jury couldn’t agree that she had been raped — an option she said never once entered her mind as a possibility.

“When we found out the reason why, it just seemed so ludicrous to me,” Cuomo now says. “I think, quite frankly, it’s insulting.”

“Ultimately I was being told, ‘Oh, you were anally raped and orally raped, but we don’t believe you were raped; you were sexually assaulted.‘”

At the beginning of 2012, the FBI updated its definition of rape for the first time in 80 years to include forced anal and oral acts. But, while that’s an important step to update the way the agency measures trends in crime, it doesn’t impact federal or state legal codes. Twenty five states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government have eliminated the word “rape” from their codes in order to use the more inclusive terms “sexual assault” or “sexual abuse” — but in the remaining states, including New York, the official definition of what’s considered to be rape can vary widely.

Cuomo wants to encourage all policymakers to use more specific language because, even though it may seem like quibbling to them — in New York, the crimes defined as a “criminal sexual act” and a “predatory sexual assault” both lead to essentially equivalent sentences — it can mean all the difference in the world to survivors of sexual violence. Creating distinctions between different types of penetration ultimately serves to rank sexual crimes against each other, which can make survivors feel like their individual experiences are also being ranked on a scale of ranging levels of seriousness. Cuomo and Simotas want to emphasize that “rape is rape.”

“I think a lot can come from calling something what it is and talking more openly about it,” Cuomo told Salon. “Some people say, ‘Oh, it’s just semantics.’ And I do think it is semantics at the end of the day, right? But I think the semantics are important.”

As the the New York Daily News reports, state lawmakers are beginning to agree. Senate co-leader Jeffrey Klein (D) said the legal code “definitely needs to change” since, as it’s currently written, it represents “an insult to not only the victims of these horrendous crimes, but to our legal system.” And Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D) confirmed that he’s “inclined” to pass Simotas’ bill.

30 notes