Paranoia Strikes Deep: Ross Douthat, College Rape & Blaming Anyone But Rapists

Paranoia strikes deep. So does male patriarchy.Almost dreamily, Ross Douthat in yesterday’s New York Times bemoans a typical scene in American college life. Alcohol-fueled parties, he says, are a "twilit (or strobe-lit) scene in which many alleged sexual assaults take place.”Fair enough, but he then goes on to say the party environment is "also a zone in which it is very hard for anyone — including the young women and young men involved — to figure out what distinguishes a real assault from a bad or gross or swiftly regretted consensual encounter.”This, he then tells us, is why reasonable efforts, like the 2011 Department of Education's "Dear Colleague" letter providing guidance to colleges on the adjudication of sexual assault claims within the campus disciplinary system, must be rolled back. The issue, he tells us, isn't really about rapists, or a culture that continues to support rape, from a president who has bragged about committing sexual assault on down. No, according to Ross, it's more one of abandoned morality and the nurturing of some new victim class. In short, it's about "liberalism."Garbage.Douthat is a talented writer who often takes reasonable and compelling stances on issues. But what he's offering on this topic is nothing but a new twist on a very old and baseless argument. And I’m tired of hearing centuries old, male-inspired drivel being trotted out as cutting-edge, heretofore unconstructed wisdom.Apparently emboldened by Emily Yoffe, a sometimes iconoclast rape apologist, Douthat has embraced a truly stupid ideology that utterly mischaracterizes the nature of sexual violence, and then foolishly enables predators, demonizes victims, and makes halting an ancient scourge that much more difficult.Like millions of conservatives, Douthat is appalled by changing sexual norms, which he appears to view as a direct cause of both actual rape and his imagined false cries of rape after “swiftly regretted” sexual encounters. He laments the “libertine” but ultimately dystopian hell-scape of American college life where red-blooded young men are ruined by legions of vindictive, or just plain gullible, feminist-twisted, victims in waiting.Never mind that this almost never happens. Never mind that women and men who emerge from situations where they’ve been clearly sexually assaulted-- let alone from some half-remembered or even deeply regretted encounter-- almost always blame themselves and tell no one. Never mind that rape is still dramatically under-reported, that there is almost never an incentive to report rape at all, let alone falsely, and that most women feel zero pressure to experience the brutal, humiliating and traumatizing experience of reporting sexual assault.In fact, never mind reality or common experience at all. Because what Douthat and his ilk feel more threatened by (than the plague of immorality or runaway liberalism) are serious challenges to male-dominated culture. This isn’t to say Douthat or those like him are misogynists; most are not. But they are undeniably patriarchal. They are convinced, not only that unhealthy or immoral college behavior is toxic, but more broadly that women are better off and more in harmony with their God-ordained roles when they avoid giving in to lust or drunkenness. They believe attempts to unbind women from imposed states of chastity and sobriety is unhealthy; that relaxing societal constraints on them leads to the inevitable “confusion,” resentment and regret that fuels false or "misguided" reports of rape.Again, garbage. Women have been raped in the company of men at college since they were allowed to join them. A generation ago, to the extent rape was discussed at all, blame was placed mostly on women themselves for invading a theretofore male-dominated space and upsetting the natural order of things. Now it’s hook-up culture and binge drinking? Please. Predatory and deviant men rape, period. They use whatever tools are in their midst, period. Sixty years ago, they used as an excuse the audacity of women, invading male enclaves and poisoning the developing, maturing male mind with temptation and folly.Now—because it must be blamed on women somehow—we’ll blame it on a leftist, godless culture of sex and gratification, the same one that's created dangerous false victims out of damsels in moral distress.We will, in short, blame it on anything but rapists themselves. 

Buzzfeed on Dr. Kim Fromme: Blackout, Rape, & Common Sense

Katie Baker's Buzzfeed article from August 7th showcased Dr. Kim Fromme, a clinical psychologist at UT Austin. Fromme has become a sought-after defense expert on alcohol consumption and its relationship to consent in sexual assault cases. This also makes her a flashpoint in an ongoing culture war. Sometimes, this is inevitable, and even desirable. Things like DNA analysis and cross-racial identification studies have made crucial differences in criminal cases, and usually they were initiated by outsiders unafraid to challenge norms for the sake of justice.But Fromme’s views- at least on the physical phenomenon of “blackout”- aren’t controversial to begin with. More importantly, though, the relevance of her expertise to the reality of sexual assault and how it should be responded to is grossly over-stated.Fromme’s willingness to testify about blackouts is not an emerging, maverick stance. Blackouts are commonly understood, particularly by toxicologists, the hard-science experts who actually study the physiological effects of toxins on the body. They’re also understood by well-informed prosecutors who handle alcohol-facilitated sexual assault cases. Yes, blackouts can interrupt memory formation, and they occur most often with rapid consumption of alcohol over a short period of time. Yes, women seem more susceptible than men, in general. Yes, a person in a blackout state might appear lucid and make decisions that appear to be informed, but not remember those decisions later. This is established science, period.Without a doubt, this science does sometimes create a problem for a prosecutor seeking to prove that a predatory person sexually touched or penetrated a victim too intoxicated to give meaningful consent. There are situations where a person consents to sex and then doesn't remember doing so. So it follows that, albeit very rarely, the person may believe she or he was sexually assaulted, and report the contact as rape. There isn't a “silver bullet” answer to a claim that the alleged victim consented during a blackout and honestly doesn't remember it. And frankly, there shouldn’t be. If the defense can establish that a blackout caused unremembered consent, then so be it. Whether the defense should or will succeed is a complicated trial question; there are aspects of the actual, physical phenomenon of blackout that can be understood and argued. The claim of “she [or he] just doesn’t remember consenting” can often be refuted depending on the circumstances and evidence.But what’s far more important is the hard reality that the vast majority of women and men who regain consciousness after any sexual encounter do not assume, let alone assert, they were raped to begin with.This is the most troubling aspect of Fromme’s mini-celebrity in the context of sexual assault. Fromme herself is problematic in that she appears to be yet another “expert” who (at least in part) blames alcohol consumption and “risky behavior” for rape instead of rapists themselves. She shouldn’t be demonized (at all), and certainly not for believing that binge drinking can increase the risk of sexual assault. Without a doubt, predators use alcohol to destabilize and disempower victims. Alcohol as a weapon needs to be reckoned with. Still, controlling alcohol use is not the answer to addressing predatory behavior, which is behind sexual assault.But even worse is assuming that any use of alcohol by anyone in a sexual situation either 1) negates consent altogether or 2) gives rise to claims of rape in any more than a tiny percentage of cases. Drunk people have and will continue to have sex, largely because alcohol lowers inhibitions and allows them to act on impulse and desire. This might be unhealthy or immoral depending one’s point of view, but it’s not criminal.But again- almost no one is claiming it is. In fact, the opposite continues to be true: The great majority of women and men who are clearly sexually assaulted- in any context- blame themselves and tell no one, least of all law enforcement. This is especially true where drinking is concerned, since voluntary alcohol consumption fuels guilt and self-blame on the part of the victim (as an aside, this is exactly what Fromme’s “risky behavior” focus drives home). So the idea that blackouts are creating a flood of mistaken victims, willing to cry rape at the slightest fuzzy memory, thereby regularly threatening the freedom of the wrongly accused, is utter nonsense.Blackouts are a fact, and a rare but occasional issue in sexual assault cases. Mistaken cries of rape- however imagined by men's rights groups or media sources- are rarer still.

David Brooks, Please Don't Assume What I "Get" on Gun Control as a Progressive

In his latest column, focusing on various afflictions plaguing the American working class, David Brooks had this to say about gun control:"It’s a culture [the American working class] that celebrates people who are willing to fight to defend their honor. This is something that progressives never get about gun control. They see a debate about mass murder, but for many people guns are about a family’s ability to stand up for itself in a dangerous world."I am a progressive, depending on how one defines the term. I also grew up largely as a part of, and certainly surrounded by, the American working class.I can say with confidence there is nothing I don't "get" where the enthusiasm for owning firearms is concerned, despite Brooks' blunt and stereotypical accusation. Like many people who lean left as I do politically, I absolutely understand, and in most cases honor, the desire of individuals to protect themselves and their families. I would not seek to prevent Americans from owning firearms within common sense limitations, the details of which are beyond the scope of this piece.But please, David, don't tell me I simply "don't get" what guns are to the working class or anyone else. I do. What I also "get" is that, unfortunately, far too many of them (along with people in other demographic groups, like Donald Trump) are not plain-spoken, responsible men and women wanting to protect their families. Instead, they are gun fetishists who believe- with adolescent naivety and emotion-driven fantasy- that guns are shields and not swords. With inattention to facts and utter blindness to human experience, they nevertheless assert that that arming everyone, everywhere, is the answer to preventing the kind gun violence that, in fact, stems from the proliferation of those very same guns.

Dan and Brock Turner, and the Lie of Alcohol, Promiscuity and Victim Blaming

A portion of Dan Turner’s letter to his son Brock’s sentencing judge was released last week after Turner, 20, was sentenced for three felony counts of sexual assault. He received three years probation and only six months in jail, a risibly light punishment. Turner was actually caught in the act of sexually penetrating the victim; two graduate students came upon him while he was top of her, clearly unresponsive. Police officers arriving on the scene found her similarly helpless. Unlike most non-stranger sexual assaults, particularly ones involving young people and alcohol, Turner’s guilt was demonstrated with relative ease. He committed a horrific crime, period. He truncated and permanently altered the life of another human being, period.A father can be forgiven for begging leniency from a court of law when his son has committed a terrible crime. Dan Turner should not be excoriated simply for the effort of attempting to put his son’s entire life in context, or for bemoaning what he thinks the effects of incarceration might have on him. His message, though, now public, must be exposed for what it is: A dangerous diversion of blame for what his son did.Turner’s obvious gaffe. describing his son’s crimes as “20 minutes of action,” was probably no more than a terrible choice of words. I doubt Turner meant “action” in the now antiquated sense of “getting some action” or anything similar. I’ve seen social media posts that highlight this phrase as evidence of the man’s callousness or worse, but I don’t think that bears out.What is of greater concern, and what must be debunked to the wider world, is his attempt to shift the blame for this crime from his son to what he describes as “the dangers of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity.” And beyond this, his belief that Brock should pay society back by educating other college students in an effort to “break the cycle of binge drinking and its unfortunate consequences.”This is as patently absurd as it is insulting and dangerous. Brock Turner, whatever else he’s capable of or has achieved, committed a predatory act of sexual violence on January 18, 2015. Not knowing the details of the case, I can’t say for sure if he identified his victim earlier in the evening and took manipulative steps to isolate her, or if he formed his intent upon realizing he had control of her in an unresponsive state. Either way, his actions were predatory. His actions were volitional. He made a choice. That choice has devastated the life of a young woman who- with effort and support- will recover fully, but who will never, ever look at her life the same way again.So let’s be crystal clear: It is both incorrect and dangerously misleading to claim that the very separate issues of “alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity” somehow combine to draw otherwise non-sexually violent men into a vortex of rape they cannot be held completely responsible for. Both excessive alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity can be objectively unhealthy.But neither of these things have anything to do with sexual violence, other than to provide the attacker with three weapons:

1. A pathway to rape through the weakening of the reflexes, protective judgment and instincts of the victim and others who might protect her (or him).

2. A brilliant cover for the tracks of the attacker’s actions, due to the compromised memory, credibility and even moral stature of the victim and the relevant witnesses.

3. A perfect excuse in allowing alcohol, a substance that unleashes desire rather than creating it, to nevertheless take the blame for the attacker’s choices, and to provide a convenient way to blame the victim as well, complicit for having "gotten herself raped" because of drinking.

I don’t know what Brock Turner plans on doing when he’s completed his tiny stint behind bars. I certainly hope it does not entail speaking to a single college student anywhere about “breaking the cycle of binge drinking and its unfortunate consequences.”Brock Turner has no right to lecture anyone on anything, let alone something as specious as some sort of cautionary tale to young men about becoming “victims” of alcohol, as if it somehow conspired from a bottle to compel him to disrobe and penetrate a young woman on the cold ground outside of a frat house.Turner is guilty. Turner and no one and nothing else- certainly not the woman he attacked. Until that fully sinks in, the best anyone can hope for it that Turner keeps quiet. 

Cathy Young Wants Feminists to Describe Rape As "Ugly Sexual Encounters." Don't Let Her.

It might be irony, the way it's commonly portrayed. Or it might just be rank hypocrisy. Whatever it is, Cathy Young, in her May 20, 2015, post embodies it.The caption under the istock photo the Washington Post chose to accompany this vacuous and alarmist piece was the following: "We need to stop prosecuting bad behavior as rape."Really? As if a non-stranger rape prosecution tidal wave has formed, blocking all other efforts to seek justice at the courthouse?No, that's not happening, but thankfully we have Cathy Young showing us the way to avoid such abominations, what with her two anecdotes about regretted sexual encounters and literally nothing else. What's funny, though, is that Cathy herself admits fully that she 1) didn't view the negative sexual encounters she describes as a crime, and 2) she didn't report them as such.Welcome, Cathy, to reality. That's what pretty much all women and men do, and by the way? It's what the vast majority of victims do when the "encounters" actually are, objectively and by any statutory definition, rape. And this wasn't just when you were young, Cathy. It's still true now. And it probably will be for a very long time.I'm sure Cathy would point out though, that what prompted her breathless piece was the idea that legions of women like her, armed now with 2015-era "feminist" notions of victimhood, are poised to suddenly push open the floodgates of litigation to incorrectly and unjustly imprison men who simply used "seductiveness" to turn a "no" into a "yes." Ms. Young would have us believe that a few reasonable initiatives regarding consent, and a renewed movement against an age-old scourge have somehow eviscerated fair judgment in the average person and created a monster of inaccurate reports and false victims.Garbage.In fact, rapists now, just as rapists when Cathy Young was in her teens or twenties, rely on myths, shame, and fear in order to keep their victims silenced. In terms of what Ms. Young has brought to the issue, this means being 1) silently obedient to Cathy Young's interpretation of their experiences, and 2) repentantly observant of the Washington Post's clever istock choice of an obviously whoring slut searching for her pumps under a man's bed.The message? If you believe you've been raped, you're probably wrong, and you probably did something to either bring it on or otherwise allow for it to happen.So blame feminism. Blame the "liberal media." Blame yourselves, certainly.Just never blame the rapist. In Cathy Young's world, there are far fewer of them than there are hysterical and litigious versions of you.     

What's to Blame for Josh Duggar? Institutionalism, not Christianity

What we know: Josh Duggar’s admission is great fodder against Duggar Family Values, which include anti-gay stances as well as assertions that “non-traditional” values endanger children.What we don’t know: What created the awful urges in Josh to begin with. Those opposed to what this powerful family both believes and attempts to influence politically are triumphantly declaring things like home-schooling and hyper-religiosity to be petri dishes for the kind of sexual deviance Josh displayed as a teenager.They’re probably wrong.As deliciously tempting as it is for some on my side of the political spectrum to demonize the Duggars and their way of life as some sort of catalyst for awful behavior, there's little psychological evidence to support that. In fact, Josh’s deviance was most likely not (in and of itself) the product of home schooling or any other religious dogma or tradition the Duggars took part in. Sexual deviance, as far we know at this point, does not generate that way. More likely, Josh was (or is) deviant for reasons we don't understand, but that are probably innate (“nature”) and/or the product of his environment (“nurture”), but in a different way than we normally observe.I am no soothsayer, but what I’ve come to understand after a career of dealing with this pathology is that it is simply everywhere. The conservative numbers (1 in 3 girls and about 1 in 6 boys) remain replicable, reliable and constant. Sexual abuse happens everywhere: Among the religious and non-religious. Among the rich, the poor, the city dweller, the farmer, etc., etc., etc. The sexual abuse of children, whether by teenagers like Josh Duggar or by more mature adults, happens continuously and universally.Therefore, the question better asked is not “what made this happen?” but “what allowed it to flourish and continue in that particular situation?” In the case of the world of “19 and Counting,” we should look, as always, to an institution.In Josh Duggar’s world, the institution of dogmatic, insular Christianity provided him two things: First, It made it easier for him not only to offend, but to get away with offending. Second, it did so in a manner that leaves him today free of legal consequences, still married, and still employable. Here's how:Whatever Josh was (or is), he grew up in a male-dominated world where “the father is the head of the family as Christ is the head of the Church.” Firstly, his was an environment that exalted a Christian-based order that, among other things, clamped down on any opposition or suggestion of "rebellion." This very likely discouraged his victims from reporting his actions to other family members or anyone who might have made a difference. Rebellion, after all, can be perceived as anything that upsets the proverbial apple cart. This was a fact probably not lost on Josh himself as he chose his victims.Secondly, this same Christian-based worldview necessitated, as it does with any religiously based orthodoxy, an “in-house” solution to conflict or deviant behavior within the environment. Why? Because it reinforces the idea that the religion itself has within it the answer to every problem- there is never a need to consult outside sources which are doubtlessly less pure and enlightened.But even more dangerous is the insistence on handling matters of “conflict” within the religious environment so that the outside world will not perceive flaws or weaknesses within its structure. The Duggars likely perceive themselves, as many do in their circumstances, as holdouts against a world moving in a direction they neither trust nor respect. The last thing they want that outside world to perceive is a weakness within their structure.It's important to understand how these things explain (but do not excuse) the Duggar’s response to a heartbreaking and haunting problem, and why offenders like Josh Duggar can flourish in environments otherwise mortally opposed to behavior like his. But it’s equally important to understand what they don’t explain.They don’t explain Josh’s deviance to begin with. That’s a question we dare not breezily discard with the easy answer of demonizing religion. Or culture. Or anything else. Because as far as we know, deviance poisons all of these equally.

Rolling Stone: From a Crucial and Embattled Movement, Behold Your Work

I have devoted a career to a growing and viscerally important, but eternally beset and threatened movement to end sexual violence. On college campuses, such violence has revealed itself to be among the worst and most widespread.I can say with head-shaking sadness and bitter disgust that I’ve never seen this movement- particularly where widespread and largely ignored (or concealed) college rape is concerned- damaged so profoundly and with such speed.This has happened because of breathtaking incompetence and blind greed, period.I don’t know exactly where the reporter, Sabrina Erdely, falls on this miserable continuum. Perhaps she was remarkably unprofessional but sincere, paving the road to hell with a genuine belief that she was doing right by a traumatized young woman she sought out for a hyper-sensationalized story. Or, perhaps she’s as guilty as Rolling Stone’s editorial staff seems to have been, green-lighting this substandard piece simply because it was obvious click-bait and a turbo-charged issue seller.What’s left for this particular story is hard to say. Clearly, there are both discrepancies in “Jackie’s” account and now additional emerging circumstances that must create doubt in any reasonable mind as to the full truth of what was apparently related to Erdely. But does that justify a leap to the assumption that Jackie just made it all up? Hardly.The idea that she completely fabricated a gang-rape, and then punctuated this vicious, elaborate hoax with a two-year long journey toward healing (including thoroughly corroborated Immense distress, withdrawal, depression, and then involvement in UVA’s anti-sexual assault movement) is frankly absurd absent some profoundly delusional condition. It’s even more absurd when one remembers that Jackie never attempted to “go public.” Instead, Erdely and her editors took her there after seeking out the most shocking example of campus sexual violence available.And now they’ve left her exposed and alone, regardless of their “apology” (revised after a backlash) that initially blamed her completely.What’s left for the movement against rape, though, is as clear as it is damning: Legions of so-called “men’s rights advocates” and others who enjoy perpetrating myths and misogyny, are declaring victory. Jackie, they’re insisting, is emblematic of women everywhere. To the paranoid male, she’s a shining example of how college hook-up culture combined with alcohol has elicited reckless false reports from foolish, immoral women who then become desperate to claw back their virtue by “crying rape," thus filling the prisons of the world with decent, if naturally red-blooded men.Countless finger-wagging moralists and scolds with ready-made prescriptions to end a plague they really know nothing about are joining them, insisting that, at very least, Jackie is another “mistaken” victim, not of rape, but of the same reckless culture combined with new, politically liberal incentives to mistakenly cry rape when the real issue is “crossed signals” with a truly non-offending male.For these two groups and so many more, Jackie is the rightfully exposed antagonist of their morality play, either because she’s a soulless liar or just another lost soul in need of everything from religion to hard-nosed advice on "how not to get raped.”This is the deplorable handiwork of a publication literally as old as I am, and one that's been culturally relevant and important far beyond its original focus on music (see Matt Taibbi, as an example), but that has miserably failed not just its readers but a theretofore unknown and healing, apparently contributing young woman as well.Make no mistake; this was done for money and nothing more. I recall my father, when I was a kid, scoffing at the idea of a “liberal media” or a conservative one, for that matter. “What the media cares about,” he would say in an expression that’s now quaint, “is selling papers.”Indeed. The almighty dollar is what matters. It’s what mattered to Rolling Stone when it came to pushing prematurely a damaged and traumatized young woman into the meat grinder of the 24 hour news-cycle and the twitterverse.  Journalistic ethics didn’t matter much. A still struggling movement they’ve set back a good 10 years didn’t matter much.Jackie certainly didn’t matter much. 

The Inevitable Doubting of "Jackie" and Rolling Stone's Sabrina Erdely

Our capacity for doubt when it comes to the accounts of victims of sexual violence- and apparently that of the world of journalism- never ceases to amaze me. Two weeks ago, a heartbreaking and deeply disturbing story emerged in Rolling Stone by reporter Sabrina Erdely. It was electrifying and remarkably popular. As of now, both the victim’s account and Erdely’s journalistic practice and ethics are being questioned.I suppose I should not be surprised.The primary objections to Erdely's journalistic integrity rest on three primary foundations: 1) It’s only based on “the word of the alleged victim.” 2) Erdely made no attempt to contact the alleged perpetrators. 3) It’s just too horrible to be true.First, as for Erdely basing her story solely on the apparently compelling, consistent and credible account of the victim, I’d remind the objectors of a legal maxim, often translated into a jury instruction in criminal cases and applicable in every U.S. jurisdiction I’m aware of: Testimony is evidence in a court of law, and if it is sufficiently compelling to the finders of fact (the jurors), then it may stand alone as the basis for a conviction. So jurors across the United States can base convictions beyond a reasonable doubt on the testimony of a single witness, but a reporter is reckless for accepting the account as the basis of a story?Second, in terms of Erdely making no attempt to contact perpetrators, this is justified because they were not named. A fraternity was identified, but no individual perpetrators. According to Erdely, she contacted the fraternity and didn’t get very far, but what was she to do anyway? Erdely tells us that the victim, Jackie, for reasons explained, didn't want the perpetrators she knew of to be confronted. She wanted to tell her story, not generate a mob. This is hardly indefensible; most victims of sexual violence do not report or tell anyone, let alone seek to create a public confrontation. Phi Kappa Psi is suffering scrutiny for sure. But not a single man is, whether affiliated or not. Thus, charges of “you didn’t get the other side of the story” make no sense, unless one or a group of men from the organization was willing to come forth and somehow prove a negative by either 1) accounting for the whereabouts of every member of the fraternity in the fall of 2012 or 2) describing the same encounter as consensual.Third, in terms of the story being too ghastly, shocking, or indicative of coordinated evil on an otherwise august and civil campus to be true? I can only hope the doubters have never experienced something similar, within or without an environment like Rugby Road. An elucidating piece by Liz Seccuro, herself gang-raped at the same fraternity house 30 years ago, might allow some ugly but necessary light to penetrate the dark ignorance of some suspicious objectors. The LA Times’ Jonah Goldberg, for instance, can’t imagine how a bruised and bloodied woman could leave a darkened, loud college party without being noticed. I’d suggest he has either a limited imagination or limited experience with college parties. Politico’s Rich Lowry speculates that “the shock of [the story] led many people to recoil in horror upon the article’s release and ask, “How could this have happened at such a respectable school?” Actually, Mr. Lowry, there are legions of women (and some men) who know exactly how it could happen.Both wonder how Jackie’s friends could have been so equivocal about reporting, and how the university could be so tepid about taking the matter to the police. Again, I can only say they have severely limited experience with the reality of sexual violence as it usually plays out in college life, and even less insight into how such violence is normally responded to. A fair debate continues about the role colleges should play in adjudicating sexual assault. But what must be understood is that the desires of victims, particularly given the gross limitations of the criminal justice system, drive the seemingly laissez-faire reactions of college administrators when rape comes to their attention. The idea is to empower, not dictate.Doubting Jackie's account is anyone's prerogative. Doubts about Erdley's reporting of it should stand on firmer ground.   

Yes, Bill Cosby is Probably Guilty, and No, There Are No Heroes

I don’t like it either.There’s nothing to like. There was nothing to like in realizing that Woody Allen, a filmmaker I credit for much of my worldview let alone my sense of humor, is guilty- in my opinion- of molesting his daughter. There was nothing to like in realizing that Michael Jackson, who even as a rock-n-roll obsessed teenager I believed was pure magic to watch, was guilty- in my opinion- of molesting children at his ranch near Santa Barbara.Perhaps Bill Cosby is the most unpleasant realization yet. Cosby, after all, is more than a brilliant entertainer. He has been a symbol of hope and progress for a generation and some of its most marginalized and disenfranchised members. I was never a devotee of the Cosby Show, but I enjoyed what I saw, and even as a kid I loved the fact that star and cast developed a lasting and convincing image of a loving, educated and successful American black family.Later, as a paternal figure and blunt critic of what he considered were negative aspects of black culture, Cosby was still heavily admired. Why? Because at bottom, he was looking out for black boys and young men, wanting what was best for them as an increasingly endangered species in a cultural and socioeconomic meat grinder.But Cosby is almost certainly guilty of a pattern of sexual violence involving the use of his influence, his victims’ relative powerlessness and lack of life experience, the brutal competitiveness of his industry, and drugs and alcohol. By my count now, no less than 15 women have accused Cosby of similar acts under similar circumstances. There is consistency. There is a pattern. Few if any of the women who have come forward- particularly recently- stand to gain anything from their allegations. They are taking on no less than an American icon; a man of grace, class, considerable power and influence. He’s a national treasure; they know well they are contributing to a national heartbreak. They know they’ll be viciously targeted in terms of their motives, their credibility, and indeed their very sanity.There’s a very, very large chunk of an already sad and disillusioned country that doesn’t want to believe Cosby is guilty of anything. Like many people who consider sexual violence in the very system that’s supposed to address it- the one I’ve spent a career in- they’ll find a reason to believe it’s just all a big lie. That Cosby never, over three decades against more than two dozen different, unrelated women in several states, committed any crimes.Maybe it was a misunderstanding that just happened over and over again, altering lives along the way. Maybe it’s true that women are just really vicious as a gender and don’t have a problem falsely accusing men of among the most heinous crimes imaginable. Maybe it’s really satisfying, fun and quickly profitable to turn yourself into an instant media curiosity as a victim accusing a beloved figure of rape.Yes, and maybe the tooth fairy will leave my IRS bill under my pillow if my latest root canal fails and I need an implant.In fact, gravity brings rain to the ground and water is wet. In fact, if the man at the center of these allegations was an ordinary plumber, or systems analyst, or cab driver or cardiologist, the belief in his guilt would be widespread and probably correct. Legally, Cosby has been convicted of nothing and found civilly liable for nothing, and it’s correct that he remain legally unburdened. But Cosby has cultivated an image both as a public figure and at times a moral scold. He’s earned this scrutiny if nothing else. It's awful. But so is the truth, much of the time.The reality of heroic acts is the saving grace of our existence; well-lived lives often contain blessed aspects of it. There was, as just one example, great worth to the Cosby Show far beyond the laughs and the tender moments, and it should live on regardless of Cosby’s reputation.But heroism itself is dangerous and inconsistent with the human condition. We're too complex for halos; they're best left to the saints. And the songs. And the myths.

An Inconvenient Truth About Pedophilia: It's a Curse, Not a Choice

A friend sent me this link to a New York Times op-ed on pedophilia, the technical term for the DSM-V, paraphilic mental health diagnosis that describes a person (usually a male), sexually interested only in pre-pubescent children.Apparently, the DSM itself (the "bible" of mental health professionals) will not describe pedophilia as a sexual orientation, but rather a paraphilic disorder. This is basically a sexual predilection detrimental to the object of the interest, and which causes the sufferer significant distress or difficulty dealing with it. Since pedophiles are solely, sexually focused on prepubescent children, any manifestation of the disorder will be- in essence- harmful and unacceptable. Rightfully, we punish such manifestations, including consumption of child pornography as well as "hands-on" offending.Regardless, I know of no reputable mental health expert who would call pedophilia a "choice." When it comes to the persistent, chronic sexual attraction to prepubescent children, what we're dealing with is more of a burden.Or more bluntly, a curse.What's chosen is behavior.  Sexual behavior involving prepubescent children should remain 1) anathema to what is societally acceptable, and 2) severely punished. I've spent a career seeking to do these things.But the author of the op-ed makes valid points when she discusses the need to understand pedophilia instead of just aiming vitriol and anger toward those saddled with this miserable circumstance. There are, as she notes, people with pedophilia who do not act out in response to deep-seated urges. They understand the concrete wrongness of sexually acting out against children, so they painfully but dutifully deny themselves a sexual life.In my opinion, with a career of seeking to protect children from child molesters behind me, I believe these successfully restrained people should be commended for this, particularly when their concern is more for the children they might harm as it is for the legal or societal consequences they might face. Certainly, they should not be further marginalized, ostracized, or hated. But regardless of how balanced any appeal to common sense or baseline compassion might be, hatred and viciousness are usually what pedophiles encounter.And so they remain in the shadows, untreated and more deeply misunderstood.We still have almost no idea what causes pedophilia; correlations between childhood experiences (abusive or non-abusive) have been at best inconclusive. If it's genetic, we've yet to discover a traceable etiology. We know that the vast majority of victims of childhood sexual abuse do not turn around themselves and abuse later in life or "become" pedophiles. Rather, it seems more ingrained, but we don't know why or how.  We also know that, while most confirmed abusers will claim past sexual abuse, even the threat of a polygraph exam during treatment will bring those claims far down.So we're dealing with a very dangerous mystery. But largely as a society, we're interested in nothing but punishing pedophiles, regardless of their actual status as offenders. If they have this desire, too many of us seem to believe that they're worthy of the worst we can legally (or otherwise) dish out to them.The comments to Dr. Margo Kaplan's piece in the NYT are enlightening in this regard. While some applaud her for her courage in being a voice of reason, many more seem to fall into a couple of categories that, while understandable to some degree, are irrelevant. First, there are commenters who simply make legally and psychologically incorrect assertions, and lump pedophiles into the far larger subset of child molesters, most of whom are not pedophiles. Second, there are woefully unfocused comments that address the harm done to the victims of pedophiles (or people they assume are pedophiles) with no further thought.Focusing on victims and prevention of harm is more than understandable; it's completely appropriate and it needs to continue to be our highest priority. But we must also understand what drives offending- particularly when the drive is so despised that passion chokes that understanding.Again- most predatory, sexual offenders are not pedophiles. The word is grossly overused and misused. Regardless, there are harmful pedophiles in our midst. We need to stop them, but in order to do so, we need to understand them.Blind hatred won't help. Blind hatred never helps anything.   

The Rice Videotape: When An Unblinking Eye is Ugly But Necessary

Unmanned, stationary video is a cold observer. It will not blink in disbelief. It will not turn away in horror. It will not cloud over with tears of pure, human empathy. But sometimes it’s the only accurate source for the truth about what individuals are capable of. Not monsters. Not demons. Just people.In 2011, a Texas family court judge was forced to acknowledge the sadistic and brutal beating of his 16 year-old daughter who suffers from cerebral palsy because of a hidden webcam she set up in desperation. In 2013, a 14 year-old French girl compelled an admission of sexual abuse by her father through the same technology. These two children would likely never have been believed were it not for the passive, electronic observer that forced action, justice and- importantly- an acceptance of responsibility from the attackers.Enter Ray and Janay Rice.Ms. Rice considers her husband’s breathtakingly vicious attack of her, and then his dragging her body, skirt hiked up on a cold, hotel floor moments after, to be a part of their private lives. She seems yet to acknowledge a single act of wrongdoing on his part, instead characterizing what he did as “a moment in our lives.” She appears to be willing to support and stand by him regardless of what he did to her, what he might have done before, and what he might do again- even while she is pregnant with his child.What are the chances, then, that Janay would ever have been forthcoming about what was done to her in that now infamous elevator- assuming she could even remember it accurately? Forget about the courtroom. What about the kind of honest detail that might have led to forcing Ray Rice to take real responsibility for a possibly permanent brain injury? What about the kind of detail that might have compelled him to examine his character and his choices, especially now that he will be a father?Given her public statements, it is not likely that Janay would have spoken at all to anyone who might have made a difference, whether an NFL official, a judge, a counselor or anyone else. She’s in love. She’s made her choice.But where criminal acts are concerned, not all of the choices are hers to make. There are at least two entities that have an interest when a crime of violence occurs and criminal charges are brought: The victim herself (or himself) and the community as a whole. The community in this case- at least Atlantic County, New Jersey, the prosecutorial jurisdiction where this crime took place- has a right to the truth, as much as it can be ascertained, in order to decide what Ray Rice did to violate their laws and what he deserves because of it (no comment, for now, on how the case was legally resolved).Without the video, it is highly unlikely that Rice’s brutality would ever be fully known- both in terms of the lightning blow he was willing to unleash into a woman's face and the callous way in which he then dragged her around. Even assuming an out of character, mental snap due to rage, Rice could have knelt beside her and comforted her. He could have called for help and admitted a terrible, momentary wrong. Instead he dragged her like an inconvenient bag of garbage. We know that now, because we’ve seen it.What Janay Rice is 100% correct about is that the repeated, for-entertainment viewing of the video tape of her abuse is exploitive and abusive itself; her pain should not be minimized nor her feelings invalidated. She is unfortunate with regard to being married to a public figure and now being at the center of a tragically public case. But given her unwavering support of a man who attacked her, given the child who will soon become a part of their dynamic, and given a desperate need for society as a whole to wake up to the undiluted reality of intimate partner violence, there is value in the videotape’s existence if not gross proliferation.It's awful. But it's the truth. And the truth matters, even when love would conceal it.

Contempt of Cop, And That Might Be It

I've worked closely with police officers my entire professional life, and I find most to be decent, honorable men and women who do a difficult job with a surprising amount of professionalism. I'm far from anti-cop. But sometimes it appears obvious that breaking the law isn't what will get you arrested. Simply disobeying a police officer, even with the right to do so, might do it.That's anathema to the rule of law.A disturbing video posted by the African-American political and cultural opinion magazine "The Root" shows a black man arguing with police officers, one male and one female and both white, in St. Paul, Minnesota in January and eventually being tasered and then arrested. It's news again in light of recent events, and race is an assumed factor. At one point in his filming of the incident, the man interrupts the female officer and says "the problem is I'm black." The two are then joined by a male officer who immediately demands that he put his hands behind his back. A struggle ensues, he's tasered and then arrested.I honestly don't know if race was a factor for the officers involved. I'd like to think it wasn't, but I completely understand those who most certainly do. Regardless, what bothered me most about the exchange I saw was simply the illegality of what seems to be happening. Apparently charges against the man for trespass, disorderly conduct and disrupting the legal process were dropped.Understanding that cell phone video is hardly an infallible source of context in a tense situation, watching this one will not yield a single explanation by the officers as to why the man is being arrested that cites Minnesota law or local ordinance. I watched it repeatedly; I don't hear it. Reports suggest a store clerk called with some concern about his presence as a possible loiterer although he was in a public place. The responding officer demands he identify himself. He refuses, as is apparently his right under Minnesota law. She appears to follow him as he walks away, at one point explaining her demand saying "this is what police officers do when they're called."That may be, but that doesn't make the demand legal. And if it's not legal, and no other crime is occurring, she needs to shrug and walk away. Period. But police officers increasingly seem not to want to do that.In February, a California Highway Patrolman arrested a firefighter who refused to move a fire truck at the patrolman's insistence while working a car wreck. The firefighter was ordered released and later filed a complaint. Details are in dispute, but it seems as if he was handcuffed and placed in a cruiser simply because he disobeyed the command of the CHP, regardless of the letter of the law.Like any institution that provides for trappings of authority, deadly weapons and combat training, police agencies sometimes attract bullies and others with big egos and little patience. I believe this is not the norm in American policing but generally an exception. I've not only worked closely with cops all of my life, I've befriended many. I've heard countless head-shaking stories (that never reach the media) of cops who have not used deadly force despite the actions of belligerent and aggressive people who threaten their lives and refuse to obey reasonable commands.Still, there is justifiable criticism being leveled against the militarization of American police forces and the rise of the "warrior cop." Engaging the community from behind barricades with automatic weapons is largely counterproductive and stupid. But what's worse is ignoring the law and putting people in chains and cages- regardless for how long or to what eventual end- simply because they've made a cop angry. It doesn't work that way. It can't work that way.As a young prosecutor I practiced before an old and quirky but wonderful judge named Dan O'Flaherty. He showed me once how he kept a copy of Virginia's contempt of court statute (the one that allows judges to jail people on the spot for in-court behavior) actually taped to the bench where he sat. His reason? When he was insulted or otherwise disrespected by someone before him, he took time to read the statute and think very carefully before even threatening the person with contempt. Because sometimes what they were doing was infuriating, but not illegal.Anyone with the honor of wielding a badge and a gun needs to understand that as well.

George F. Will: Championing Male Paranoia, Ignorance, and the Status Quo

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”Attributed to the anthropologist Margaret Mead, this sentiment is both insightful and beautiful, but deceivingly tragic as well. If, after all, Mead was right that only small, committed groups of people have really changed the world, then it’s exactly because human beings as they’ve assembled in larger groups never would or could.It's sad but true. Tribes, nation-states, empires and entire civilizations have made, by and large, miserable decisions over the millennia in just about every area of human interaction. In our largest collections, we've consistently chosen slavery, patriarchy, militarism, vengeance, racial and sectarian violence, bigotry and greed.Regardless, hope and progress persist and have moved the world forward; I believe Mead is right that this progress in humanity has been driven in large part not by the masses but by the outliers, the suffering, the unusually reflective, empathic and brave.When it comes to the shameful and shame-based, age-old shroud of silence that has been draped over survivors of sexual violence, nothing is different. Progress is being made, much of it born of the efforts of women (and some men) who refused at last to suffer silently and who finally punched through to the social consciousness with the feminist and victim’s movements of recent decades.And now a small but surprisingly growing number are coming forward to expose what’s always been true and almost never acknowledged: Colleges and universities, like most institutional environments, have been havens for sexually violent individuals for far too long, and for reasons that institutional leadership could address far better than it ever has.But for writers like George F. Will, this shedding of light and move toward accountability must be dismissed as hysteria and the establishment of yet another “victim class” with a hidden agenda. He’s armed with nothing more than one, remarkably atypical and grossly misleading anecdote of an apparently mischaracterized sexual assault. Yet he spends half of a column on its facts before dismissing pretty much all college-aged victims as confused and coddled miscreants, unable to characterize their own experiences due to “hook up culture,” or "hormones, alcohol, and faux sophistication.”As Will himself would write in judgment of such a moronic conclusion:Well.Like so many before him, Will combines ignorance and useless moralizing; unlearned in sexual violence dynamics, he fails to grasp that most clear cases of victimization- let alone awkward or even borderline violent sexual events- almost never lead to complaints of victimization to anyone. Of course, awkward and negative sexual hook-ups happen. Of course regret sometimes sinks in. Of course women (and some men) feel cheated, used and angry after sexual encounters in many circumstances and because of many factors. The idea that they'll now "cry rape" because of a handful of Department of Education initiatives, thus filling the country's prisons with innocent men, is paranoid nonsense.Regardless, as with so many men of his generation and inclination, Will's real concern is with the fate of the hapless, charming lothario who he is certain has no ill intent but now faces the wrath of the badly behaved, deviously empowered woman with an axe to grind and a sympathetic, left-leaning government to help her grind it.It’s garbage. But it’s not surprising. Will’s hysteria is a common and oft-repeated pattern of those who would preserve the status quo and the appearance of white, male dominated normalcy at any cost; just as women who demanded equal rights were once marginalized and dismissed as a small, vocal group of disgruntled malcontents; just as those who fought for an end to racial segregation were once branded as the minority in an otherwise content sub-culture of second class citizens. It's that ever-present, all too common drone that has damned the world to so much misery and injustice for so long without change. On this issue, Will champions it shamefully.My hope is that efforts like Will’s- ones which regrettably resemble the sad echo of mass group-think through the ages- will continue to falter, however improbably, because of a small group of thoughtful individuals who have simply had enough. 

An Intolerable Glimmer and an Intolerable Focus on Controlling Women: Why I Still Fight Victim-Centered Rape Prevention

The “glimmer” is one of doubt. It’s the doubt that’s created when we analyze a rape perpetrated on a victim who was drunk, dressed seductively, or engaged in whatever behavior we have adjudged unwise and foolish. It’s a glimmer that allows for the blaming- ever so slightly, but still substantively- of the victim. It’s a glimmer that allows for the exoneration- ever so slightly, but still substantively- of the offender.That’s what victim-centered rape prevention does. Regardless of how well-intentioned. Regardless of how coldly logical. Regardless of the reservoir of love and benevolence that lies behind it. Regardless. It still serves to create the glimmer. And the glimmer is too much.See, we can claim we’re not blaming victims all we want when we advise seemingly obvious and demonstrably effective means of prevention. It does not matter; the effect still serves to blame victims and protect offenders. Why? Because sexual violence is a crime different from any other.Read that again. Rape is categorically, undeniably in a class by itself. When one person attacks another sexually, the crime is analyzed differently than any other. Since criticizing Emily Yoffe’s State pieces earlier this week (her pieces are here and here) , I have received dozens of messages from people who construct analogies to other crimes to describe why her key advice (control your drinking) is simply sound advice and not victim blaming, regardless of how unfair it might seem. Others shake their heads and tell me I can wish for a kinder, fairer world all I want, but they’ll be damned if they won’t tell their daughters and sons exactly “what not to do” in order to protect them.That’s understandable. But here is an undeniable truth: Leave aside my belief that all that advice, even if it works in many situations, also potentially opens up the hearers to other vectors of attack. For those who would still prefer to create rules and encourage loved ones to follow them in order to best play the odds, I will challenge them on at least one aspect of their thinking: They cannot avoid a charge of victim-blaming by claiming they would give similar advice to anyone in order to avoid, say, robbery (by walking on well-lit streets), or car theft (by locking doors).Rape isn't like robbery, car theft, or even murder. Sex, and how we view it, doesn't allow for that.The nature of sexuality in our culture (and most others) does not allow for it to be analogized to any other crime. The nuances and complexities of sexual interaction, seduction, flirtation, gender roles, the intensely private and culturally shame-based nature of the whole subject, the relation of the sexual organs to the excretory ones, the continued prizing of “purity,” etc, etc, etc, all combine to make sexual crime one that is always analyzed differently from any other.So the danger of tipping the scales even a tiny bit and judging victim choices, thus marginally exonerating offenders, is magnified with sexual crime.Another hard truth: The further we dig into the nature of sexual crime, the further we must dig into the nature of sex itself. And that means taking an honest look at gender roles, expectations, and deep-seated fears and obsessions that have shaped how society judges, treats, confines, punishes and subjugates women.Read that again also, if you would. Far too much of the debate concerning how women can and should protect themselves from men is polluted with the continuing and still deeply unresolved obsession that men (and some women as well) still have with women as sexual beings. Our major religions, our societal structures, our laws, customs and mores. How many are hyper-focused on controlling female sexuality? When we can answer that question honestly and accurately, we'll have uncovered much of what is wrong with how we seek to prevent rape.That, in a nutshell, is why I find even the best intentioned, victim-centered prevention strategists to be ultimately wrong-headed. Try as they might, they are still tipping the scales. They are still creating doubt. As a prosecutor, that’s a thing I was trained very carefully to avoid when justice is on the line.

Emily Yoffe, Like Most Misinformed People, Won’t Get It. Maybe Ever.

Emily Yoffe is frustrated by the backlash against her well-intentioned but ill-considered original Slate piece from last week, but apparently emboldened by the support she’s received from other well intentioned and ill-informed supporters.Yoffe, like many others, sees a reduction in drinking (on college campuses especially) as the key to reducing sexual assaults against women. Indeed, the answer seems startlingly clear to Ms. Yoffe, as if she’s sounding an alarm that those around her infuriatingly cannot hear:Women! Stop drinking! You’re making yourselves vulnerable!It seems so obvious. A woman (or a man for that matter) who decides, for whatever reckless, juvenile, or ill-advised reasons, to drink to excess, is making herself/himself vulnerable in a cruel and unpredictable world. That's the seemingly clear-as-glass conclusion at which Yoffe and many like her have arrived.My perspective is that of a former special victims prosecutor, so I suppose I must ask myself: Haven’t I seen countless cases in which objectively “bad” victim behavior (like heavy drinking) “led to victims being raped?”Here's the naked truth: I have worked with victims- male and female- who were raped during or after behavior that might have been judged unwise. But I have never seen a victim who was raped because of that behavior. I’ve only seen victims who were raped for the one, single, incontrovertible reason that all victims are raped:Because someone chose to rape them. This is where Yoffe gets lost. Granted, it’s a subtle distinction and one I also had to absorb over time. It was a brilliant and irreverent PhD psychologist (Nikki Vallerie) who finally clued me in to a simple and profound truth: There is no vulnerability without danger.A woman can skip through a big city park at midnight in a G-string made of sewn-together $100 bills. She will not be vulnerable- in other words, she won’t be at risk for the slightest victimization of any kind- even a criticism of her clothing choice- unless someone in her environment means to victimize her.Let that sink in. No one is at risk, regardless of what they do or don’t do, if no one around them means them harm.But the Yoffe’s of the world believe they've figured it all out and claim victory when it comes to policing bad or reckless behavior, believing the key to preventing most- if not all- sexual violence means the prevention of such behavior because of the “dangerous world” we all inhabit.Indeed, the world is a dangerous place. But here are two critical areas where Yoffe and her ilk fail in their analysis and admonitions.1. Women (and men) can be (and are) sexually victimized in the most “innocent” of circumstances, i.e., a day-time study group, a church function, an alcohol-free event or movie date. So warnings against “late night, drunken date rape” only protect victims from one type of rape- and could actually expose them to further harm as they’ll be unprepared for any other scenario other than what they’ve been warned against.2. Rapists thrive on and celebrate- whether or not they do so consciously- the very rules of “wise and protective behavior” that Yoffe and her compatriots have so fervently and self-righteously promulgated.The reasons are simple, and devastating.First, as I alluded to before, a laundry list of things not to do will simply clear the path for the rapist who will rape after church, on a simple, alcohol-free DVD movie date, after a study session, or pretty much whenever he can isolate a victim who believes she (or he) has protected her/himself in every imaginable way from harm.Second, the man who chooses to a rape a person who has “broken” a finger-wagging protective rule that society soberly approves of, knows full well that he’ll most likely never be accused of that crime.Why? Because, thanks to the self-satisfying proclamations of the Yoffes of the world, his victim broke a rule and “got herself raped.” Therefore, and as he well knows, she might not even be believed if she does report. But she’ll definitely be blamed even if she is. That will most likely keep her quiet. And so it goes.Want to stop rape? Focus on rapists. 

The "Re-homing" of Children Issue: A Response

Last week, I was contacted privately by an individual who was familiar with “re-homing,” also through an Internet group that included the participation of adoptive parents, some of whom were seeking to get rid of their children, and prospective “parents” looking to procure them.The person who contacted me is also an adoptive parent, appears to be a dedicated one, and largely regrets any cooperation she might have given to the “re-homing” process. But while she acknowledges the failures and the risks, she still believes there is justification for the attempts some make at abandoning children to others with power of attorney, largely from the perspective of a desperate parent with a dangerous or unmanageable adoptive child. Since she contacted me privately I will not identify her and will do my best to avoid referring to facts that might also do so. But I believe a portion of my response to her is relevant to a further examination of the issue of “re-homing” and how dangerous and utterly thoughtless it can be. So here it is:I understand your position that not enough resources exist for adoptive parents who find themselves with children who have theretofore unknown problems (or ones hidden from them) that make them not only unmanageable, but also perhaps a danger to themselves and their families. Still, I have little sympathy for adoptive parents in this situation who resolve it by dumping their children (I will not use the phrase "re-homing" without mocking quotes) with strangers and in the most dangerous of potential circumstances. Adoption is among the most profoundly sobering decisions a prospective parent can make. I'm sure you understand this better than I as you have actually taken this step and appear to be doing so with love and decency. In my view, no prospective parent should ever consider adoption without also having the resources to address every possible type of problem, foreseeable and unforeseeable. If an adopted child becomes a danger to themselves, the parents or other siblings, and must be removed from the parents' home, then the parents need to be financially prepared to seek institutional care for them, if necessary, but not while disowning them. If the best interests of the child and the family both appear to be in dissolving the adoptive relationship, then it should be attempted only through a formal, legally recognized process.  You may not know well the tactics of predators who seek out children to exploit, harm or kill, but I can assure you that a "re-homing" platform is among the most powerful and gratifying vectors to what they would consider perfect victims. I say "perfect" because a predator could scarcely imagine a better scenario than parents desperate to pawn off an unwanted child- most likely a child who is emotionally and/or physically compromised to the point where they are virtually powerless to seek help or redress from any type of abuse.  It is a fact that child predators, like all things that hunt, seek the path of least resistance and greatest security. The legal ability to abandon a vulnerable (indeed, perhaps even objectively unlikable) child to a complete stranger with a pro-forma legal document is the clearest imaginable example of those two favored circumstances. This fact alone makes "rehoming" reckless, cruel, and thoroughly abhorrent, even without considering the less sensational risks of simply unprepared and hopeful parents accepting a "re-homed" child and being even less able to properly care for her or him. Within the "re-homing" universe, what is the incentive for the abandoning parent to be honest about the true extent of the child's problems (or potential dangers to others) to begin with? The system is about dumping human beings on others, plain and simple. No one should get near it. You shouldn't have either.  In a letter you shared with me, you rhetorically asked this question to the author of the original Reuters story: "Why are parents resorting to informal networking groups to help them with adoptions that are failing? Because there are no resources.  Because of societies preconceived notions that these kids just need love, a good family, etc. and all will be well.  Tell that to the mother who finds her daughter raping a sibling with a pencil, tell that to the father who finds out his daughter is giving blow jobs to his 4 year old.  Tell that to the family who has to sleep with their bedroom doors locked because they fear for their lives." What I would tell a family in a situation like the ones you describe above is that they are still parents, not renters of human beings. They may have to lock doors. They may have to maintain distance between individuals within the house for the safety of everyone. They may have to very carefully seek out institutional care for their wounded child. They may have to seriously curtail or refine their own goals, dreams and priorities. I don't claim to know the difficulty of parenting, either my own child or an adoptive one. But I know quite well to not make such a monumental decision without being ready to accept and deal with everything that might befall me- and the rest of my family- if I choose to do so.

"Re-Homing." Child Abandonment Becomes a Predator's Providence

Reuters Investigates has released a stomach-turning series on children offered on Internet forms by adoptive parents wanting rid of them. They find ready takers, often abusive predators, and abandon them with power-of-attorney documents. The dumping happens in most cases after little or no vetting of the “new parents,” and often takes place in parking lots. It’s called “re-homing,” a term sometimes used regarding transferring unmanageable pets.Quick aside: My only criticism of the piece is the unfortunate tendency of the authors to ape the language of the perpetrators and refer to this system of abandonment as “re-homing.” As a prosecutor, I was in the business of gradating evil, and and so I’ll offer a rough hierarchy of such to this “system:”  Atop is the human virus Nicole Eason and her pedophile and abusive associates. Eason, a miserably failed parent and life-long child abuser, has been on the receiving end of the abandonment process as much as possible. Below her and her fellow scorpions on this hierarchy are the adoptive parents willing to abandon children to strangers after a brief exchange of emails and photos. Below them, having unerringly followed the well-intentioned-paved road to hell, are those who have “moderated” the forums involving child “re-homing” in the first place.The willingness of participants on all three levels to be interviewed, frankly, shocks me almost as much as what they did. Eason makes statements about cruelty and violence against children (she calls it parenting) the way one might describe a golf swing. The individuals on the other side of this reckless and selfish transaction- the ones who first procured children through the often grueling process of legal adoption and then dumped them- should move our entire society to revisit how we’re assigning adoption candidates in the first place. Above a fully recognizable photograph of Glenna Mueller, for instance (a “professional parent” who survives on government subsidies provided for children she adopts), is this quote about a child she abandoned to the grotesque couple of Randy Winslow (a pedophile and child pornography trader) and Nicole Eason:“I was a little concerned about Randy," Mueller recalls today. "He never said anything. He spent time with (the boy) and played with him but didn't interact with me.... But as long as they were on the up-and-up I was OK with them taking him. It was like, get him out of here.” Perhaps I should have more sympathy for the abandoning adoptive parents- the stories of whom are a part of the piece- apparently finding themselves desperate enough to dump their children with people like Eason. But I don’t. At least one family interviewed admitted they could have turned their charge over to protective services, but would have had to pay child support for her until she was 18. So instead they trusted Eason and her partner, both of whom gave them the creeps when they came for her, but sent her anyway. Others, including a police officer, claimed to be genuinely deceived by Eason. But I suspect he, like most of them, largely saw what he wanted to see and ran with it.If there is any reservoir of sympathy for a player here, if might be for people like Megan Exon, a moderator for a time of the forums that feed adoptive children to waiting vampires like Eason and Winslow. Exon, who had no training in adoptions or social work, thought it a nice idea to “introduce” parties interested in trading children. She appears stupidly naive, not cynical or predatory. But whatever her intentions, she facilitated abuse and emotional torture, and all knowingly under the radar of the child protection system. Predators view these forums like providence itself; they could scarcely script a more perfect scenario than helpless, often compromised children with guardians seeking to pawn them off.I’ve written before on this subject and been challenged for not fully appreciating what adoptive parents go through when hope-filled adoptions become nightmares. That may be. But whatever the suffering of these adoptive parents, it doesn’t approach the suffering of the children they chose to bring into their lives. Sending them out of their lives, like trash and to monsters, isn’t making that suffering any less bearable.

On Adolescent Sexual Exploitation: Room for Nuance, Not for Compromise

I should be more nuanced on the nettlesome issue of adolescent sexuality, I'm told. It's not cut and dry, and my tone is often unyielding. Perhaps.I limit myself to 700 words in this space out of respect for my readership and in acknowledgement of the hundreds of other demands on their time and opportunities to spend it. If I had more space, I'd be more circumspect and more exploratory of opposing points of view, at least where I thought arguments had merit. No one comes close to possessing all the answers on human sexuality, what is objectively abusive, and what should be considered punishable by law. I'm no exception.In fairness, the issue of adolescent and adult sexual contact is particularly difficult to categorize uniformly. I sat on a Huffington Post Live panel last month where I discussed the issue with three well-known psychologists, all of whom agreed (as do I) that the "age of consent" to sexual intercourse in US jurisdictions has less to do with inherent rightness and more to do with an arbitrary cut-off for various cultural, historical and political reasons. I've known 15 year-old kids who could make thoughtful, informed and logical choices about sexual contact, and 25 year-old developmentally normal adults who absolutely could not. The age of consent in most of the US hovers around the age of majority, another number we've picked to differentiate the comparatively protected world of a child from the colder and more unforgiving one navigated by adults.When it comes to sexual contact between even older minors and adults, though, there are at least a few key points that, for me, make these "relationships" exploitive and toxic far more often than my detractors who see Americans in particular as "hysterical," "Victorian", etc. In no particular order:1. The issue is usually less about age and more about power, control, and authority. I would not likely advocate for sex-offender registration or a felony conviction for an adult within a few years age of his or her minor sexual partner- assuming a relationship based on more or less equal footing. Stacey Rambold, the Montana teacher whose paltry sentence recently sparked outrage, was  [slightly] less culpable in my mind for being 35 years the senior of his victim than he was for being her educator. Teachers have power over students both in terms of what they can practically affect in their lives and superior insights about navigating adult life. We properly condemn and criminalize crossing this line. It's not wrong because it's illegal. It's illegal because it's wrong.2. The still organically forming adolescent brain should at least be a factor in how we view a minor's ability to engage equally with an especially far older adult. Nothing magical happens within the brain to end adolescence at 18. But the fact is, teenagers are more impulsive, more brash and less self-controlled and than adults. Adults should know better and act thusly. 18 is still arbitrary. But it's not baseless.3. What we have traditionally viewed as basically "harmless" where adult-child sexual contact is concerned is continually being challenged and rightfully so. The elite Horace Mann school in New York City, like countless institutions the world over, was apparently rife with sexual abuse by teachers on minor students for literally decades. To the extent people knew of it, I'm sure some considered it a quirk of the place, the price paid for such a dynamic and interesting faculty, a simple right of passage, or any number of things. Far too many of the victims of this "quirk" think differently, and are now responding in droves, decades after being seriously harmed with impunity.There is room for nuance, particularly with regard to the application of the criminal law. I was never a mindless hammer in a court of law and I have welcomed the insight of the psychological community when trying to do justice in this regard. Increasingly, I believe my still-active colleagues are doing the same thing.But I won't yield so quickly to counter-arguments on the "harmlessness" of "fuzzier" sexual boundaries between adults and children. For one, I know better. For another, I know the motives of a dangerous few who are making them. See NAMBLA for a reference.   

A "Former Lawyer's" Foolishness Topped Only by the Washington Post Editorial Board's

Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter once said "words are blunt instruments," a quote not only good lawyers, but all professional communicators take to heart. Words are the weapons lawyers wield to wring from the system the outcomes we advocate for. But anyone who communicates for a living ideally respects the coarse limits of language and works hard to construct expression that accurately reflects the intended message. A decent vocabulary and some thought and care before expressing oneself helps to hone arguments in the most fair and effective way possible, but it's always a challenge. Sadly, there are communicators, including those with legal training, who don't even approach it.Betsy Karasik, the Washington, DC-based artist and "former lawyer" who wrote a remarkably uninformed and foolish op-ed in the Washington Post last week about the sexual abuse of minors by school teachers, uses words about as effectively as I'd expect a toddler might a stick of dynamite. Karasik, once a lawyer who specialized in things like negligence and products liability rather than anything related to sexual abuse, wrote regarding the case of Stacey Rambold, the Montana school teacher who, at 48, was raping a 14 year-old girl who then committed suicide short of her 17th birthday. Rambold was sentenced to 30 days.Karasik characterizes the outcry over Rambold's sentencing (and the legal response observed in most US jurisdictions to child sexual exploitation) as "utter hysteria." She sweepingly classifies sexual contact- perpetrated on children by adults in positions of power and authority over them- as "sexual relations." I'd suggest, at very bottom, that she studiously review the use of the words she employs before tossing them around recklessly in a publication of national repute.She seems almost wistful about the "fuzzier" sexual boundaries that existed between adult teachers and minor students in the 60's and 70's. She describes sexual contact between her peers and some teachers as what she believes to have been "consensual in every honest meaning of the word."Really?  Consensual? How, exactly does Karasik define that word?  And where does she draw the nerve to characterize these situations- ones she likely knew almost nothing about- as such?Ms. Karasik, here's a fact, if you're at all interested: Given the remarkably low percentage of victimized minors who report sexual abuse and exploitation- particularly by authority figures like teachers, mentors, coaches and others with power over them- my guess is you have no idea how many of your peers who were sexually targeted by educators actually suffered and to what degree.If Karasik knew anything about the dynamics of child and adolescent sexual abuse, and how predatory grooming, shame, fear and uncertainty silence victims and allow perpetrators to offend again and again, she'd be perhaps more circumspect about how "harmless" sexual contact can be between adult authority figures and children, and what "rehabilitation" really means.The sole time in her piece were Karasik approaches a lucid point is where she seems to wonder (it is not clear) if the pressures of the investigation and the case against Rambold added to the emotional burdens the victim was experiencing and contributed to her suicide. That may be true, and it's the very reason myself and many others in the child protection community have worked for years to make the response as efficient and non-traumatic as we can for the children involved. But if Karasik's opinion is that looking the other way at child exploitation and rape by a predator like Rambold is a better option, she should talk further to victims who were preyed upon with impunity; that would include during her own youthful era.The only thing more insulting than Karasik's opinion is the Washington Post's willingness to allow space on its pages for it. It's one thing to publish a controversial or unpopular opinion that is nevertheless logically argued by an authoritative figure and with some empirical support. Indeed, it's a crucial function of any media outlet. It's another to publish the thoroughly baseless personal opinion of an individual unsuited to comment intelligently on her chosen subject and with zero scholarly evidence to support it. The Post- one time a newspaper of tremendous authority and national import- has hit a new low.

Unheeded Warnings: The Puppeteer "Wannabe" Child Molester Cannibal And His Environment

“He has no criminal record in Florida, which helps explain his frictionless association with these groups, many of which routinely perform background checks.”-Peter Jamison, Tampa Bay Times.The quote above was a minor footnote in the article about Ronald William Brown, the youth minister and puppeteer from Largo, Florida who was recently sentenced to 20 years for possession of child pornography and investigated for conspiracy to rape, murder and actually cook and eat an identified, targeted child at his local church. But the quote makes a strong point anyway.Many youth organizations, religious and non-religious, perform criminal background checks of candidates and current employees. The problem is they’re usually worthless. Child predators, particularly relatively educated, middle-class white men with ties to the community and convenient covers for their methods, are usually not criminally versatile, meaning they don't engage in "typical crimes" like robbery, burglary, car theft, etc that are most often reported immediately (unlike child abuse, particularly sexual abuse). So between the very low rate of reporting child abuse and the low likelihood that it will be successfully prosecuted, there's nothing to alert well-intentioned leaders of youth groups that a certain candidate is dangerous. This played out exactly as expected in Brown's case where there was no footprint in the criminal law reflecting the reality of his pathology and intentions to act on it.Nevertheless, there were warnings.From the same article: “In 1998, a Pinellas County sheriff's deputy stopped Brown for a traffic violation and observed boy's underwear between his front seats. Brown said he used the underwear to dress his puppets. In 2010, Largo police were called to Brown's house by a neighbor who had suspicions about his habit of driving boys around. No arrest resulted.”Most likely, no blame lies with the police officers who were alerted to these facts but made no arrests. As is typical, Brown was ready with a plausible explanation on both occasions, the first a tragic 14 years before his arrest in 2012. I say tragic because although the Federal prosecutors who pursued Brown found no evidence of him actually harming children, it is at least quite possible that he did so to one degree or another given the access he created over the years through many different venues. His attorney insisted that Brown’s pathology was limited to fantasy, and thankfully this was challenged by the prosecution and the judge. But even in the court proceedings, the assumption by all parties (prosecution, defense and the bench) seemed to be that Brown had not yet acted on his impulses.Granted, that assumption is appropriate in terms of legal sanctions for Brown; he cannot be convicted or punished for what he might have done or wished he could have done. But the fact is, given how infrequently children report acts of abuse and how often men like Brown get away with them, we’ll likely never know for sure what he did over the many years his pathology evolved and metastasized. Brown alone drove groups of children to church in a van the church itself provided. He had them over for pizza and proselytizing.The pastor from Brown’s church, Randy Morris, where Brown was active for more than 15 years, stated that, to his knowledge, Brown was never alone “at the church, with any child, at any time.” I’m sorry, but that should be little comfort to parents whose children interacted with Brown over time. The more jaded among us (those who have, for example, seen Brown’s now vintage ventriloquism on the Christian Television Network) may assert that leaders and involved parents at Brown’s Gulf Coast Church were foolishly naive to give him any access to children, ever. After all, Brown did match every Internet child molester stereotype, right down to his trailer formerly shared with his parents and pet cat. But in fairness, the typical Evangelical pastor is often not the typical young adult on the internet looking to make fun of something salacious.Regardless, the question becomes whether a decision-making leader like Randy Morris should monitor people like Brown, with not only conviction records but also arrest records (they are public), and with any other available and potentially reliable information. The answer should be obvious.