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.