This is indeed a sad situation. He's actually been in jail for some time now and recently lost his appeal.

The whole thing rests on a very clear (albeit ridiculous) law that put him jail because of her age (she was 15). Incidentally, he probably would have gone to jail no matter who was servicing whom, because of the way the law was written. All that mattered was that there was sodomy involving a 13-16 year old.

And the saddest part is that the law has since been changed, though it was specifically enacted to not be retroactive. So the Georgia legislature had the chance to save this kid, but did not.

What amazes me is that at the same time you get a case like this one: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_12_17-2006_12_23.shtml#1166557915

Something needs to be done to overhaul this kind of idiocy...

Incidentally, he probably would have gone to jail no matter who was servicing whom, because of the way the law was written.

I'm sure you're right...but I just wonder if anyone would have bothered to bring charges in the first place if there was a video of a girl getting head as opposed to a guy...

Oh, and not to mention...compare that with the Haidl case in Orange County. Now why is it that in each case a video of the event in question fails to result in the correct conviction?

This is why I keep arguing for lower age of consent laws. 15-year-old girls give blowjobs consensually all the time. I realize that the people who write these laws tend to be on the puritan side of things, but there ought to be a hard limit to magical thinking even in politics.

(Sorry so many posts; feel free to combine or something.)

I've always thought that if both are under 18 then no penalties unless there's a greater than 4-5 year age diff, if one is under age then have it as a misdemeanor (and no sexual predator listing) if less than 4-5 year age diff, felony if greater. That seems to me a fair covering of the issues involved while addressing the power play that comes in when one is significantly older than the other. The new law actually sounds like it's pretty reasonable in this direction, which makes this whole thing even more weird.

I just wonder if anyone would have bothered to bring charges in the first place if there was a video of a girl getting head as opposed to a guy...

Yeah, somehow I doubt it. The whole reason the police got involved in this instance is because one of the girls involved woke up and called her mom. She thought she might have been raped, so they went to the hospital and the cops were notified. After seeing the video, this girl has said that she did consent, etc.

Just some more background for you, since I've been following this one for a while.

BEG, it goes like this. Women can't really consent to sex. If you have sex with an underage girl, then it's necessarily a violation of their parents' property rights. If you have sex with a girl who's not underage, then even if she doesn't want it, it's your God-given right as a man.

And if you're a woman, you should go back to the kitchen instead of commenting on blogs.

BEG: The old law made it molestation to engage in intercourse with someone under the age of 16. The absolute or relative age of the partner didn't matter. And as if that wasn't weird enough, it was aggravated molestation to engage in sodomy (as happened here). That is, Wilson would have been better off sleeping with the girl.

The amended law now has more sensible language that considers the age difference and also makes the crime a misdemeanor instead of a felony.

Ah yes, the zero tolerance society. Looking through an unrelated fact sheet on insane drug sentences, the average prison sentence in the mid-90s for a rapist was 6 years, 7 months. Well, at least the prison construction industry in Georgia is happy.

Also, since the poor kid's legal options are all but spent, the best option is to convince the Georgia legislature to rethink things.

So sign the petition his lawyer has going.

I've always thought that if both are under 18 then no penalties unless there's a greater than 4-5 year age diff, if one is under age then have it as a misdemeanor (and no sexual predator listing) if less than 4-5 year age diff, felony if greater.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want the people I had sex with when I was 17 to go to jail.

I tend to like Canada's law: if one partner is over 18 and another is under 16, or one is over and one is under 14, then it's statutory rape.

Alon, that's more or less what I was advocating. Statutory rape is a far lesser charge than rape (misdemeanor vs felony).

I find it pretty insulting that any teen girl who has sex is an automatic victim.

I see some foreshadowing. Isn't that the same line many misogynists make when they whine about the 'unfairness' of the boundaries of what does and does not constitute rape? I wouldn't be surprised if we find on another forum a bunch of whiny-assed guys will be complaining that the judge has been manhandled by feminists into thinking all girls are victims during sex.

Some of the states laws concerning this sort of behaviour are appaling, and a travesty of justice. I really don't see how anyone can not see the sense in "grey area" laws that allow teens to actually date teens.

My heart goes out to this kid.

Apparently, he also gets to be a registered sex offender when he gets out of jail. The kid is going to be a MESS. How do they expect him to be a productive member of society? Moralizing is not the best way to run a state.

Although tRJ's details are interesting. Was this a case of her actually consenting, or just appearing to consent and then backing down?

Aerik-

I can almost guarantee that that discussion is going on right now. It's almost like a physical law of the internet, for every news article hosted, some people are using it to draw the wrong conclusions.

So sign the petition his lawyer has going.

Isn't that ex post facto?

Was this a case of her actually consenting, or just appearing to consent and then backing down?

Read the ruling. The court found that it was voluntary but still imposed a ten year sentence.

Ex post facto only applies where a *penalty* becomes retroactive. There's no miscarriage of justice where, after it's been decided that a law is wrong, people who broke the unjust law are not prosecuted for it. If there were, there would be no point in appealing a criminal conviction on constitutional grounds. The judge/justice might rule in your favor, but then the prosecutor could cry "ex post facto" and the ruling would only help people who committed the crime in the future.

Actually, this view that teenage girls can't consent to sex is closely couples to the sex crime view of rape. If rape is a violent crime (or for that matter a hate crime), then there's consensual sex, which has nothing to do with rape and should be completely legal, and rape, which has nothing to do with socially unapproved sex and should be illegal. But if rape is a sex crime, then the exact set of acts performed matters while consent doesn't; hence, socially unapproved sex should be treated as rape, while rape should be treated as mere socially unapproved sex.

Having a 14yo daughter (she'll be 15 in a few weeks), I'm of a few different minds here.

In ethics, we're taught that true consent can only happen if the parties are a) able to clearly understand the risks, benefits and consequences of their actions b) able to freely agree or decline. We classify people under the age of 18 as minors because as a society, we don't think that a person has enough experience to do point a above reliably. There's a decent body of neuroscientific evidence showing that the parts of the brain involved with risk assesment, impulse control, and setting limits are in fact still developing in teenagers.

Additionally, youth and inexperience are widely seen as risk factors for being coerced, which violates B above.

Question 1: Should the Govt attempt to protect minors from SEX? IMHO, there should be laws in place that punish adults for using minors in a coersive fashion. If it were a 19yo, or a 49yo, with the 15yo, it would be easier to see this as a situation where true consent may not have been possible.

Q2: Is there any reason to beleive that a 17yo is that much better at decision making than the 15yo? Uh, considering that a video was made, and everything else that has gone on, there seems to be lots of dubious judgement involved.

I think both minors are probably in need of some other kinds of interventions, which jail definitely won't help with.

Er, whoops, what I meant to say was, there would be no point in appealing a criminal conviction on the grounds that the law under which you were convicted was unconstitutional.

"But if rape is a sex crime, then the exact set of acts performed matters while consent doesn't; hence, socially unapproved sex should be treated as rape, while rape should be treated as mere socially unapproved sex."

I don't think I understand what you mean by the "sex crime view"... no matter what "sort" of a crime something is, there is still room for a mens rea requirement, sometimes for the victim as well as the perpetrator. My putting my hand on your thigh is battery unless you consent to it. Your having sex with me is rape unless I consent to it. I don't understand why defining it as a crime of sex, rather than a crime of violence, would change the fact that consent is the pivotal issue.

Ah, okay... fair enough, TLF.

Jessica thank you for posting this. I work in criminal defense and I often feel conflicted about the way that feminist concerns about the particular kinds of violence levied against women has been co-opted by "tough on crime" politicians, judges, and prosecutors and has led to some really fucked up policies that do not help women or anyone. Somehow a lot of this shit seems to come from Georgia, like the recent law passed saying no registered sex offender can live within 1000 ft. of a school bus stop, meaning almost nowhere in the state. I've had loads of clients who are registered sex offenders and treated as pariahs for the rest of their lives; there is this widespread but underexplored idea that people found guilty of sex-related crimes are somehow more depraved and less rehabilitable than other criminals. I actually think that hyper-pathologizing sex crimes is very counter-productive and shuts down any hope of individual progress or conversion of people who have committed sexual violence in the past. This is a tragedy and I hope it advances our conversations about ending violence against women without adding to the violent prison-industrial complex.

Alon, I wasn't talking about the 15 year old. I was talking about the other 17 year old girl he had sex with that night.

From an ABC article:

In a portion of a tape obtained by "Primetime," Wilson, then 17 and an honor student and star athlete who was homecoming king, is seen having intercourse with a 17-year-old girl, who was seen earlier on the bathroom floor. During the sex act, she appears to be sleepy or intoxicated but never asks Wilson to stop. Later on in the tape, she is seen being pulled off the bed.

He was acquitted of that crime, but it still sounds very sketchy to me. When I brought this up, it didn't have anything to do with the case of the 15 year old, which I believe is ridiculous.

On Canada's consent laws: The age of consent is 14 unless someone is in a position of power or authority over them, in which case it is 18. There is even a 2 year exemption for people under the age of 14. Interestingly, the consent age for anal sex is 18.

The current discussion is to move the baseline consent age to 16, and implement a 5-year exemption for 14 and 15 year old, ie. a 14 year old could engage with someone who is 19. This will likely pass soon.

There's some state, I think Utah (and maybe others but I've only heard of one)? that has so-called "Romeo and Juliet laws" saying that statutory rape laws don't apply with an age difference of five years or less.

However, the law is worded heteronormatively, so a 19 year old boy went to jail a couple years ago for having consensual sex wth his 15 year old boyfriend.

Cassandra--

in the case of the heteronormative law, did the defendant try to make an equal protection appeal? I would think that Lawrence v. Texas would make that argument pretty easy to pull off.

There's some state... that has so-called "Romeo and Juliet laws" saying that statutory rape laws don't apply with an age difference of five years or less.

Georgia added a Romeo and Juliet provision to its law earlier this year, but specified that it would not apply retroactively. Under the law now in place, Wilson would have been guilty of a misdemeanor and would have served, at most, 12 months in prison. He's on Month 22 right now.

I think that the fact that both girls from what I've read from you guys were not in the best positions to consent (the 17 year old seemed sleepy and intoxicated, and the 14 yr old didn't remember what happened). Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like that would be a non-cansenting atmosphere. of course then you'd need to see what state the boy was in too. This whole situation seems more sticky now that the situation was a little more "dangerous?" if thats the right word. Well either why if everything was very consentual (everyone was in their right minds) I don't think that this kid should be getting jail time or the label as a sexual offender.

BEG, the defendants of the Haidl case and the Missbrenner case in Illinois made the victim look like she asked for it, was a slut, wanted to be a porn star, etc. Society blames rape victims and this is why most women do not report to the police or press charges. The Missbrenner defendants got off scot free unlike the Haidl case because the Illinois victim refused to watch the video of her own gang rape. Idiocy, indeed.

Here's what it seems to boil down to:

If the woman cries foul, ie she did not consent, the man will get off.

If she says she consented, they'll put the man away for years.

That certainly seems to sum up what happened here and in other cases.

I expect selective reporting from MSM, but not Feministing. Overlooked in this story is that there was more than one victim. There was the girl on the video, who was lucid, not intoxicated, etc. She wasn't the one that alerted the authorities. The one who blew the whistle was the second girl who was stoned, drunk and blacked out what happened. That night, five men, one of which was the defendent, had sex with her. And no, the prosecution couldn't get the rape charge to stick, so they charged him with aggravated molestation, ie being on the receiving end of oral sex with a minor.

Everyone is screaming "injustice" in reference to this case. He was railroaded! Here's justice for you: you don't want to go to jail, don't gang bang a 15 year old girl who's stoned and drunk.

Save your pity and your righteousness for a more deserving cause.

Jane, Wilson doesn't deserve to sit in prison for a consensual sex act. What happened with the other girl (which a jury agreed was not rape) doesn't change the absurdity of the sentence he got.

i agree trj. i had sex at 15 and while you may not like the idea of it as a mother, you have to grasp the fact that 15 year olds can make informed decisions and even at an older and wiser 25 i find people like jane disgustingly condescending for thinking that all teenagers need to be protected.

in ny, the age of consent is 17 (which blows the whole "society decided it was 18 for a reason-SO arbitrary FYI- out of the water). also, you have to be more then 3 years apart precisely so things like this dont happen. SAVE YOUR pity for girls who are raped jane, which is not this case.

this boys life is ruined and although no one said that you didnt potentially make bad choices at 15, they are still your choices and no one should be in jail for 10 years. for the love of god, people make just as bad choices at 30 and no one ends up in jail.

personally, i find it horrifying when feminists defend women in the name of "protection" at all costs, and completely overlook any other perspective. ugh.

trj,

true or false: Wilson, along with 4 other individuals, fucked a girl who was stoned and drunk.

true or false: if all Wilson did that night was receive a blow job, he'd be in jail today

The issue has a context. And if you strip the issue from its context, you lose its meaning. That's what MSM has done, and that's what you're doing. They're plenty of randy teenagers giving and receiving blow jobs with impunity. There's probably one getting off right now. No one cares. There's a reason this guy is in jail.

jane. thats not why he was convicted genius. furthermore, i have had sex TONS of times stoned and drunk and frankly,i t was all consensual. personally, for me, if you make the choice to drink and then make the choice to engaged in sexual acts its still a choice . unless of course you are completely out of your mind drunk. that is not the idea i am getting from this case though.

stop with the "we need to protect helpless 15 year olds cause they cant make their own choice" crap. ugh.

katie, with five guys in one night? According to this article http://www.atlantamagazine.com/article.php?id=158 , five men, including the defendent, had sex with the other girl, Michelle. She blacked it out cause she was shitfaced. And of course Wilson wasn't convicted of rape. Just like you said, plenty of chicks get wasted and voluntarily consent to sex. Hard to prove it was anything else when you can't remember anything.

female autonomy is just the scariest thing, huh?

i have known girls to have sex with 5 guys in one night. and lets reiterate that if they thought it was rape THATS HOW it would have been prosecuted and rightfully so. a girl can make absolutely dumb choices b ut its not rape. although i have known girls to make choices like that and say it was rape and ruin the guys life. thank god that is the exception and far from the rule.

katie, he was charged with rape. and tried for rape. They couldn't get a conviction. Like I said, cause she couldn't remember. Actually that's the crux of the legal case. The prosecution used the molestation statute as a fallback in the event it couldn't get a conviction on rape. This is the issue that was before the Georgia Supreme Court. (It declined to rule on it.)

The angle that MSM and you've seized upon takes the conviction completely out of context. It's sensational and easy to understand but doesn't tell the whole story. And now the feminist community is rallying around some guy who gang banged a girl who was drunk and stoned.

Jane, the molestation charge was not a "fallback." They were two separate charges, relating to two different girls. He was found not guilty of raping one girl, and then found guilty of molesting the other girl. There really isn't a context issue. They were two discrete charges.

sorry jane. just cause i am a feminist doesnt mean i stand up for women regardless of facts. like i said before, i would stand up for women in most cases given the facts on rape being an underreported and underconvicted crime but just cause shes a woman doesnt mean i will stand up for her cause she cried rape. also, as like i said, you can make bad choices when you are drunk and stoned but it doesnt mean it wasnt a choice.

honestly, i think it is the way society treats womens sexuality that accounts for most of the false accusations of rape (and there arent many). a woman has sex with many men and shes considered a slut and is compelled to say it was rape to save her 'reputation".

Katie, I know what you're trying to say, but dragging out the tired old rhetoric about women scrambling to save their reputations after a night of sexual indiscretions by declaring that they were raped just isn't helping.

I think that the sentence, considering the charge, is ridiculous. And I don't think that throwing charges at a defendant until something sticks is a good legal practice. Based on what the jury foreperson said, that's not what happened in this case.

It sounds to me like a group of kids got together, got high, got drunk, and got it on. If, at any point, any of that activity wasn't consensual, then the perpetrator deserves to be punished for it, but in this case, it doesn't look like that's what happened. The jury viewed videotape of the incident and decided that the 17 year old hadn't been raped.

Hmm...wish I would have known all this background before posting. I have no idea what happened in this particular situation, but I stand by my statements about consent laws in general.

i know jenny which is why i said " isnt often". and i do think its a huge problem that women have to lie bc of societies view on our sexuality. or rather feel they have to lie. i cant imagine any feminist not thinking its a problem or a horrendous fact of the patriarchy. how mentioning that isnt helping i dont know. its more just a thought, albeit off topic.

i agree about consent laws as well.

I think Jane is basically right. There is a huge difference between a 17 year old who is a little loaded deciding to have group sex, which is absolutely fine by me and which IMO can not be criminally prosecuted after Lawrence v. Texas, and a seventeen year old sexually abused by five men when she is blackout drunk and too intoxicated to understand what is happening, which is rape in many states. The seventeen year old woman's level of intoxication may have posed a question of law, but I don't have a lot of doubt that all those guys knew she was too loaded to understand what they were doing or give meaningful consent.

A jury is not supposed to convict for one act because they can't agree on the criminality of another, but I suspect that's what heppened here. While I support a change in the law because I think oral sex between a fifteen year old and a seventeen year old is generally age-appropriate and in many cases will be really consensual, I think he was convicted because the jury generally thought he was a rapist for what he did with the older woman, but couldn't agree, and found that the clear violation of the overbroad SR law provided them an easier resolution.

I'm not on the injustice bandwagon. I think the case points out a problem with the statute, which it is my understanding has been fixed.

A not about drunken sex in coercive environments: I expect better of men than to line up to fuck completely loaded partners. I've waived off a threesome that I looked forward to for weeks because the prospective third had a third drink and I though her judgment was impaired (we're talking about a woman in her thirties here). I've got the highest sex drive of any het guy I know, so if I can make that call, I don't have a sympathetic ear for any other guy whining about having to forgo sex with a drunk partner, ever.

I don't think this is a case of someone having to lie, katie.

As I shared before:

In a portion of a tape obtained by "Primetime," Wilson, then 17 and an honor student and star athlete who was homecoming king, is seen having intercourse with a 17-year-old girl, who was seen earlier on the bathroom floor. During the sex act, she appears to be sleepy or intoxicated but never asks Wilson to stop. Later on in the tape, she is seen being pulled off the bed.

From that description, it is to me extremely debatable whether she was able to consent. Perhaps you have been willing to have sex while drunk and stone in the past, but were you just lying there, barely participating? Did someone have to pull you off the bed afterwards, because apparently you couldn't move on your own?

I know the jury decided she wasn't raped. I also know that the rape conviction rate is extremely low. I am the kind of person who almost always believes the woman, because I don't believe that claiming to be raped saves your reputation. It opens you up to be dragged through the mud and is extremely traumatic.

If there was in fact a rape, he should have been convicted of that crime. He should NOT have been railroaded on other charges relating to consensual sex. That is not how the justice system is supposed to work, and it was wrong. It also appears the jury was not given all the information on how to rule; they didn't know about the mandatory ten-year sentence. They likely expected he would get probation.

Lastly, there is the race element. I use to live in Georgia; it does not surprise me that this defendant was black. If the only thing different about him was that he was white (still an athlete, honour student, etc.) there's no doubt in my mind that they would have found a way to be more lenient. It's obvious from the Atlanta Magazine article that it does happen.

The jury foreperson made it clear that the jury didn't feel that the 17-year-old was raped. It doesn't make sense that the jury would acquit him on one charge an then convict him on another for no reason. They acquited him on the rape charge because they didn't think it was rape. They convicted him on the other charge because the law, while ridiculous, was clear.

It sounds like this is one of those cases where a saying I learned in law school is completely appropriate: hard cases make bad law.

Jane's brought up a pertinent issue -- it sounds like this guy probably is In Fact a rapist. On a personal level, this makes me feel less bad about his conviction.

However, for whatever reason, the system was unable to convict him of rape. I'll be the first to charge the system with incompetence when it comes to getting much-needed rape convictions, but at the same time, protections for the accused exist for a reason. One of the things that makes America a great country is the extensive protection we have for people accused of a crime. I know I wouldn't want it any other way.

Here we have a guy who by all accounts appears to be a scumbag rapist. This doesn't change the fact that he also received a consensually-administered blowjob. We *cannot* let the fact that he's a bad guy serve as the reason to sentence him for a crime he didn't commit. He did not engage rape the girl who gave him a blowjob. He probably raped someone else, but this is unproven. It hurts our credibility as a nation and as feminists to call for punishing him when he hasn't been proven guilty. We should instead focus on improving the quality of criminal prosecutions and ensuring that victims are heard but not intimidated.

The implicit suggestion that a girl should "know better" than to drink/get stoned if she doesn't want to get raped is probably the most troubling thing I've read on this thread. It's one thing to say the boy should not have been convicted on the lesser charge (which in this case, he should not have). It's quite another to say that a girl can "consent" to sex when she's passed out from drugs and drinking. Any person old enough to be having sex should know that you don't have sex with someone who isn't physically able to tell you "yes" or "no." As Thomas has said, you make damn sure that they've consented, or you just don't have sex. Period. It is not that hard. NO WOMAN GIVES UP THE RIGHT NOT TO BE RAPED SIMPLY BECAUSE SHE HAS A FEW TOO MANY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And apparently, this cannot be yelled enough times.

Thomas, agreed. I was just reacting to what I perceived as a one-sided reaction to the issue. Like OMG he's serving 10 years for getting a blow job!!! That's the tenor of the commentary I'd read elsewhere. I was hoping for a more nuanced analysis from a feminist blog.

And for the record, analyzing the statute in a vacuum with no context, I don't believe it's a bad law per se. Take, for example, a 15 year old who was molested by a family member, starting when she was a child. Is consent ever valid under those circumstances? I would argue no. The question then is how do you distinguish between "real" molestation and the benign encounters that so many here are arguing to defend as consensual. I can intuit the difference but how do you draft a law to do so?

who said you are asking for rape bc she had too many? i didnt see that anywhere.

jane, i dont care how old you are being moklested against ones will is always wrong. you dont need a special law for just young people for that.

i dont think she lied to save her reputation either personally. i really dont think that happens very often.

it is also dumb that anyone would do this if they werent sure she was truly consenting. i do have to say though, giving a blowjob takes effort, but its certainly not impossible that you arent too drunk to remember it or be forced.

law fairy, i love how you are like "it does a diservice to our country to not stand behind innocent until proven guilty yet you call the guy a scumbag rapist who probably raped someone else. i dont understand that.

i would be willing to bet that if he was white he wouldnt be convicted at all

katie, I'm talking about THE LAW. I'm not going to go around telling people what to think of the guy. What the law thinks of you and what people think of you are two ENTIRELY separate issues. No one has the right to a good reputation. Everyone has the right to a presumption of innocence in the eyes of the law.

TLF, exactly. She was apparently too drunk to be very responsive to anything, and it looks like the jury decided that because she'd been flirtatious earlier, got drunk, and didn't say NO, she wasn't raped.

This emphasis on the word no bothers me a little. Oftentimes, unwilling participants are simply too scared to say no. They could, like in this case, be incapacitated. I would rather implement proper sex ed with an extensive section on rape where everyone is taught that sex should only occur when there is enthusiastic consent from both parties. If teenagers were taught to look at the situation like that, we wouldn't have this problem.

Giving this young man such a harsh sentence for something that really shouldn't have been a crime at all does a disservice to justice and feminism. If there was rape, he should have been convicted OF THAT RAPE. It doesn't make me feel better that he ended up being punished anyway for something inconsequential. It angers me that it's so easy to disregard actual rape.

I'm also concerned about what's happened to the poor young lady in the meantime. Think about it: she claimed to have been raped, and her claim was ruled false, but she set off a chain of events that led to a beloved athlete (we know how much people love those athletes) being sent to jail for ten years. The consensus in the community is probably that if she'd kept her mouth shut, none of this would have happened. Life is probably very difficult for her right now.

katie, that's kind of absurd isn't it - not limiting a child molestation law to young people? I would think the question is: who's a child? at what age do you draw that line? I could imagine a teenager falling prey to a molester, e.g. if the perp is a repeat offender family member. But I can't imagine an adult needing the protection of a child molestation statute.

Thank you, Law Fairy.

We can't have a just civil society if we don't have rules that don't changed based on the situation. Prosecutors that botch their case shouldn't be allowed to just go fishing for charges.

Though this whole thing makes the legislature not making the revocation of the law retroactive a lot easier to swallow.

personally, i would like to see the video. i mean i cant imagine that if there was a video that it couldnt have obviously been rape. i mean what kind of people dont convict for rape when there is a video? that makes me sad for the justice system.

things for rape victims is always horrendous afterwards. there is a girl in my town who was raped by three men (sodomized too) at gunpoint while her boyfriend was made to watch. one pleaded guilty in exchange for a shorter sentence but the trial hasnt started yet. hes out around on the streets and she has seen him at the diner. i truly cant imagine. frankly, i would be beating the shit out of him if i saw him.

prairie, if you are incapacitated it should clearly be a no without having to say it. if you are too scared to say it well then i am not sure there is much we can do about that. its not the guys fault then unless the girl is clearly and obviously acting scared. its too bad people have to be told these things though.

prairielily - I feel bad for Michelle, the other victim too. Perhaps I identify with her a bit too strongly and that's where my editorialization is coming from.

well obviously children need more protection but my point was more pointing out that anyone can be molested. however, personally, i think a 15 year old is more then capable of saying no to unwanted touching. although i could be wrong given the psychodynamics of being a victim of molestation.

prairie, if you are incapacitated it should clearly be a no without having to say it. if you are too scared to say it well then i am not sure there is much we can do about that. its not the guys fault then unless the girl is clearly and obviously acting scared. its too bad people have to be told these things though.

This is why I'm focusing on enthusiastic consent. If a guy is groping a girl who isn't moving, that's not enthusiastic consent. It's enthusiastic when she says she wants him to touch her. If she fakes enjoyment, that's something else entirely, but what I'm talking about is teenagers being taught to mutually respect each other. If they understand that it is a violation to force themselves on someone who doesn't actively say they want it, there will be less cases of men begging ignorance and claiming that "she didn't say no."

The dictionary definition of consent is "yes." It's not "absence of no." I just wish that was the commonly held definition of it.

i like that point about yes is not the absence of no. you should use that all the time when talking about rape prairie. really makes sense.

if you are too scared to say it well then i am not sure there is much we can do about that. its not the guys fault then unless the girl is clearly and obviously acting scared. its too bad people have to be told these things though.

I find it difficult to conceive of a situation where a girl who is too scared to get a "no" out, but that the guy wouldn't be able to tell. Honestly, I have trouble of coming up with a situation where a guy legitimately can't tell that a girl isn't interested. A girl doesn't have to be sobbing or fighting or yelling "no" to get across that she's not interested, or that she's scared, or that she doesn't want to have sex. I think that prairielily's point is a tremendous one- that a woman hasn't said "no" doesn't mean that she's said "yes."
I really like that notion of enthusiastic consent. I guess that's probably the basis for my comments above- if a woman isn't enthusiastically returning an advance, I assume she's not interested, and take that as lack of consent. Maybe that's the problem- we've focused so much on "no means no" that people overlook that "lack of no doesn't mean yes." If you're trying to kiss someone and she keeps turning her head, or she's tense or she's just not returning your advances, then there's a pretty damned good possibility that she's not consenting. The fact that she hasn't screamed or said "no" or tried to fight you doesn't mean she's saying "yes."

Take, for example, a 15 year old who was molested by a family member, starting when she was a child. Is consent ever valid under those circumstances? I would argue no.

If you want to go into hypotheticals, you need not restrict yourself to 15-year-olds. Is the consent of someone who grew up in a fundamentalist household and was married off to an emotionally abusive husband at 19 ever valid?

The point that was made in "NO!" is good and apt here: "Yes" means yes. Everything else means NO. "I don't know" means NO. "Maybe" means NO. "I'm not sure" means NO. Silence means NO. And guess what? If men are confused, they should STOP and CLARIFY.

Regarding why the jury didn't convict him of the rape of the older woman: Zuz at Feministe (who is a lawyer, as I am) says the the Georgia statute does not provide for intoxication to eliminate consent. That explains a lot: if the jury saw that she was obviously too drunk to know what she was doing, and that he penetrated her in that condition, they may have believed that he was morally culpable of rape (I'm with them on that, as I said above) but that they were bound to acquit based on the law. They may have then felt pretty damned good about having a law to convict him of a sexual assault that was undisputed, even if its application to someone else would be unjust and even if the law should be changed (which, in the event, it has been).

The "no means no" issue did come up in this case. Apparently, when the defendant was first accused of rape, he said that he couldn't have raped the 17-year-old because he understands that no means no, but apparently doesn't understand that silence also means no. He was offered a plea deal, along with the other guys involved, but he refused on principle.

I don't know what deal was offered, but it seems likely that his sentence would be up by now. He could have continued on with his life if he hadn't been so pig-headed.

Did his attorney not inform him that the blow job charge was a slam dunk? Someone needs to be sued for incompetence.

Keshmeshi, the other kids who took the deal are serving 5-7 years and had to register as sex offenders. In Wilson's case, it was being labeled a child molester for the rest of his life that led him to refuse the plea.

Thomas, what you're saying isn't actually correct. Read this link for a reaction from the jury foreperson. The jury foreperson said that when the jury saw the tape, they all decided that it wasn't rape. You can be intoxicated and give consent in Georgia, but if you can prove that you're too intoxicated to provide consent, then it can still be considered rape.

I wish I had gotten in the fray earlier.

Anyway, I understand, and like, the idea of "enthusiastic consent," but I am worried about mens rea. If the offender believes that the victim has given consent, but the victim doesn't, is this rape, or a really, really bad misunderstanding?

Rape. This is but one problem with misogyny: men are always insisting that their "intent" trumps their impact. On women.

Here is something that is really fucked up. It was in the Austin news the other day. This guy only got probation, and I think his lawyer should go to hell:

A former Manor High School substitute teacher admitted in state district court Tuesday that he had oral sex with one student in 2004 and solicited oral sex from another in 2005.

Under a deal with prosecutors, Andre L. Jones was sentenced to 10 years of probation, his lawyer, Walter Prentice, said.

Jones, 27, pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a child and improper relationship between educator and student, both second-degree felonies, as well as criminal solicitation of a minor, a third-degree felony.

"I think this was a resolution that was good for everybody," Prentice said. "There was absolutely no allegation in any of the reports of any force or threats. The problem was . . . (the victims') ages."

In 2004, Jones told a student who was 16 that he would get her in trouble if she did not have sex with him, a police affidavit said. She told police that she performed oral sex on him in an art classroom.

The next year, a student who was 15 told school officials, and later police, that Jones called her out of a class to request oral sex from her, the affidavit said. She refused.

The girls' names are being withheld by the Austin American-Statesman because of the nature of the crimes.

I agree that the sentence seems entirely unreasonable for the crime in question (I am not going to get into whether or not the incident with the 17 year old girl was rape).

The fact of the matter is that, under the letter of Georgia law, the jury and judge in the case simply followed the letter of the law and really couldn't do much else. There's really three issues at play here:

- The prosecutors in the rape case with the 17 year old girl decided to also file lesser charges that would typically not have been filed in a similar situation. This is a questionable tactic from an ethical standpoint, but I believe it's also one which is commonly used to drive to plea bargains.

- Under the old law, what happened with the 15 year old clearly fell into the description of 'child molestatiton' (someone below the age of consent, which is 16 in Georgia, had sexual relations with someone above the age of consent). The old law set a minimum sentence of ten years. The original judge gave the lightest sentence that they were allowed to under law.

- If you read the appeals ruling, it states that the corrected child molestation law explicitly stated that old cases were not allowed to be revisited in the context of the new law. This means that the appeals judges were simply following the clear direction of the legislature in the new law.

Your outrage should not be directed at the judges involved in these trials. It should be directed at the prosecutors for using strong-arm tactics and, above all else, it should be directed at the Georgia legislature for creating a poor law to begin with, using a mandatory minimum sentence, and then for specifying in the revised law that old cases could not be revisited.

I suspect that this sentence would not have passed if it were not for the use of a mandatory minimum sentence in the law. Mandatory minimum sentences, like three-strikes laws, are often the root cause of bizarre cases like this one. When laws include them, it basically says that the legislature does not trust judges to make intelligent decisions. The hands of all the judges involved here were tied, and it is entirely the fault of the state legislature.

Sorry, L, legally intent is required. The whole point of the question is if the man has a guilty mind. Why not always make it murder when the person dies? The "impact" is the same.

I'm a bit wary of assuming so much about drunken teenagers. Seriously, you are going to have some bad calls in these situations, especially when dealing with teens just experiencing these things the first time. This doesn't give people a pass, but borderline calls will exist.

[The same applies to plea deals, though the lifetime badge of shame seems to be the determining factor here.]

I'm with those who are upset at the prosecution and the law overall. The jury isn't the one who handed down a 10yr sentence, sentences rarely the responsibility of juries per se. Ten years simply too excessive. If you killed someone, you tend not to get ten years, if it is let's say manslaughter or something.

(Seriously, would rape often get you that? It truly seems this was a stand-in for a rape conviction, which simply is an abuse of the law, even if not atypical.]

This is the problem btw with laws of this nature. They are open to abuse. But, I do think the context matters. If this person obtained a shorter sentence, many would be upset -- they don't want any punishment for a bj. But, this is not like any bj either.

Rape. This is but one problem with misogyny: men are always insisting that their "intent" trumps their impact. On women.

Does it mean you support making the penalty for manslaughter identical to the penalty for murder?

Li, in law, intent always trumps impact. That's why you don't go to jail for robbery when you accidentally pick up someone else's purse.

Anyway, I think that it might be a good idea to establish a law like manslaughter for rape (negligent rape?). It doesn't seem just to punish someone as a rapist for a misunderstanding, but it would create an incentive to be sure that you have obtained consent. The only problem I foresee is logistics.

alon, i think she meant people give men the benefit of the doubt when they say they didn't mean it. men say this whether rapes are "intentional" or "unintentional". even gang rapist and videographer greg haidl said (courtesy of the reclusive leftist):

“It was never my intention to hurt you and cause you pain. I can’t take back any negative feelings and emotions, and I’m sorry for that also.�

So apparently Greg just didn’t realize that being impaled on a pool cue might hurt. He had no idea that a lit cigarette in the vagina or anus might cause pain, not to mention permanent scarring. Poor Greg. He just didn’t know.

And in case you’re wondering if there’s any ambiguity about what’s on the tape, here’s what the jury foreman said about it:

“The tape proved they were guilty. If you show that video on the news, everybody’s view would be that these guys should hang. People would go crazy. You know what I mean? It was primal. It looked like savages having their way with a piece of meat.�

Six years.

I don't know... if that's what she meant, I don't have any disagreement. But she replied "Rape" to the question, "If the offender believes that the victim has given consent, but the victim doesn't, is this rape, or a really, really bad misunderstanding?"

And yeah, the six years part was really rich. As I noted a few days ago, the Haidl case was a brutal rape. Intent isn't determined by what you say; if a witness says he say you shoot someone a few times till he collapses and then stand over him and take a failure shot, no "I didn't mean it" defense will reduce your sentence.

"If the offender believes that the victim has given consent, but the victim doesn't, is this rape, or a really, really bad misunderstanding?"

It's rape because it's men's responsibility to understand what women are saying in a male privileged world. It's not our fault we're not understood. There's only so much women can do to educate about rape. Men should listen to feminists more and attack less.

Am I the only one who wonders if consent was meaningful from the 15-year-old? Five guys are gang-raping the 17-year-old. I'm reminded of the recent Maryland case where the question devolved down to "can she take back consent?", although she's just been raped, so I'd doubt "consent" no matter what she said. It seems to me highly doubtful whether performing the blow jobs (one after the other down the line) wasn't a calculated decision to reduce the risk of rape.

I'm sorry this rapist got ten-years for child molestation, rather than rape, but if the jury can't discern rape in the video, I seriously doubt their conclusion that the oral sex was consensual.