Hmph, I’m afraid the only answer I could give is that its because some people are just fucking stupid.

The things some people are capable of never cease to appal me.

"Her father said the pregnancy and Caesarean section means the victim can never enjoy her childhood again because every time she dresses she can see the stretch marks and surgical scars."

ummmmm not because of the rapes? oh no, it's all about vanity and appearance to him. what about her f'n emotional scars?!?!

I think we all know the answer...

I wish they would have at least said "statutory rape." I did a quick search and it seems like the age of consent in SC is 14.

Gah.
Even the breaking story didn't call it rape.

I found one story that actually called it rape. Once. At the very end. When he admitted that he'd been raping her a couple times a week for two years.

I can't help but read the AP version and take away the impression that "Well, because she didn't complain, she wasn't really raped, it was, you know... sex."

I was going to say what honwood said... the rapes themeslves would be horrible traumatic. So would being the only pregnant 9-year-old at school. That had to be fun (but what am I saying? I'm sure the kids at school were really sweet ant sensitive about the whole thing).

On the slightly-bright side, the headline at CNN.com said "Man rapes, impregnates girl, 9, gets 25 years".

While there's a lot wrong with the entire article linked here, I have to wonder if the original headline was a combination of stupidity and subconscious sexism (I'm not saying that's okay or better, at all); I've seen a lot of really awful spelling/usage errors in online news articles from places like the AP and CNN. Not just little stuff, but headlines that made absolutely no grammatical or communicative sense whatsoever, like someone started writing a sentence and forgot halfway through what they were trying to say.

Honwood, I understand where you're coming from, but as someone who had cancer and a hysterectomy at a young age, I can say that, even though I am at peace with what happened to my body, the huge scar is a visible and painful reminder that triggers me to think about the cause of why I have it. I am in no way comparing the trauma of cancer to the severity of the trauma this poor little girl has endured from repeated rapings by this man, but I would say that the what the father is getting at is something similar to what I experience with my scars - a physical manifestation/reminder of physical abuse and permanent emotional damage. And I cam imagine that being 10-years-old and having to see stretch marks and a c-section scar would only add to how completely traumatized she already feels.

FWIW, I clicked the link for the AP story and was provided with this link to contact the news station:

http://www.wyff4.com/contactus/index.html

I emailed the station and said that I was appalled that they said "having sex with" instead of "raping" in their coverage of the story.

The good news: the bastard will rot away in jail for 25 years. None of this "consent" crap from the judge, who only said that he would shave some time off for admitting to the crime (which is at least less traumatic for the girl).

(Gotta celebrate victories when you get 'em, right?)

I agree with BabyPop. I had a tumour excised when I was 19, and I'm thankful that the scar is small, although my breasts are distinctly assymetrical. (It's fine under most clothing.) I'm not longer scared or pissed off (had some pretty lousy doctors), but I sometimes realise that I'm going to go through the rest of my life like that.

I imagine that, once the girl has received a lot of counseling, she can begin to process and cope with what happened to her. Unfortunately, every single morning, she'll have to deal with remembering it. There's no way for her to not think about being raped and bearing a child every single day.

So incredibly sad. I hope that his cellmates make him suffer.

To be fair, at least WYFF called it rape once in their coverage.

"He also admitted that rapes had been going on once or twice a week for about two years."

I wrote a letter to the AP asking about this, though. I'm wondering why they failed to call it rape or abuse, and I'm wondering why the WYFF article claims the abuse happened for two years, but the AP story says one.

Oh crap - I went to look for other coverage and found this:
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/feb/03021802.html

PREGNANT 9-YEAR-OLD RAPE VICTIM BEING USED TO PUSH ABORTION LEGALIZATION

This particular story is about abortion reform in Nicaragua but you can best bet the same insanity will soon visit our shores.

In the article Jessica posted, it says the rapist, "was arrested last year after doctors discovered the girl was at least seven months pregnant".

I know these are personal details that will probably never get answered (and probably shouldn't in the media), but didn't her parents notice that she was pregnant before that?! And I can only assume they are anti-abortion as, if they had known about it early enough, then she could have terminated the pregnancy.

But maybe they did not realize until she was, in fact, 7 months pregnant. Wow.

Although, if you want depressing, read this:
http://www.indexjournal.com/news/20070425c_n.html

The girl's grandmothers were both raped at young ages. It did not name her, but gave the names of her family members (like it's hard to figure this out now).

Since the crime, the penalty in NC has been increased to life in prison.

Since the trial, the girl has been removed from her home:

The three daughters (including the victim) belonging to the victim’s mother — all half-sisters with differing fathers — have been removed from the home and separated since the incident occurred.
The victim is now living with her father, while her two siblings continue to be cared for by other family members.
The victim’s mother, Barbara Jones, said the emotional trauma placed on the family will remain long after the shocking case has faded from the public memory.
“Those girls have been split up now because of this,� she said. “That baby is still my grandchild and I will never even be able to see him.�

There has to be some other issue going on there - perhaps the rapist knew the mother? Who even has access to a 9-year-old that often?

Are the parents of the little girl being charged? Because who lets a 9 year old stay pregnant? That is unacceptable.

Here's another really depressing thing about this. The rapist is only 26. He got 21 years in prison. This miscreant will only be 47 years old when he gets out.

He took this girl's life from her and he should be in prison for life. It's just sickening because anyone sick enough to repeatedly rape a child is, statistically speaking, almost certain to rape more when freed.

oenophile, I found this, indicating he was the victim's stepfather. Fucking hell.

And as I was reading all about this, I was thinking, "at least the parties involved aren't heming and hawing over the custody/grandkid thing." Silly me.

If the girl was living with her mother and this was her stepfather, who was also living with her, I find it really fucking hard to believe the mother had no idea this was happening to her daughter. Jesus H. Chris. Abortion =\= immoral. Rape (of a small child) = okay until they get "caught"?

Beh. I should really preview first. Sorry - I think you know what I'm getting at, though.

tiny update that makes me feel a little better
" The penalty for Ronca’s crime — first-degree criminal sexual misconduct — has stiffened since his arrest, from a maximum of 30 years in prison to a new maximum penalty of life imprisonment."

It's all in the timing.

I would assume the mother is a long time victim of sexual abuse who has never gotten help for her own issues. Now she left 3 daugthers to continue that legacy (if you assume this guy raped all the girls).

Tragic

So the baby would not only have been Barbara Jones' (the victim's mother) grandchild, it also would have been her stepchild? Fucking hell, this and that story of the freshly integrated prom are illustrating the worst of the stereotypes about the South.

Are the parents of the little girl being charged? Because who lets a 9 year old stay pregnant? That is unacceptable.

Huh? As everyone here knows, I don't mind, as a policy or moral matter, abortion in the case of rape or for children (IMO, it's a per se extenuating health issue to be pregnant that young).

The parents did not know until the baby was viable - 7 to 8 months along. Are they REQUIRED to get her abortion at that late stage?

I can kind of understand the lack of notice about pregnancy. If my little sister got chunky, my first thought would not be pregnancy. Likewise, if a 9 year old is not having periods, it's probably because she was 9. This little girl may have never had a period (quite likely if she was being raped from age 7 onwards).

At 7-8 months, it makes sense to continue the pregnancy - her baby is viable at that point.

BabyPop, I suspected that the rapist was somehow related to or involved with the mother (a lot of creeps ferret out single mothers to gain access to their children). Sick, sick, sick.

I can understand why the relationship wasn't advertised in all media, though - again, it's a way to find out her identity, which should (IMO) be protected at all costs.

so many things just so wrong and so sad here, but i have to say my favorite line from the ap story was this:

The judge gave him five years less than the maximum because he admitted to the crime and apologized to the girl's family.

ew. this guy deserved every day in prison he could have gotten under the law. i don't care what sort of admission or gesture of remorse he made. like this scumbag wouldn't have kept on raping this poor girl if she hadn't gotten pregnant. he's just sorry he got caught and is going to jail.

It really sounds like there is something wrong with the overall family, if this guy was in fact her stepfather.

I'm saddened that this little girl had to go through this and hope that she gets the emotional help she needs.

At least CNN is reporting it as rape.

That poor girl.

Thanks for the link, BabyPop.

Sadly, this isn't the first time I've seen the rape of a child "reported" this way in the media.

The most generous explanation for the headlines is that in South Carolina, the most serious sexual offense (what would colloquially be called rape) is officially called "criminal sexual conduct" in the statute. The writers, I hope, were just lazy and took the term from the court transcript.

Also, I read the father's comments about the scar as meaning that they remind her of the whole ordeal, not just the delivery.

God, poor thing.

I sent an e-mail to the link above and got this reply, a few minutes ago:

This has been the wording of the story since 1 pm today:

http://www.wyff4.com/news/12998664/detail.html

The wording was originally chosen because of the indication that a
variety sexual activities had occurred and it was chosen in an effort to
be inclusive. After careful consideration, we changed the word to rape
to be sure the nature of the crime was clear. It was changed hours ago.

But it still does say "having sex" in one place. Besides which, as I told her in my reply, this explanation makes no sense. How is "having sex" more inclusive than "raping" or "sexually assaulting"?

WTF.

That is a totally nonsensical explanation.

"The girl's grandmothers were both raped at young ages."

"I would assume the mother is a long time victim of sexual abuse who has never gotten help for her own issues."

Maybe Jones was conceived during a similar rape, whether or not she was sexually abused herself?

That could explain both why she didn't let her daughtr have an abortion ("if my mom had an abortion then I wouldn't be here!") and why she let her husband rape her daughter ("if my dad didn't rape then I wouldn't be here!").

The whole situation sounds so extremely fucked up. The adults who are now taking care of this child and her infant are facing one hell of a task. I hope they manage to give her whatever it is she needs to pull through with her sanity intact. My thoughts are with her and them.

When I was 9, I didn't even need a bra. I climbed trees. I was in ballet. I wore t-shirts with kitties on them. I was reading "The Boxcar Children." I keep asking myself how this 9 year old could possibly endure this.

I've read so many articles on how Britney Spears and low-rider jeans are robbing children of their childhood. So where is the outrage at this most unthinkable crime? This girl can never be normal. When something as horrific as this is diminished, it diminishes all victims of sexual violence.

When I was 9, I didn't even need a bra. I climbed trees. I was in ballet. I wore t-shirts with kitties on them. I was reading "The Boxcar Children." I keep asking myself how this 9 year old could possibly endure this.

I've read so many articles on how Britney Spears and low-rider jeans are robbing children of their childhood. So where is the outrage at this most unthinkable crime? This girl can never be normal. When something as horrific as this is diminished, it diminishes all victims of sexual violence.

When I was 9, I didn't even need a bra. I climbed trees. I was in ballet. I wore t-shirts with kitties on them. I was reading "The Boxcar Children." I keep asking myself how this 9 year old could possibly endure this.

I've read so many articles on how Britney Spears and low-rider jeans are robbing children of their childhood. So where is the outrage at this most unthinkable crime? This girl can never be normal. When something as horrific as this is diminished, it diminishes all victims of sexual violence.

It is situations like this, where there seemingly can be no way one could blame the victim, where, when victims are blamed or the events are called anything other than "rape," the deeply ingrained mechanisms to protect rapists and rape-culture becomes clear.

A few years ago, when the rapes of babies were increasing in shanty towns in South Africa, one couldn't blame the babies, of course, but one could blame the mothers for leaving their children vulnerable to attack. Anything to protect men from taking responsibility for rape. Patriarchy.

Now, in this case, in the USA it is difficult not to point to the mother for not picking up on the serial rape of her child, but again THE MAN RAPED THE CHILD. Responsibility is on him and stopping rape starts with MEN--good MEN, men who would never rape and who aren't paranoid about "false accusations." Men who are willing to stop the locker room conversations that makes rape into a joke or who see fuckwits like those above who make sport out of rape and say, that's not funny, Rape ISN'T FUNNY.

The news media, calling it "sex" and not "rape" is that knee-jerk attempt to protect rape culture, to erase or qualify rape as something else or an "indiscretion" or "failure of judgement" rather than the heinous crime it is. Good men and women are needed to remind our media reporters/writers of their better natures--of what is ethical and what is wrong. Its up to all of us to say when something we see in this world is wrong, but it is the special responsibility of GOOD men to do this when they are among men, when they have their private conversations, when they're joking around, etc. Women can't stop rape, it has to be approached as a human issue--which it is--and it needs honest and forth-right words and actions to accomplish its abolition.

Hah! This is the change that was made when I pointed out that the article still said "having sex" in one place:

Arrest warrants said that Ronca had been "having sex with the girl" for more than a year, and told her not to tell anyone.

Of course I wrote her another e-mail telling her that apologetic quotes are inadequate to correct the problem, and that journalists ought to be more concerned with accuracy and non-bias.

While obviously the man who did this deserves the vast majority of the blame here, I also kind of agree that seeing as its a rape "culture" you can't totally separate the culture out. I was one of those who had a negative reaction to the father's quote. Of course you never know what else he might have meant or said, b/c the media is so selective with quotes, but if that /was/ all he said, it way downplays the rape aspect. I think about my dad, who might want to be sympathetic in a case like this but who is just not a feminist and just would not fully understand the psychology of being a female victim of a sex crime. And I also agree that even if she was 7 months pregnant, if she was my little girl or my little sister I would have wanted her to have an abortion. Giving birth is not only extremely painful and difficult (not that rape isn't), it is life-threatening, especially when you're too young.

I'm willing to bet that with all the other fucked-up elements of this family not-withstanding, they are also pretty socially conservative people.

Awesome Kattyben! Keep at 'em. I didn't even GET a reply to my email!

He received a lighter sentence because he apologized to the the "girl's family." To her FAMILY? What? they own her? There is a whole lot of parsing to do here.

I'm so relieved to see that other people are enraged by the use of such dismissive language by the media.

Not too long ago, in Québec, a man was found guilty of sexually assaulting his girlfriend's 12 year-old daughter. Her mother found out about the assaults when the daughter became pregnant. A crime journalist from a prominent French-language newspaper, La Presse, named her article on this incident "En prison pour avoir fait un enfant à une fille de 12 ans" (approximately: "Thrown in jail for making a child to a 12 year-old girl").

The rest of the article (http://www.cyberpresse.ca/article/20070317/CPACTUALITES/703170753/0/LADISCUTER07) trivialized the accident, and faintly suggested that the child had somehow "consented" to being assaulted.

When I wrote to La Presse to complain about it, they told me in one brief sentence that they had to respect a word count limitation.

By the way, the offender in this case only got 42 months, which is utterly ridiculous, but relatively harsh, in Canadian standards. The net of criminal liability for sexual crimes is broader north of the border, but the sentences are ridiculously low.

On another note, the age of consent is Canada is 14 yo (with adults, except if the adult in question is in a position of authority). Minors under 14 can consent to sex with other minors from 12 yo, but until they're 14, they can only consent if their partner is no more than 2 years their elder.

oenophile, I'm not quite sure what you mean by this:

"Because who lets a 9 year old stay pregnant?"

Are you advocating forced abortion because of her age?

Pockysmama,

I think the family perhaps did not provide her the option of having an abortion. I think oenophile (or at least myself) would like to have seen a family being encouraging/supporting of an abortion at that age. Now, if for whatever reason the 9 yr-old desperately did not want an abortion, that would be one thing. But you really would not expect the 9 yr-old to have strong pro-life/abortion is immoral tendencies on her own unless she was raised to believe those things, would you?

Pockysmama,

I think you are referring to Livia38's comment; I responded to her (she thinks the parents ought to be charged for not forcing an abortion).

JustAnotherJane,

I am right there with you. I was a tree climbing, "Bocar Children" reading 9 year old myself.

I cannot even imagine the horrors that child had to endure; both before and after giving birth. To not only have to go through the ongoing sexual abuse/assault but then to have her entire family torn apart? She did absolutely nothing wrong and now she is torn from her sisters, torn from the child she carried to term, torn from her mother?

I'm just trying to put myself in her shoes, where even after enduring the unspeakable acts she most likely still views her mother as, well...a mother. And the baby she had is her child, no matter how f'd up it is.

Jeez, that is just absolutely heart-wrenching.

What a confusing and horrible thing to go through. I can only hope that she is in the care of a family who is capable of providing a wonderful home for her as well as people who are prepared to deal with the massive healing process in store.

...and I hope that it's true what I hear happens to child molesters in prison -- they get the shit beat out of them constantly.