Vachss

"When we find evil and violence coalescing within an individual, then the only sane self-protective goal is incarceration. To do that consistently rather than episodically we need to take the self-interest out f collaboration. And we need to look at what we are doing to spawn such sympathies.
We have allowed sex crimes to be the one area of criminality where we judge the offense not by the perpetrator but by the victim. There is an essential difference between sex crimes and other crimes, but it has nothing to do with victims. Most other crime is in response to a need that the offense itself seeks to meet. (Some) people kill because they are angry. (Some) people steal because they want money. But as each rape is committed, it creates a greater need. Rape is dose-related-- it is chronic, repetitive... and always escalating.
Rapists cross a line-- a clear, bright line. Absent specific, significant, predictable consequences, they are never going to cross back. Too often, instead of consequences what we give them is permission.
Collaboration is a hate crime. When a jury in Florida acquits because the victim was not wearing underpants, when a grand jury in Texas refuses to indict because as AIDS-fearing victim begged the rapist to use a condom, when a judge in Manhattan imposed a lenient sentence because the rape of a retarded, previously victimized teenager wasn't "violent," when an appellate defense attorney vilifies a young woman on National TV for the "crime" of having successfully prosecuted a rape complaint, when a judge in Wisconsin calls a five-year-old "seductive"-- all that is collaboration, and it is antipathy towards victims so virulent that it subjects us all to risk."


December 31, 2003