Rape/Sexual Assault Culture

Well it is the era that we now live. good or bad.

 

I have a question for the resident law experts:

Specifically it's about the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker who has been redubbed as the Golden State Killer. He was found through DNA profiles and genealogical websites earlier this year. But the crimes he is being charged with are just the murders he is responsible for. This is because the 50 rapes he also committed prior to that have exceeded the statute of limitation.

My question was this: if the East Area Rapist had never turned into the Original Night Stalker or Golden State Killer, if his crimes had remained limited to just rape and not murder, would this mean that the guy would have just walked even with his identity finally being revealed? Or would he have been charged with something else?

And is there a serial offender like that who has kept his freedom in spite of eventually having been caught?

 

https://thinkprogress.org/the-butcher-of-usc-1f01fa23ad82/

Ten weeks ago, an LA Times investigation revealed that Tyndall allegedly sexually harassed and abused patients at USC for three decades. University officials admit they were notified of Tyndall’s behavior as far back as 2000. Victims allege they notified officials in the medical center about the abuse as early as 1991. And yet he continued to work until 2017, when the university allowed him to retire quietly, with pay, after an internal investigation found evidence of misconduct.

 

It does seem strange that there's a statute of limitations for a crime like rape. It's not like the victim gets over it any more after 10 years than they did after, say, 9 years.

What's the point of introducing an arbitrary cut-of, for ANY reason, for a crime like rape?

 

Pretty unique circumstances, no? I mean here we have essentially two technological advances at once, one making it possible to say with almost absolute certainty that this is the guy if he can be found (DNA analysis) and one making it possible to find him through his relatives even if he himself has never been looked at (DNA database expansion.)

Future cases will be increasingly apt to be caught before the statute of limitations expires-- the database is going to continue to expand.. This is in affect a temporary accident of progress, a donut hole, not a chronic injustice

And we can expect civil actions against anyone similarly exempt from prosecution due to their relative restraint-- mostly those do not have temporal boundaries, I believe (?) so it should be possible to ruin what is left of a perp's life, through lawsuits, anyway...

And then there's always karma-- he's apt to be reborn as a pretty girl in Rwanda or Bosnia or Nanking or some such place...

 

Thanks for the information.

 

I'm not trying to minimize the crime of rape, but there are a lot of crimes that can affect victims for the rest of the lives that have statutes of limitation attached to them in various jurisdictions.

Getting beat within an inch of your life, child abuse, kidnapping, financial crimes that leave someone in ruin, etc.

 

Child abuse also doesn't have a statute of limitations over here and, tbh, I think that's the correct position.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33482619

As I said, what precisely is the point of having a statute of limitations for crimes like this? I can see how it can be difficult to prosecute someone successfully but, so WHAT? That could be the case one day SHORT of, say, a 10 year period. The idea it changes one day AFTER seems a bit daft, to say the least.

It also means that people are less likely to come forward for offences that happened to them in a period before the SOL ends because, what's the point of re-living an event if you won't get justice, even it means your evidence might support someone ELSE who's also been raped.

 

I'm not following the logic that an SOL creates an environment in which victims are less likely to come forward before the SOL, but I'm all ears.

My thoughts on a statute of limitations:
-a period of time of 10 years or in the case of childhood things 10 years from the date of adulthood doesn't deny the alleged victim the right to go to law enforcement to pursue charges.

-no SOL in cases of death is a no brainer to me because the victim is denied the right (by virtue of being dead) to come forward.

-not having an SOL allows the alleged victim to defer coming forward/prosecution. This is often to their detriment but also to the detriment of a wrongfully accused defendant. The risk of incorrect acquittal/wrongful conviction increases because different types of evidence (both exculpatory and inculpatory) deteriorates at different rates. Bak records, witnesses recollections, ability to locate witnesses, camera footage, email correspondence, etc.

-criminal justice IMO is supposed to be rehabilitative rather than punitive. If you do something awful as a drug addicted 22 year old, but you get clean at 26 and spend the next 20 years living a squeaky clean and productive life, then I don't want you in jail.

-On the other hand, if you continue to commit crimes and other people come forward and charges are brought against you, I see no reason to exclude the testimony of alleged victims from 20 odd years ago. I also see no reason why the alleged victim from decades before won't feel like THEY are getting justice if they help put someone away.

-It is completely true that nothing really changes between 9 years, 364 days and 10 years. But IMO a line should be drawn where it is reasonable to do so. Why 18 to vote and not 17 or 17 1/2? When I was a kid, the age for a drivers license in my state was 16 years, 1 month and 1 day old. How much better of a driver or more mature could I possibly be at 16-1-1 than 16 years, one month or 16 years? Today it is 16 years, 90 days. Why?

 

The thing to bear in mind is that, generally, rapists don't just rape and then, 'get better'. They don't just stop IOW. If they get away with that sort of behaviour once, they'll tend do it again.

So it's more a case of a 'pattern of behaviour' and, in that regard, most studies have shown that people ARE less likely to come forward if they think little will happen.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...9d6d4814c4c_story.html?utm_term=.c84637b0b3cb
https://www.wnyc.org/story/2015-more-rape-victims-came-forward/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/...tes-of-limitations-for-rape-be-abolished.html

Let's put it this way, if you didn't come forward at the time when a crime was committed against you, how likely are you to come forward years later?

Not very, I'd suggest

 

Half true. They don't stop until they hit ages 40 to 45, then they do because the testosterone count is down. As with the Golden State guy.

 

Well, fair point I suppose. I've never been a rapist so I wouldn't know... er, not that I'm suggesting you are mate, natch!

But you get my point. Like that fella who had raped the wife of his 'friend'. The locals didn't believe he'd DO such a thing until he was caught red-handed, (no jokes please fellas), attacking another young women.

For, probably 20-30, years these people are liable to be repeat offenders and we don't want to unnecessarily put people off from coming forward, especially because of some imaginary 'line in the sand' or similar idiocy.

 

That was from an expert commenting on the Golden State guy. They stop raping either when they get in a happy relationship (unhappy doesn't count, as the Golden State guy was twice married while this was going on) or when they get old enough that the testosterone count drops.

See, it's not all men who are jerks, it's just those young guys! (And Donald Trump.)

 

What the hell?

So, can we assume the women he victimized deserved it because in their previous lives they were shitbags?

 

There are still a few mysteries in the theory, and I seem to have forgotten my operator's manual back on the other plane; but no, not necessarily...

Some rebellious souls are assigned particularly difficult incarnations for their edification, while others choose them as the quickest way to discharge the consequences of some particularly stubborn previous behavior-- or to make more rapid progress after a long bland spell..

Some even think it is possible, when close to clear, to volunteer to dispel someone else's karma when they seem overburdened. Dick Cheyney probably needs all the help he can get, for example...

 

Yeah, it can be a "catcha 22". I remember being on a barge shooshing flies off Cleo's buns while Antony was pestering Slave Girl Moola down in the scullary.

 

There's some new evidence that cuts away at the idea that sex offenders are predominantly of the serial variety, but that's not really the point.

That's kind of the point I'm trying to make here. We need to balance defendant rights vs. victims rights. If the choice is a) no SOL or b) an SOL of a reasonably long period of time, I'm erring on the side of a defendant every time. That's simply the view I've developed of criminal justice generally informed by some prosecutor and public defender friends.

The article below that you linked has some very important points at the bottom

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/magazine/should-statutes-of-limitations-for-rape-be-abolished.html

Other feminists say the emphasis on statutes of limitations is misplaced, and that significantly lengthening time limits ignores deeper and more important problems. “The biggest barrier to victims’ coming forward isn’t the statute of limitations, but what victims face when they do report,” says Sandra Park, senior attorney with the national A.C.L.U. Women’s Rights Project.

That's the problem with coming forward. Not SOL. In many ways it reminds me of the late term abortion arguments based upon bogus notions of "fetal pain".

1.5% of all abortions occur after the 20th week in the US. Something like 2/3 of those are for medical reasons or extenuating circumstances like familial rape. Of the other 1/3 (0.5%), roughly 80-90% of those abortions occur after week 20 because of the ridiculous financial, logistical and bureaucratic hoops some states put women through. In other words, 1 in 1000 or 1 in 2000 abortions in the US occur after the 20th week for "elective" reasons in cases where women have reasonable access to the procedure (financial, distance, none of this multiple visit stuff).

So rather than wasting political capital on protecting "late term/partial birth abortions"...where someone like me (who is pro choice) can see some merit to banning abortion beyond a certain # of weeks... pro choice groups should be focusing on the access aspects. They should be willing to say, "We are willing to ban abortion after 20-22 weeks, except in cases of rape/incest/medical, provided the states do not do A, B, C and D to impede access". No more "partial birth abortion" propaganda. I realize that the pro life side will never go for that, but the issue is that the late term (and SOL for sexual assault) argument distracts from the big issues. ​

 

Is this called 'Going full Hoddle'?

 

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Of course, it's possible for both things to be true. There's a problem with victims not coming forward because of the way they're treated AND there's a problem with people not coming forward years later because they'd rather not relive the experience if they won't get justice themselves.

I just don't see the point in arbitrarily restricting whether someone can be prosecuted based on a 'cut-off' date like it's a matter of an overdue library book. Why it can't just be judged on the merits of the incident itself.

 

Rape culture is: a radio D.J. over here who has now raped two women in the space of two years not getting a jail sentence for the first offense and only getting time served for the second offense.

 

Man who tied up, sexually assaulted 14-year-old girl will serve no jail time https://t.co/0kLQNsGWG0 pic.twitter.com/meoVDyjZPJ

— PIX11 News (@PIX11News) August 10, 2018

What the actual ********? Rape of a minor and no jail time?

 

Wait, what ...?

Osborn, then a student at Cosby High School. . . ​

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Imagine his sentence if he were black.