"A felony conviction for assault will make his desire to complete his mission impossible"

Poor choice of words.

Indeed.

fuckin mormons.
fuckin political connections.

Like that definition of "sexual intent" bugs the hell out of me: it's saying "sexual intent" means only stuff done for the sexual gratification of the perpetrator. But doing stuff for the purpose of sexual humiliation of the victim is equally (and explicitly) sexual in intent! (Leave alone the overlap for lots of rapists, where sexually victimizing someone is itself gratifying.)

Plus one of the main reason we get upset about sexual abuse of children is that it fucks them up (developmentally, emotionally, sexually), which is pretty much independent of intent; trotting that notion out here would seem to suggest that it's less serious to rape a child for the purpose of terrorizing him/her than it would be to rape a child because you enjoyed it. Which is ... fucked.

So you kind of wish they'd just handed him a Get out of Jail Free card rather than dragging law and logic and good sense down with them.

(Besides which, well, this gets into grayer areas but seriously, who chooses ass-penetration as a go-to punishment unless for some reason he enjoys -- or at least doesn't mind -- being the one doing it, which is weird and dangerous from the get-go?)

I'm just sayin'.

http://www.vachss.de/images/v_another_c.jpg

"I asked Wheeler what he was holding, and he stated it was a broom, and he even articulated where that broom was touching that victim, which would be the butt. I even pointed out to Wheeler the look on his face during the photo, demonic and satan-like. Wheeler agreed."

1) 'Cause if they were gay it would be totally creepy.

The County Attorney's totally bullshit rationalization is here: http://www.co.yavapai.az.us/departments/Aty/ConcernedCitizenBennett.htm

Whether they received sexual gratification from it is immaterial--as Nabisco says, rape is frequently much more complex than the pursuit of sexual pleasure. The boys were entrusted to the care of these young men, they abused their power and violated them, and there's little more you can say about that. Whether the boys had clothes on is also irrelevant, and hair-splitting about "intent" makes her appears both corrupt and ridiculous.

I can't imagine how anyone could see this as anything more than an obvious miscarriage of justice, designed to protect the powerful at the expense of the weak. I hope this gets wider press coverage, and that Senator Bennett and Sheila Polk suffer the irreparable professional damage and national ignominy that they deserve.

(I know no one disagrees and I don't need to tell you guys this, but still.)

You could just cut-and-paste some of what you've already written for us. If she can read that and still not blush, she is a hard case indeed.

I totally agree with the implied premise of the original poster (as well as the supposition that they're getting easier treatment for political reasons). I have no problem with [quickly thinking through the details here] the offenders serving jail time, having to go through counselling, etc. Forget about the mission, obviously. I just question whether, based on what little we see here, I would be prepared to put a felony sex crime on their records, which would mean their lives were over, for all intents and purposes.

If this becomes the justification why the DA doesn't act on this case, then I don't want to hear any more rhetoric from her about how the criminals are coddled while the victims of crimes are left unsuccored by the justice system and how unjust and awful all this is.

The reason these criminals are getting mercy is that they are middle-class-white-kid-with-influential-parent criminals, while the vast majority of poor juvenile offenders are getting whacked with the full weight of the law. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy, Ms. Sheila S. Polk, even when it appeals to middle class prejudices.

If they'd done this to young girls, with the same absence of sexual intent, I wonder whether people would really care about what their anal penetration with objects "meant" and whether they "understood." They don't seem to be dangerous pedophiles. It doesn't matter. And even if they were, a lot of molestation and rape occurs without a real "understanding" on the part of the perpetrator of how terrible their behavior is (depersonalization of the crime, denial of accountability and preposterous excuses are pretty much par for the course). I don't think their ignorance, feigned or real, gets them a pass. They did what they did. And the fact that this sort of sexual humiliation may "happen all the time" gets them zero sympathy from me... the insane frequency with which molestation, sexual assault, and child abuse take place don't exactly mitigate them as crimes, it just makes them more horrifying.

Between the butt cheeks over clothing != up the rectum, in my jurisprudential view.

If they'd done this to young girls, with the same absence of sexual intent, I wonder whether people would really care about what their anal penetration with objects "meant" and whether they "understood."

Good point. Yes, you're probably right, the whole thing would be viewed differently, although I'm not sure that changes anything for me.

I just think it does a certain disservice to those who suffer much more serious assaults to lump everything together, which is the feeling I get from your comments, i.e., let's show "classic" rapists (not sure how to put that more tastefully) how serious we are by making sure even these offenders get drawn and quartered.

Anyway, I'm not saying they shouldn't be severely punished, monitored, and kept away from kids for the next few years, just Bnad OTM.

Because, like, people who HAVE suffered much more serious assaults, their stories are taken just as seriously as you guys seem to be taking these kids...

If he gets, say, a year, then I feel the sentence is appropriate for the case.

xpost yeah "Whatever" indeed.

What punishment do you think is fair in this case? 36 counts x 2 years = 72 years (so parole in what, 36 years or something)

According to the piece I linked above, Prosecutor James Landis actually said "the matter might have been treated differently if the victims had been girls. Or if the perpetrators had been homosexuals."

And, what, exactly, is the difference in your head between a woman being raped and a whole pile of little boys getting sexually molested? Obviously one is "worse" but pray tell why is one "serious" and the other "Well let's not ruin the rest of their lives over this, boys will be boys"? They shouldn't have been allowed to plea this down to one count of aggravated assault (PLEASE NOTE A TOTALLY DIFFERENT CRIME).

xpost yeah that's the most disturbing part of this really, it really is bad enough people think that but to have the prosecutor actually say it.

No, I don't know anything about Arizona, so I won't argue with you on that.

I'm tempted to try to explain the difference, but I'm not sure it's worth getting into a long explanation. Especially as painting one as "serious" and "let's not ruin the rest of their lives" is a bit of a misrepresentation. A felony conviction - at least as I am assuming - carries various collateral punishment: "the loss of voting rights, exclusion from certain lines of work, prohibition from obtaining certain licenses, exclusion from purchase/possession of firearms or ammunition, and ineligibility to run for or be elected to public office."

All that said, I would be bothered if Laura's right, and they are simply pleading guilty on the choking, with everything else effectively "not happening."

Sort of a side-issue, but there's a larger thing here: the neutral wording of our laws should offer heterosexual men protection from assaults by other heterosexual men, but something about our culture runs against that -- we take it as given that boys will be victimized by other boys, and that it's not something worth adjudicating. (Another tangent to that issue = prison rape.) What would in any other circumstances be considered sexual assault gets put down to something like "roughhousing" or "hazing." And I shouldn't even say "men," because I'm guessing the same would go down for similar girl-group action.

And well not to be all poor-men masculinist up in here, but -- as much as I totally understand where the state of things comes from -- I get the feeling most people would be pretty hard-pressed to explain why we consider it okay and normal for boys to grow up getting victimized: it builds character, alright, but not the kind of character we really want. We're kind of addicted to this narrative that gets applied to mild bullying, which is that boys (in particular) should stand up for themselves, learn to be men, solve their own problems, etc -- and that's a useful story, but there comes a point where we've passed that as the applicable narrative. And when someone goes out of his way to sexually humiliate you in a manner that -- if a girl were involved -- would be considered completely heinous lock-em-up-forever, and the response seems to be that it's not that big a deal ... there's something quite fucked about that, don't you think?

You know for a fact this is not true; in our current system, any analogous girl-group action would be filmed in slow motion and scored with synth strings and slap bass.

Which is another kinda fucked thing: you realize they'd probably get harsher penalties if they'd just beaten these kids, right? If they'd just punched them in the face all the time? Whereas we can't escape the cultural idea that boyish ass-poking is somehow quaint or funny or well-meant. If they were gay, or actually beat the crap out of the kids, that would be weird, right, but ass-poking? Ahh, those crazy kids.

From a 'friend's' experience I can say that these incidents have horrible lasting side effects beyond - what does the article say? trouble going to the bathroom? fear of the dark? - that can take years or a lifetime to work out. The agglomeration of sexaulized humiliations over the course of a single week or in my friend's case' two summers (see, you're a faggot if you don't fight back, but if you do fight back you're going to get it again and again and again and worse and then you're a faggot for liking it) CAN cause real trauma and problems of identity and worse. The ass-poking with a broom is only the psychological tip of the iceberg: being constantly on guard, afraid to use the bathroom, self-deprecation (I did deserve it ... ), adrenal 24-7, mistrustful of authority... because the incident isn't strictly sexual (or for the sexual gratification of the tormentors) doesn't mean that pathologically it can't/doesn't have the same effect as molestation.

I don't know how bad the situation for these kids is, but I guarantee for at least some of them that EVERY subsequent corporeal punishment they suffer during their lives will be ten times worse because of the damage they've received at the hands of two sadistic and retarded 18 year olds. So as nabisco said, the "ahh, those crazy kids" mentality has a Titanic-deep repercussion on the victims. It depersonalizes them, tugs the rug out from under the (legitimate) sexual and psychic confusions they may be left with, and reifies the notion that they deserve what they got in the "hey, it's all part of the game" sense. One effect of the slap-on-the-wrist punishment is that it makes the counselors - in some sense - right. And the kids wrong. As if they've not got (like my friend) enough to worry about now, enough of a misunderstanding of sex, enough of a fear of male authority figures, enough of an adolescent complex, etc., etc., etc.

(and to correct myself)

but I guarantee for at least some of them that EVERY subsequent corporeal punishment they suffer during their lives will be ten times worse because of the damage they've received at the hands of two sadistic and retarded 18 year olds ... because of the residual damage they suffer, the memories (which, like many trauma memories, are not integrated into the personal-narrative flow, but float untethered and always at the back of the conscience) that're stirred up, the echoes and repercussions of a horrible incident that're going to bob into the foreground, and the general anxiety and complicated relationship with any authority figure.