Day: December 10, 2003

Efforts to Criminalize Male Rape in Scotland

In Scotland police are investigating a number of sexual assaults on men perpetrated by what is believe to be a small gang. But under Scottish law, raping a man is not recognized as a crime.

Under Scotland’s definition of rape — which goes back to 1844 — rape is a crime which involves only a man sexually assaulting a woman. The perpetrators of this and other sexual assaults against men could be charged with assault, sodomy or possibly robbery if they stole from their victims, but not rape. And apparently, the maximum sentence for a first offense sodomy conviction is a mere three months.

The English legal system formally incorporated a gender-free definition of rape in 1996, but Scotland has yet to make that change, despite estimates that at least 400 men are victims of sexual assaults annually. That figure is likely higher since Scotland doesn’t keep statistics on the gender of sexual assault victims.

Keith Cowan, a spokesman for gay rights group Outright Scotland, has been trying to have the law changed. He told The Sunday Herald,

Rape is considered by the justice system to be much more serious than indecent assault or sodomy. The crime of sodomy confuses the very serious offence of male rape with the minor offence of consensual sex between men, which did not happen in a private place.

A crime as serious as male rape should carry an unambiguous and recognized rape charge so that it is clear from the charge, and from the record of any conviction, how serious the offence is. It must also be included in sexual assault statistics.

Such a change would seem to be a pretty straightforward, sensible thing to do. Why the law hasn’t already been changed is a bit mystifying.

Sources:

Law failing victims of male rape. By Neil Mackay and Liam McDougall, Sunday Herald (Scotland), October 5, 2003.

Call for new laws after male sex attacks. Stephen Khan, The Observer, October 12, 2003.

Dean: Unfair and Unbalanced?

Henry Hanks points out that there’s a major problem with Howard Dean’s attempt in last night’s debate to essentially blame Fox News for his speculations about whether or not the president had been tipped off about 9/11 but let it happen anyway,

SPRADLING: Congressman, thank you.

Governor Dean, you had once stated that you thought it was possible that the president of the United States had been forewarned about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. You later said that you didn’t really know.

A statement like that, don’t you see the possibility of some Democrats being nervous about statements like that leading them to the conclusion that you are not right for being the next commander in chief?

DEAN: Well, in all due respect, I did not exactly state that. I was asked on Fox fair and balanced news that…

(LAUGHTER)

I was asked why I thought the president was withholding information, I think it was, or 9/11 or something like that. And I said, well, the most interesting theory that I heard, which I did not believe, was that the Saudis had tipped him off.

We don’t know why the president is not giving information to the Kean commission. I think that is supposed to be investigated by Congress. I think it’s a serious matter. I agree with Wes Clark, the president is not fighting terrorism. And we need to know what went wrong before 9/11.

I did not believe, and I made it clear on the Fox News show that I didn’t believe that theory, but I had heard that. And there are going to be a lot of crazy theories that come out if the information is not given to the Kean commission as it should be.

The problem here is that Dean is lying both about what he said and where he said it. The comments that started this whole controversy didn’t occur on Fox News but rather during a Dec. 1 appearance on The Diane Rehm Show, which the last time I checked is not part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Here’s the exchange,

Rehm: Why do you think he (Bush) is suppressing that (Sept. 11) report?

Howard Dean:I don’t know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I’ve heard so far — which is nothing more than a theory, it can’t be proved — is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now who knows what the real situation is?

Notice, too, that Dean is also lying about what he said. Dean does not say that he doesn’t believe this theory about Bush having been warned, he simply says that it can’t be proven.

And Dean supporters really think this guy is going to be able to beat Bush?

Source:

Transcript: Democratic Presidential Debate in Durham, N.H.. Washington Post, December 10, 2003.

Catholic Church — Condoms Don’t Stop AIDS

The Roman Catholic Church came in for much-deserved criticism after a BBC documentary, “Sex and the Holy City,” that documented the Church’s ridiculous — and potentially deadly — practice of telling people in countries hit hard by AIDS that condoms don’t prevent the spread of HIV.

In the program, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo is shown repeating a ridiculous claim that the AIDS virus can permeate a condom,

The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the ‘net’ that is formed by the condom.

In fact, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control notes,

Laboratory studies have demonstrated that latex condoms provide an essentially impermeable barrier to particles the size of STD pathogens.

But Trujillo would have governments regulate condoms in the same way they regulate cigarettes,

These margins of uncertainty…should represent an obligation on the part of the health ministries and all these campaigns to act in the same way as they do with regard to cigarettes, which they state to be a danger.

And this message is filtering down to Catholic officials in developing countries who are passing it on. Nairobi Archbishop Raphael Ndingi Nzeki tells the BBC program that,

Aids…has grown so fast because of the availability of condoms.

A spokesman for the World Health Organization told the BBC that the Church’s anti-condom campaign would only help to further spread AIDS,

Statements like this are quite dangerous. We are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people and currently affects around 42 million. There is so much evidence to show that condoms don’t let sexually transmitted infections like HIV through. Anyone who says otherwise is just wrong.

Condoms are not a magic bullet that makes it impossible to spread HIV, but studies suggest it does reduce the risk of AIDS transmission by up to 90 percent. Spreading misinformation and lies like this is simply unconscionable.

Sources:

Vatican: condoms don’t stop Aids. Steve Bradshaw, The Guardian, October 9, 2003.

Vatican in HIV condom row. The BBC, October 9, 2003.

HIV can ‘slip’ through condom. News24.Com (South Africa), October 9, 2003.

Fact Sheet for Public Health Personnel: Male Latex Condoms and Sexually Transmitted Diseases. U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Unmanned Commonsense at NPR

Sally Pipes has an article on gender neutral language — which isn’t a bad idea but, like all things, gets absurd when taken to extremes — that begins with this hilarious anecdote from a recent National Public Radio broadcast,

Last month NASA ended the career of the Galileo space probe by smashing it into Jupiter. As a reporter on National Public Radio noted, Galileo was an “unpersonned” space craft. Only language was injured.

An “unmanned” spacecraft would, of course, be accurate but not politically correct. This sort of nonsense proceeds from militant feminism, which sees gender bias lurking on every hand, and regards the English language as an instrument of repression. The extent to which this ideology has permeated educational institutions is evident in The Language Police, a recent book by historian Diane Ravitch.

Source:

Language Police Brutality. Sally Pipes, Pacific Research Institute, October 2003.

Gerald Amirault Granted Parole

A Massachusetts Parole Board voted in October to grant parole to Gerald Amirault who was at the center of the Fells Acres child care sex abuse case which marked the start of a nationwide hysteria over alleged ritual sexual abuse.

Amirault still maintains his innocence and his conviction, to put it bluntly, was a travesty. Police in the case used techniques to elicit testimony from child witnesses that would simply not be tolerated today. Police told parents to question their kids about sexual abuse and instructed not to take no for an answer, while a pediatric nurse used dolls to elicit tales of sexual abuse from the children and informed them that they were in “denial” if they said that no sex abuse had taken place.

Police maintained that the Amirault’s abused the children to produce child pornography, but never turned up a single such example of this alleged child porn.

The Amirault case was a contemporary witch hunt and it is outrageous that Gerald Amirault had to spend 17 years in jail based on such a miscarriage of justice.

Amirault is slated to be released on parole in April 2004.

Source:

Gerald Amirault gets parole after 17 years. Tom Mashberg, Boston Herald, October 24, 2003.

Open Season on Children in the United States

One thing I will never understand is why killing a child so often results in so little jail time provided that the person who does the killing is the parent of the child.

Consider the case of 22-year-old Tiffany Trice and her 18-month-old daughter, Victoria Miller.

Victoria died on August 5, 2002. Trice plead guilty to reckless homicide in her death — her plea agreement stipulated that she still maintains her innocence but that concedes there is enough evidence against her to obtain a conviction.

Trice punched her daughter so hard in the stomach and chest that she bruised the little girl’s aorta, leading to her death.

Trice had been held in jail for 14 months awaiting trial. Want to guess how much additional time she’ll spend in jail? Three years? Two years? Surely at least one year.

Well, the plea agreement called for a five year sentence, but the judge in the case released Trice on probation. Provided she doesn’t violate the terms of her probation, she won’t serve a single additional day in prison.

Absolutely disgusting.

Source:

Woman pleads guilty to reckless homicide. Courier-Journal News (Louisville, Kentucky), August 30, 2003.

Local Mom Who Killed Daughter Will Go Free. The Louisville.Com Channel, 2003.