Friday, April 18, 2008

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/crime/
bal-te.md.rape17apr17,0,5827288,full.story


"The victim testified in Montgomery County court that she agreed to sex 'as long as he stops when I tell him to.' As he began, she told him to stop because he was hurting her, but he kept going for five or 10 seconds, she said...[he] denied any wrongdoing but was convicted of first-degree rape and other crimes and sentenced to 15 years in prison, with all but five suspended."

Holy shit.


Anonymous
11:00:00 AM
4/18/2008

4 comments:

PChis said...

I mean, I know you have to break some eggs to make an omelet but...

Yes, this is a good ruling and anyone should be able to withdraw consent to have sex, but five to ten seconds? In some ways that seems like a long time, but in other ways that seems like she just threw out an arbitrary time.

Depending on how much pain she was in, that time could have seemed much longer than it actually was (ever got a charlie-horse?).

Then again, I feel the article leaves out key information that an outside reader would need to make an informed decision (how aggressively did she say stop? How exactly did he go about stopping in that 5-10 second interval?)

Maybe it's time to go find that court document.


Perhaps rape law needs to be much better defined: "if one participant withdraws consent, all other participants have 12.5 seconds in which to remove all body parts from said participant." It's like a shot-clock, except turnover=15 years in prison.

Dr.A said...

No pretty much every act of sex is an act of rape. You always leave yourself open for prosecution, just some times it's more likely than others.

Anonymous said...

PULL IT OUT PULL IT OUT aaaaand five seconds too slow. Rape'd.

Anonymous said...

The thing that pisses me off about this is that it belittles the act of rape. The brutality of rape is emotional just as much, if not more, than physical. It's the feeling that you have no control, that you are being used. It's the distruction of something that is supposed to be intimate. That's why rape victims have a hard time recovering: the emotional damage. Although the woman in this case was in pain, I doubt if she incured much emotional damage from those 10 seconds.