{"id":56390,"date":"2013-08-06T17:26:47","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T16:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/judge-calls-13-year-old-girl-who-was-sexually-assaulted-by-a-41-year-old-predatory\/56390\/"},"modified":"2013-08-06T17:42:51","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T16:42:51","slug":"judge-calls-13-year-old-girl-who-was-sexually-assaulted-by-a-41-year-old-predatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/judge-calls-13-year-old-girl-who-was-sexually-assaulted-by-a-41-year-old-predatory\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Calls 13-Year-Old Girl Who Was Sexually Assaulted by a 41-Year-Old "Predatory""},"content":{"rendered":"
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You know the number one thing you can do to stop sexual assault? Don\u2019t sexually assault anybody. Sounds easy enough, right? So why is the main responsibility for avoiding abuse still so often placed on victims and potential victims?<\/p>\n

Recently Jennifer Stephens, a battalion commander in the Ohio National Guard, noticed a sign in the women\u2019s restroom at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base declaring that \u201cPreventing sexual assault is everyone\u2019s duty!\u201d<\/a>\u00a0That duty, according to the base\u2019s sexual assault prevention and response program, includes the warning to \u201cAvoid becoming a victim.\u201d How? With tips like \u201cSocialize with people who share your values,\u201d \u201cPay attention to your surroundings\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t leave a group situation with someone you don\u2019t know well.\u201d \u00a0That\u2019s all sound, common sense advice. The problem is that, as with so many prevention programs, it suggests that preventing abuse is not \u201ceveryone\u2019s duty\u201d at all.<\/p>\n

Stevens told Business Insider, \u201cI think this is part of the reason victims are afraid to report incidents. If you\u2019re a victim and you\u2019ve done one of the things on that list, you now feel like it\u2019s your fault that you were sexually assaulted.\u201d<\/a> And she wrote a letter to the SARC Office<\/a>, asking, \u201cInstead of practicing victim blaming by making a list of all the things people should do to avoid becoming a victim, how about you make a list of all the places that a victim can go to find safety and help in their time of crisis?\u201d She added, \u201cThis type of rhetoric only serves to promote the current rape culture that is entrenched in the military today by putting the spotlight on the victim instead of nailing the perpetrator to the wall.\u201d She signed it, \u201cA concerned citizen and Military Sexual Trauma survivors advocate.\u201d In a statement, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base vaguely responded, \u201cWe have implemented robust training for all Airmen designed to both deter potential offenders as well as give Airmen the awareness and tools they need to step in and stop assaults from taking place.\u201d But Stevens says, \u201cIn all my years in the military, I\u2019ve never heard anyone say anything about what\u2019s being done to stop the perpetrators. It is absolutely alarming.\u201d<\/p>\n

The policy of asking potential victims to figure it all out is hardly unique. Earlier this year, Shaw Air Force Base made headlines for its \u201cSexual Assault Prevention and Response literature,\u201d with its notes to \u201cbe careful\u201d<\/a>\u00a0because rapists often target those who are \u201care young (na\u00c3\u00afve)\u201d or \u201cemotionally unstable.\u201d Yet even the appalling, accountability-deflecting warnings on how to avoid sexual assault pale in comparison to the regular supply of flat-out blame that victims far too often face.<\/p>\n

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This week in the UK, Judge Nigel Peters gave a suspended sentence to 41 year-old Neil Wilson after he pleaded guilty to \u201cmaking extreme pornographic images and one count of sexual activity\u201d with a 13 year-old girl. The judge explained his leniency as stemming from the fact that \u201cthe girl was predatory and was egging you on.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0During the trial, the prosecution had declared the girl was \u201csexually experienced\u201d and that \u201cShe appeared to look around 14 or 15 and had the mental age of a 14 or 15 year old despite being younger than that. There was sexual activity but it was not of Mr. Wilson\u2019s doing, you might say it was forced upon him despite being older and stronger than her.\u201d Law enforcement also found \u00a0\u201ca stash of images and videos depicting child abuse and bestiality\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in Wilson\u2019s home, but sure, the 13 year-old girl is the predator here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Republished from: AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know the number one thing you can do to stop sexual assault? Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sexually assault anybody. Sounds easy enough, right? So why is the main responsibility for avoiding abuse still so often placed on victims and potential victims?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-56390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}