Statutory Rape and Further Punishment of Victims

Two cases of statutory rape have made headlines recently.  Such cases are problematic enough on their own, but both of these stories involve further victimization of those who were already abused.

The bigger story, apparently, concerns a 10-year-old girl in Ohio who, because of the Dodds ruling and a state legislature dominated by pseudo-Christian yahoos conservatives was denied an abortion in her home state.  The Ohio “trigger law” now restricts abortions after six weeks; the girl was at six weeks and three days. 

To think that law makes any sense, you’d have to be both an absolutist about abortion and remarkably ignorant about how pregnancy works… or, one supposes, sufficiently unscrupulous to make a law effectively banning abortion altogether while pretending, presumably for political cover, not to do so.  Especially for someone so young, menstrual periods are often irregular, so it’s quite possible that this girl legitimately might not have even suspected she might be pregnant until an abortion would be illegal… not to mention that she’d likely be in denial about the entire incident.

The fact that the girl was ultimately able to secure an abortion in Indiana (where abortions may well be banned by the end of this month) is irrelevant.  Curmie has argued before that a moral/ethical argument against virtually all abortions is understandable.  But in the same way Curmie can respect both Muslims and Christians without being either, he disagrees with that absolutist position which, ultimately is based on the idea that a collection of cells is a “baby” because we said so. 

The Ohio law, incidentally, skips over all that high-falutin’ “embryo” and “fetus” terminology and declares a fertilized egg an “unborn child”; it also clings to the “fetal heartbeat” nonsense: a neat trick since their idea of a “fetal heartbeat” occurs before there is either a fetus or a heart.  There is no moral, ethical, philosophical, religious, or biological “right answer” to the central question of what constitutes a “baby.”  Curmie knows only that he deeply distrusts those who argue that their opinion is a fact, and who insist upon strictures to which everyone must abide. 

Curmie may comment later on the machinations that brought about the overturning of the Roe decision, but let’s leave those aside for the moment.  The point is that whatever you think about Roe—correct ruling, horrible ruling, good result from a bad argument—the issues are, must be, different if the woman (or girl!) involved is pregnant only as the direct result of being a crime victim.  Now, those “equal protection” arguments must resonate, and we have, even in the minds of honest absolutists, conflicting moral/ethical imperatives. 

Crime victims should be supported, not (as in this case) condemned to carry a reminder of their trauma and (unwarranted but still real) shame for another several months.  If this girl was six weeks and a couple days along in late June, and she was apparently only nine when she was impregnated, then she’d probably be starting 5^th grade (!) at about 15 or 16 weeks, and would start “showing” soon thereafter.  Girls of that age have enough to go through without that, not to mention that carrying a pregnancy to term can be extremely risky for someone so young.  

At this point, we have a clear duty to protect a victim, and a pregnant 10-year-old is by definition a victim.  If there’s a constitutional protection for criminals against cruel and unusual punishment, there damned sure ought to be one for people abused by those criminals.  As far as Curmie is concerned, this overrides any argument based on an opinion about when human life begins. 

Of course, there followed the (inevitable?) argument that the whole story is, or at least could be, made up by “an abortion activist” (a.k.a. an obstetrician-gynecologist).  The Indianapolis Star wouldn’t comment on whether they’d confirmed Bernard’s story, so the reactionary conspiracy theorists were in full flower in double-quick time.  Right-wing PJ Media hack Megan Fox led the pack with a series of what she may indeed be stupid and/or doctrinaire enough to believe are actual indictments of the story.  Naturally, she accuses Bernard of playing to the media instead of caring about the child.  

Dr. Bernard

It might be worth mentioning a couple of facts in this regard.  Fox tweeted, “#DrCaitlynBernard got a call from another doctor asking for help for a horribly abused child and her first instinct was to call the media.”  

Bernard said she received the call from an Ohio colleague three days after the Dodds decision: so, June 27.  But the story doesn’t come out until four days later, on July 1.  A paper is going to wait four days to cover a story this potentially explosive?  It sure seems to Curmie that maybe contacting the media wasn’t, in fact, the first thing Dr. Bernard did.

Fox also expresses concern that the police weren’t involved.  Of course, the crime had already been reported to Franklin County Children’s Services on June 22, five days before the Dodds ruling was handed down, eight days before the girl’s pregnancy was aborted, and nine days before the news story was first published.  That office then alerted the police, who, for reasons of their own (not to tip their hand to the rapist that they were closing in, perhaps?), did not respond to questions about their involvement in the case.

It is true that the story as reported does indeed lack “the name of the referring doctor, any of the towns involved, whether charges were brought against the child’s alleged rapist and whether Bernard or the referring doctor contacted the authorities regarding the child rape.”  As it should.  If it’s standard procedure to protect the privacy of adult rape victims, it damned well better be for girls, and none of these protections seem inappropriate. 

Could the story have been completely fabricated?  Sure.  So could stories about, oh, I dunno, teachers cramming CRT down the throats of third-graders.  The difference between these two examples is that the doctor’s story is plausible.  Even if it had been a complete fiction, it describes events that could reasonably stem from an absurd legislative action. 

Of course, as Curmie initially suspected, it now appears that a suspect was indeed arrested for felony rape of a 10-year-old Ohio girl… and confessed!  Right-to-lifers still won’t let it go: the fact that the story is true (or at least that there was indeed a 10-year-old victim in Ohio) is regarded as “pure moral luck,” and the real bad guys aren’t the rapist or the misogynistic legislators, but the rather those awful people who reported a true story as if it had been based in fact.  There was even an argument that we don’t know if the 10-year-old victim whose alleged rapist was arrested is the same girl Dr. Bernard was describing… as if that matters even a little in terms of the larger story.

But if Curmie thinks this case is troubling, the news out of Louisiana might just be worse.  Just read the headline: “A Louisiana woman was ordered to pay her accused rapist child support after sheriff ‘dropped the ball.’”  Yes, Gentle Reader, you read that correctly.  A more colossal fuck-up in the legal/judicial system would be difficult to imagine.

Crysta Abelseth at age 32

Here are the details, such as we have.  In late 2005, a 16-year-old girl named Crysta Abelseth met 30-year-old John Barnes in a bar in Hammond, LA.  Barnes reportedly said he’d drive her home, but instead took her to his house, where they had sex.  She says he raped her while she was passed out; he says it was consensual.  

Legally, it doesn’t matter: the age of consent in Louisiana is 17.  It was rape, and according to Louisiana law two things are true: 1). it doesn’t matter if she lied about her age (he claims she had a fake ID, which, under the circumstances, certainly seems plausible), 2). the fact that he was more than four years older than her makes it a felony.  So his denial that he committed felony rape means precisely nothing.

The arguments of idiots like Todd Akin (remember him?  Curmie does) notwithstanding, that evening’s events led to a pregnancy.  Abelseth chose to have the child (there’s that word “choice” again!), apparently allowing friends and family to believe that she had been impregnated by a boyfriend. 

All was well until Abelseth’s daughter was five, when somehow Barnes discovered her existence.  Despite the fact that admitting the child was his would prove his guilt of a felony (!), he proceeded to demonstrate paternity and somehow was awarded shared custody; he paid $428 a month in child support beginning in April 2013.  Needless to say, in a just universe, he’d have been immediately arrested rather than granted any rights whatsoever to even see his biological offspring.  But this was only the beginning of the insanity of what passes for a justice system.

In 2015, a bunch of stuff happened.  In May, Barnes sued for sole custody, claiming Abelseth had men spend the night while her daughter was present.  “Men were coming in and out of my child's life…. She had three husbands in six years and it wasn't healthy.” 

A few weeks later, Abelseth reported to the police that Barnes had raped her in the traditional sense of that term.  She told a reporter for a Baton Rouge television station that the delay in making the allegation was because “I thought if I didn't do it the next day, there was nothing I could do about it… I went to a trauma counselor, and he said, ‘No, you have 30 years after you turn 18.’”  A skeptical person might well find the timing a little… erm… interesting, and to at least entertain the possibility that there was a little retaliatory gamesmanship at play, but it’s still pretty difficult to feel a lot of sympathy for a sexual felon, however much he attempts to claim the high moral ground.

Anyway, the Tangipahoa Sheriff’s Office now admits that Abelseth’s allegations were not assigned to the proper department to be investigated.  “We dropped the ball,” quoth they last month.  Uh, yeah, that would be a big “oops,” especially since it’s clear that Barnes had sex with an underage girl, whether it was “consensual” or not.  Oh, and Barnes’s company, Gumbeaux Digital Branding, listed the Ponchatoula Police as a client on their website… until that TV news story ran, after which that listing was removed.  That’s not suspicious at all, right?

Moving on in 2015: Judge Jeffrey Cashe is now assigned to the case, which seems never to end.  Six months later, which is to say in early 2016, a new joint-custody agreement actually forced Abelseth to pay child support to Barnes.  That’s right, the rapist was receiving child support payments from his victim; the amount was actually increased the following year.  A couple of brief notes here: Abelseth’s attorney should be disbarred for incompetence, and if Judge Cashe could place higher than third place in a battle of wits with a dustbuster and a toadstool, it would be revelation to Curmie.

Fast forward to earlier this year, when Barnes sued for sole custody of his daughter, amidst a flurry of claims and counter-claims between he and Abelseth.  The most damning of the accusations was that he was mentally, physically, and sexually abusing his daughter.  The strangest was that Abelseth had given the girl a cell phone in violation of an order by Cashe.  Abelseth was accused of “promoting inappropriate behavior” because the girl had done something stupid with a previous phone:  the first-ever teen-ager to do so, and all the mother’s fault, apparently.

Yes, it’s true: the timing of Abelseth’s allegations does seem suspiciously retaliatory.  But there’s a difference between distrusting a woman’s testimony and giving sole custody of a teen-aged girl to a man who is her father only because he <checks notes> committed a sexually-based felony with a teen-aged girl as the victim.

None of this mattered, apparently, as Cashe granted full custody to Barnes.  According to Abelseth, he did so without giving her a chance to defend herself or even notifying her or her lawyer of the decision.  If she’s telling the truth: wow.  If she isn’t: wow.

Then, perhaps in response to headlines that made him look like an imbecile, Cashe reversed the order, appointing a temporary third-party guardian.  There was another court day, apparently a long one, last Friday, and a decision is due this week.  If this were an actual soap opera instead of real life taking on all the trappings of one, it would be time to break out the popcorn.  Unfortunately, this is a real girl at the center of this storm, and she’s the one most likely to suffer while the adults hurl epithets at each other.

Sigh.