Laws on sexual violence in the state of Tennessee are confusing at times. Someone in the legal profession could be much more able to explain the different aspects of the law better than I.
Here is the definition of rape:
Rape: Sexual penetration, no matter how slight, of the genital,anal, and/or oral openings of the victim by any part of the perpetrator’s body or by use of an object, without the victim’s consent or against the victim’s will.
Sexual Battery: Intentionally touching the victim’s intimate parts (primarily genital area, groin, inner thigh, buttock, or breast) without the victim’s consent.
And here are different definitions used in prosecution.
- Forcible rape
- Date rape
- Statutory rape
- Child rape
- Sexual battery
- Lewd and lascivious conduct against minor
Isn’t all rape done by force?
I had the same response that Betsy did on this story. We murky the waters by using terms like “forced sex” instead of rape. We need to concentrate on solutions to make this stop. She is accurate in her story, as we’ve seen this happen in Memphis recently as well. The bottom line is that the New Visions and Woodland Hills’ stories need to be looked at. The obvious question is how do we, as Tennesseans, deal with this situation because it’s obviously not being dealt with.
Maybe we could use legislators expanded per diem to protect kids and reinvent the funding infrastructure. Just sayin’.
I’m trying to write a post for Pith about the Governor’s proposal to close down the female juvenile detention center and throw those girls back in with the boys, into a facility where the sexual abuse of the boys is so rampant that it’s received national attention. I’m trying to write about how, because newspapers in this state won’t call rape rape, I had to write Nate Rau and clarify whether the girls in this story were having sex or being raped, because you can’t trust the newspapers to be square with you.
When you break it down, rape of a woman or a man is just that. Rape.
And if we can’t protect at-risk kids, then that’s a sad commentary on our state.
As I said over at Betsy's – the long-term costs to the state as a result of any assault will be higher than any savings resulting from this morally bankrupt move.
Apparently I didn't post it there, I just tweeted it.
What I said: “@AuntB Maybe @rachel_w can provide a study giving a $ value of lifetime costs to the state after an assault. Bet it's more than the savings.”
Think Freakonomics-style stuff: not just costs of defending against litigation and damages, but also the second- and third-generation effects. Any argument made in regards to saying we need to “live within our means” needs to address how much more this boneheaded move would cost us five, ten, twenty, FIFTY years from now. I'd venture to say we'll lose financially as well as morally.
The statutory definitions of rape, aggravated rape, sexual battery, and aggravated sexual battery in Tennessee all include “force or coercion” as the first element of the crime (Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-501 et. seq.). Statutory rape and other child-related sexual offenses do not require force or coercion as an element of a crime, since the nature of the crime assumes the victim is incapable of consent due to their minority. I think this is why you hear descriptions of “forced sex” when dealing with minors, because inevitably with some sexual crimes against minors the victim may have consented (such as it is) to the sexual contact. This doesn't just involve kids having sexual contact with other kids. For example, a striking number of the teenage runaways in this state “voluntarily” engage in prostitution with adults. They will tell you they were not forced into these arrangements. In fact, many of them end up leaving safe homes to go back to it after being rescued by law enforcement. We can't really prove coercion under these circumstances, but we can still prove that a sex crime took place against the minor (although many people would still consider this “just sex”). Obviously, when an adult or even another child actually *forces* the same sort of sexual contact on a minor, however, particularly through the use of violence, it is even more heinous than mere statutory rape. The trend right now is to make that distinction for the purposes of punishing such behavior even more severely. I'm not trying to be dismissive here, because I think you're right that the vast majority of our society does not take rape seriously, unless the victim was beaten within an inch of their life, but the distinction between “forced sex” and “rape” is probably a useful one when dealing with minors because of how the statutes are constructed.