The Rape-Happy States of America

I stumbled upon this in the comments section of another blog, did a bit of searching, and found out it is true - in more than half of the American states, a rapist can sue for custody or visitation rights.  31 in fact.

In the wake of Todd Akin's comments about pregnancy rarely resulting from "legitimate rape," lawyer Shauna Prewitt highlights a reality for women in that situation in a column on CNN: In a majority of states, attackers are afforded the same rights as other fathers. 

Prewitt, herself a rape survivor who gave birth to a daughter as a result of her attack, explains that  31 states have no laws that bar rapists from seeking custody or visitation rights. For Prewitt that astounding fact is personal. Her rapist attempted to get custody of her daughter, "but thankfully I got lucky and his visitation rights were terminated," she said, according to a profile of her by The Am Law Daily's Brain Baxter. She added: "I'm not sure I would have made the decision I did had I known I might be tethered to my rapist for the rest of my life."

Who Says Shit Like This? Oh yeah, ...Republicans - Again

"Some Girls Rape Easy"

Wisconsin state representative Roger Rivard says his pappy taught him to be wary of "consensual" sex because "some girls rape easy."

“He told the Journal Sentinel that his father had advised him not to have premarital sex, and he took that seriously.

‘He also told me one thing, “If you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry,”‘ Rivard said. ‘Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she’s not going to say, “Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.” All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she’s underage. And he just said, “Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,” he said, “they rape so easy.”

‘What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me, telling me, “If you’re going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.” So the way he said it was, “Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.”‘

FOX News Mouthpiece Dismisses Rape in US Military

This FOX News correspondent has a message to US women soldiers who fall victim to rape - enough already.   And, of course, she kept her job at FOX.
  

Gore Vidal - Crazy As A Cut Cat

Gore Vidal has finally lost it.

You remember that 13-year old girl that Roman Polanski drugged and sodomized? Well Vidal has come to Polanski's defence, smearing the victim as a disgruntled whore. From Air America:

"I really don't give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker thinks she's been taken advantage of?"

Vidal went on to dismiss those who condemn Polanski as the usual "anti-Jew ...anti-fag" types.

Harper & Hillier's Disgrace

The honour of Canada's military mission to Afghanistan has been sullied, perhaps irreparably.

The story in today's Toronto Star says it all. Canadian soldiers being ordered to look the other way and shut up about sexual assaults on civilians by their Afghan army comrades.

"Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been ordered by commanding officers "to ignore" incidents of sexual assault among the civilian population, says a military chaplain who counsels troops returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The chaplain, Jean Johns, says she recently counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped by an Afghan soldier, then wrote a report on the allegation for her brigade chaplain.

In her March report, which she says should have been advanced "up the chain of command," Johns says the corporal told her that Canadian troops have been ordered by commanding officers "to ignore" incidents of sexual assault. Johns hasn't received a reply to the report.

While several Canadian Forces chaplains say other soldiers have made similar claims, Department of National Defence lawyers have argued Canada isn't obliged to investigate because none of the soldiers has made a formal complaint, says a senior Canadian officer familiar with the matter."

Great. We're over in Afghanistan training a corps of armed sodomite pedophiles. Best of all, we're making sure to keep a lid on it.

Fight with the Canadian Armed Forces! Indeed. Maybe we could start by shooting a few of the peds we're allied with. Maybe, as described in this 2002 account from the New York Times, we should just hand our Afghan army comrades over to the Taliban:

"Though the puritanical Taliban tried hard to erase pedophilia from male-dominated Pashtun culture, now that the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is gone, some people here are indulging in it once again.

''During the Taliban, being with a friend was difficult, but now it is easy again,'' said Ahmed Fareed, a 19-year-old man with a white shawl covering his face except for a dark shock of hair and piercing kohl-lined eyes. Mr. Fareed should know. A shopkeeper took him as a lover when he was just 12, he said.

An interest in relationships with young boys among warlords and their militia commanders played a part in the Taliban's rise in Afghanistan. In 1994, the Taliban, then a small army of idealistic students of the Koran, were called to rescue a boy over whom two commanders had fought. They freed the boy and the people responded with gratitude and support.

''At that time boys couldn't come to the market because the commanders would come and take away any that they liked,'' said Amin Ullah, a money changer, gesturing to his two teenage sons hunched over wads of afghani bank notes at Kandahar's currency bazaar. "