You know, I don’t even blog most of the instances I come across of “it’s not sex, it’s rape”, because there’s so bloody many of them.
This one cheesed me the fuck off tonight. [Child sexual abuse warning.]
Police decry ‘slap on wrist’ for illegal sex
[…] One of the men, Justin Charles Mudimbu, a 39-year-old Zimbabwean who moved to Broome two months before the offences, had sex with the girl in exchange for alcohol and money on three occasions last September. He was given a 3 1/2-year prison sentence, suspended for two years.
The first offence took place when the girl was just 12, and on each occasion he did not wear a condom. Mudimbu said he had thought the girl was 17, and Judge Martino agreed, saying the girl looked 17. “In this case there are a lot of matters to your credit … it is also relevant that you have pleaded guilty at an early stage; you are very sorry for what you have done,” Judge Martino said.
So now you get cookies from the judge after raping a 12 year old, so long as you say “Sorry, I thought she was a seventeen year old prostitute”? What. The. Fuck.
Categories: gender & feminism, violence
Grabbing somebody is Assault, and sexual touch makes it Sexual Assault. Stop minimising this. #rapeculture101 
Quicklink of the Day #2: #DestroyTheJoint excludes voices of women with disabilities 
Quicklink Of The Day #1: Transgender Day of Remembrance 
Friday Hoyden: Gillian Triggs 
Hoyden About Town 
*flails* Sometimes the only thing you can do is despair. 😦
The decision should be appealed in a higher court of law as Judge Martino obviously has not done justice to the 12 year old girl.
Credit where credit is due applies only to the child rapists, it seems. In an American case, a rapist-pimp called only “G.G” started grooming Sara Kruzan when she was 11, and started two years later, when he also forced her into prostitution for twelve hours each night (along with other girls). After three years of constant rape, when she was only sixteen, she killed him. And will spend the rest of her life in prison. In the video, she explains her experience (not graphic), and talks about how the judge told her she “lacked moral scruples”.
Grrrrr.
That is all I can think of to say that is vaguely coherent.
Related: did you see this post at Shakesville? (TRIGGER WARNING) http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/08/justice-bitchez.html
Summary: rapist got 2 years imprisonment (after pleading guilty) and the headline actually called the crime rape.
I had the same reaction as a lot of the commenters on the linked thread: WOW a rapist got an actual prison term! Only after that did it click: 2 years is pretty paltry, compared to the sentences dished out for other crimes.
And then I see a story like this and remember why I have the first reaction first. Makes me mad.