I wanted to look at an article about a recent case in NH where a 15 year old boy was sexually abused by a 38 year old woman. The judges comments and the poll the paper ran are disturbing as well:
The 38-year-old New Hampshire woman convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy should not have been treated any differently than male defendants in similar statutory-rape cases, rape experts said yesterday.
“Having worked with male survivors, it is a cultural myth that there is no negative impact for teen-age boys being in sexual relationships with older women,” said Gina Scaramella, executive director of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, of the sentencing in Nashua on Monday that some perceived as light.
Scaramella said society has conditioned adolescent males to believe that having sexual relations with older women is harmless and that they are victors rather than victims.
“It is something we don’t take seriously. It’s joked about nightly on TV and made into a glamorous situation,” she said. “But the basics are the same: it’s a complete misuse of power, and it has a significant negative impact on the development of the adolescent involved.”
I want to applaud Ms. Scaramella for her words in this case. I find it encouraging that she and her center not only understand but they are willing to publicly speak out on this issue.
In handing down his sentence of Robin Mowery on Monday, Hillsboro County Superior Court Judge Robert Lynn questioned the extent of the teen’s victimization by noting how he “aggressively pursued” sex with Mowery, now 38.
“Young men have raging hormones. It doesn’t make him a bad person,” the judge said before sentencing Mowery to a two- to four-year prison term.
Prosecutor Patricia LaFrance had asked the judge to hit Mowery, who was convicted by a jury in June of four felony sexual assault charges, with the maximum five- to 14-year sentence.
Mowery was accused of having sex with the boy on four occasions in her home, car and the boy’s home. On the witness stand, she told jurors that the teen raped her at knifepoint and tied her daughter to a tree and threatened to slit her throat if she told anyone.
Lynn, who called her testimony “complete baloney,” acknowledged that society views sex crimes against young male victims differently than it does with female victims. “Like it or not, an underage boy having sex with an older-aged girl is viewed differently than the other way around,” he said.
LaFrance said that kind of logic doesn’t belong in a courtroom.
“My position is that the gender doesn’t matter. It’s an adult sexually assaulting a child,” said LaFrance, adding that she was “disappointed” by the sentence and plans to appeal it to the New Hampshire Sentence Review Board.
The prosecutor is right. Bottom line is that gender doesn't matter. It was an adult sexually assaulting a child. Period. To make matters worse she tried to accuse the victim of crimes which could have resulted in him being sent to prison(she later recanted those claims). In another article on this case it was stated "Mowery's sister, Jaime Manning, said the divorce of their parents and abusive relationships caused Mowery to concoct elaborate stories." From that same article "The teen's father also addressed the judge, saying the assaults changed his son and that he worries that further emotional problems will surface when he's older."
The paper also ran a poll which asked the following question and got these results:
If an older woman has sex with a teen boy, what should her punishment be?
58% - Same sentence as a man
8% - Lighter sentence than a man
34% - No time, that boy is lucky
To me the bottom line is that an adult sexually abused a teen and that is how it should be viewed by everyone. It only takes speaking with a few male survivors to understand why this is so. You can read the complete article here.
Monday, December 15, 2008
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1 comment:
I am happily surprised to see a conviction, but the poll results and the judges comments are typical and remind us that we need to educate our friends, family and co-workers about this unhealthy view of male sexual assault victims.
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