I’m truly sorry (speaking for myself, of course) to be speaking from the voice of experience here. But I am speaking (and approaching this) from experience. If that benefits my daughter, then who knows, maybe it was all worth it?
What I want, more than anything, is to walk that fine line between taking it too seriously and not taking it seriously enough.
I think it was some guy on a commercial who said “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure”.
That pretty much describes parenthood.
There was something that bugged me about that the way that OP was shared with the SDMB, it was somewhat reader digest like in it’s details. The xanax and a glass of wine, the hair coloring in her underwear and T shirt, the race to retell this sad tale on the internet the same night it happened. I was almost expecting an uplifting end to the story like in readers digest or redbook, when I realized we would have to wait for the next chapter in the drama to actually occur before we are privy to the rest.
I wish I didn’t open that thread, Im glad she has all the support of the dope but the fact that she is broadcasting this story as it happens is somewhat gross and IMO, disrespectful of her daughters privacy.
I obviously don’t expect every here to share my sensibilities, and maybe anything I say about this won’t change your mind. But I came here for support because it’s the place I can come to best protect her privacy. Yeah, there are a handful of Dopers who know her from DopeFests, but I can’t imagine any of them would say anything to hurt her. I can’t lean on my IRL friends right now because they’re in the neighborhood, and having this around the neighborhood really would be disrespectful to her privacy.
I wish I had a neat, upbeat ending to the story, but it doesn’t have any ending at all yet.
As for the “tone” of the OP, well, I’m not a gifted writer. I just try to put down words so people will understand what I’m trying to say.
Never mind-wrong thread. :smack:
and a new granddaughter.
I wonder how he’ll feel when she’s 8 and she comes to him with a story about boys forcing her into performing oral sex?
Maybe it’s just me, but Sunrazor never struck me as this type of poster. I’m hoping he just had a bad day, or didn’t understand the situation.
Norinew, we’ll thrash this one out. You go wallow in the support of your MPSIMS thread.
I’m going to apologize right now for the wall of text thats coming. Sorry.
But this whole thing reminds me of an incident that happened when I was a kid. Me, my cousin “Ken” and a few other kids were playing basketball in my backyard. My grandparents had built a hoop for me there, even though I have always sucked at sports. A kid, a little younger than us, named “Ray” came into the yard with his brand new soccer ball and somehow got confused in the basketball game. Result: His soccer ball had vanished and he said we had somehow take it and hidden it. Of course,we all laughed and denied it. Ray’s dad showed up fifteeen minutes later and demanded that we return his ball. But none of my friends had taken it. Being kids we were pretty ballsy about telling him that. Well, Big Ray decided we were all “dirty little stealing liars” and proceeded to whip us with his belt. This led to much screaming and running and then my grandmother saw it and came out of the house and cussed and cursed. As mad as Big Ray was he wouldn’t hit an old lady so he backed off. It was then that another kid that wasn’t there came up the street with the ball asking who it belonged to. “Ray’s” soccer ball had rolled out of driveway, down the street and was found by a person that wasn’t there in my yard.
That didn’t solve the problem. My grandparents were pissed. My granfather came home shortly after Big Ray had left and was fantastically mad. How dare he come into his yard and whip his grandchild and friends for no reason. Granddad wanted to fight him, but my mother (yes, I lived with my grands, but my mom was still alive…its a long complicated story, just roll with it) opted to call the police. The officer took everyone’s story and though we had grounds to go further, my folks decided to noty press charges. Was Big Ray wrong? Hell yeah. I never liked the fucker anyway. As an adult I had to curse him out when home on leave once. (Even though he’s old compared to me, he has a big mouth and depended on his age to be a buffer for the asinine things he would do or say, but thats another story…besides, his son, “Ray” and I had become good friends in the time). * But my grandparents were right in calling the police Someone assaulted their child. (me). Rather than take the law into their own hands they called the cops. The entire thing was settled rather quickly, apologies were given and its forgotten really. Yeah, there were bad feelings for awhile, but eventually they calmed. It was a lot better than what my grandfather had proposed*…“Just shoot the jackass”. **
My point is its a shame and a crime that happened to** mudgirl.** Her mother was correct in calling the police to deal with it. When a child is threatened the parents will basically go berserk to protect the kid. Theres no problem with that, but it can make things worse for all parties. Norinew displayed a good deal of common sense in calling the police. I understand what Sunrazor is saying, but I respectfully disagree. *(I don’t think *Sunrazor ** is a bad guy or anything…we’ve seen eye to eye on military opinions and at least, to me, he seems like a reasonable and intelligent person.)
Its touchy, dealing with children. The boys involved definitely need counseling. Brushing off what they did would only lead to more problems in the future.
Again, Norinew, I’m sorry you and your daughter had to go through this.
Bingo. When you can’t talk to those close, you need to talk to those far. Nothing wrong with that. - And talking about it is necessary both as a coping device, and a means of gathering advice on how to deal with it in the best way possible. None of us have all the answers. It would be foolish to think that, it would be foolish to act that way, especially where the lives of our children are concerned.
Everyone is arguing about whether it is “rape” or not. There are two useful definitions of rape. The first is the general usage definition – what laymen mean when they use the word. The second is the legal definition. It seems that the contention in this thread regards the latter, so let’s examine that.
There is enormous diversity in state approaches to defining the crime in statute. Maryland is one of a few states that has stuck with William Blackstone’s definition from 1785. In Maryland, rape is “vaginal intercourse . . . by force, or the threat of force, without consent of the other.”[sup]1[/sup] The situation at hand is not rape in Maryland. (It probably falls under “sexual assault” or some similar crime, but I don’t have those definitions at hand.)
The 1962 Model Penal Code (never adopted in Maryland) defines rape as “sexual intercourse with a female not his wife if . . . he compels her to submit by force or threat of imminent death, serious bodily injury, extreme pain or kidnapping”[sup]2[/sup], with “sexual intercourse” including “per os”[sup]3[/sup] (oral). The situation at hand is not rape under this section of the model penal code because there is no threat of imminent death, etc… It would probably instead be considered the third degree felony “Gross Sexual Imposition.”[sup]4[/sup]
When this victim’s age is taken into account, however, it can be re-elevated to rape under the MPC. Under 213.1(1)(d), it will be rape if “the female is less than 10 years old.” But some posters in this thread don’t seem to be basing their definitions on the victim’s age.
I am not saying that the situation is not terrible. I am only suggesting that we should not bandy around unwarranted terms. (This is not addressed at Norinew, who is keeping a remarkably cool head here, and is not trying to gild the lily with unnecessary linguistic baggage.) And of course, if you are using the non-legal definition of “rape,” then your definition is up to you.
[sup]1[/sup] Md. Code, Criminal Law §§3-303(a)(1), 3-304(a)(1)(2006).
[sup]2[/sup] ALI Model Penal Code official draft §213.1.
[sup]3[/sup] Id. at §213.0.
[sup]4[/sup] Id. at §213.1 (2)(b) “Sexual intercourse . . . when he knows she suffers from a . . . defect which renders her incapable of appraising the nature of her conduct.”
I wonder if the people who think oral rape isn’t rape are the same ones who think oral sex is not sex (Bill Clinton, I’m looking at you). I think they are wrong, and I wish I could understand their point of view…
Norinew, you are doing all the right stuff. I hope the legal experience does not turn out to be unpleasant for either you or your daughter.
I hadn’t actually looked up the statute, so thank you for clarifying. But yeah, so far, I’m really trying to avoid slapping potentially emotionally charged labels on the incident.
In the originally linked thread, Sunrazor has done an admirable about-face to his original assertion that calling the police was an over-reaction.
Apparently, he’s been out of the news biz for 10 years or so, and times changed, and he didn’t notice (hey, I personally didn’t notice when short hair became “cool” again). But he was moved by the reaction to him to check his perceptions.
Good on him, says I. Very few people would bother to do such a thing. They “know” what they “know” and they aren’t interested in being disabused of such notions. Sunrazor, however, in true Doper spirit, apparently said, “hmmmm, I wonder if there’s something I’m missing here” and checked it out. And found out that while he was busy getting ten years older (as have I), times had changed.
He apologized gracefully and without making excuses.
Therefore, I am posting to his pit thread in an effort to un-pit him.
Thank you, Sunrazor, for affirming why most of us are Dopers in the first place: the belief that ignorance can be successfully fought! 
norinew, I won’t be able to respect or admire anyone for quite some time, as you are currently hogging all of my respect and admiration. You are an amazing mother, have raised an absolutely amazing child, and you have dealt with Sunrazor with about a thousand times more class than I would have.
As I will now demonstrate. I didn’t see an admirable about-face, I saw cowardly excusing. So he was out of the journalism business for ten years and therefore he didn’t realize that you should call the cops on two child rapists? Why the living flying fuck would you need to be in journalism to realize that? I’ve spent a grand total of nine weeks in the journalism business; I knew the correct reaction to child rape going in and I knew it coming out. So should he have.
I want to thank **Alice the Goon ** for being able to disagree civilly with me. I have apologized to norinew for misunderstanding the social context within which apparently most of the Dope lives and for parsing her words too closely. As I understood **norinew’s ** OP, her daughter wasn’t held down and raped, but rather cajoled into doing something she knew wasn’t right in the first place – and then put a stop to it. She’s a girl anyone would be proud to have as a daughter; **norinew ** is a woman any kid would be lucky to have as a mother. At no point did I ever argue otherwise.
And thanks one and all for participating in the first official pitting of Sunrazor. I shall treasure it always.
Maybe you can put it on the mantel over your fireplace. I think it would look quite nice there.
Could you explain how the social context has changed?
I’m not arguing with you; I actually agreed with what you said (perhaps not how) in the other thread. Apparently, I’m also a dinosaur and need some understanding of the current culture in which we live.
Please fight my ignorance. Thanks.
I am blushing furiously right now!! This is the pit, you need to stop being so nice. 
How the hell should I know how it changed? I didn’t see it happen! There was a time when the parents of a 14-year-old boy who got an 8-year-old girl to do anything sexual would have been mortified, grounded him for a month and made him have a heart-to-heart talk to the priest/pastor/counselor/whatever. The kid himself would have been so humiliated at discovery that he’d have tried to dig a hole and hide in it. There would have been tears (on the 14-year-old’s part) and apologies and solumn vows to never do anything like that again. Finally, the lad would have been strictly instructed to play with kids his own age, and he would have complied.
How did all of that change? Well, now you’ve highlighted my ignorance again.
Ah, I see. I didn’t grow up in the world that you did.
I can’t tell a whole lot of change in the social context except for the reactions to the events.
When I was between 6 and 8, some older guy tried to pick me up in his car. Luckily, I moved away and knew enough to get to safety. There were many more things that happened to me, but I’ll refrain from sharing them lest people around here go through the exercise of making up more negative names for the people that inhabit the earth with us.
Well, there you go.
I can only speak for myself here, but…
The problem is that Sunrazor is helping to propagate the idea that when things like this happen, it’s OK to not call the police, and it’s OK to just let the parents handle it. It is that kind of attitude that makes this kind of thing go on so long before anyone is caught. It’s this kind of “non-reporting” mentality that leads to more victims, and leads to victims being violated in even worse ways. The reason I, personally, was (and am) so enraged by it is that there are enough people with this fucked up, stupid idea already, and they don’t need encouragement. They don’t need their idea validated. When shit like this isn’t reported and followed up on, the perpetrators do it again. And it tends to escalate. That’s what the statistics say, overwhelmingly.
So if you’re hunky dory with the notion that helping people convince themselves and each other that child molestation isn’t serious enough to report to the cops, then I can see why you don’t understand why we’re so upset. But some of us realize the severity of this mentality and are not only outraged by a person having it, but that this person would try to actively convince others… when it’s something that leads to serious victimization of children… you’re really baffled that we’re incensed? Do you realize that when you look into the background of that 40 year old guy who is imprisoned for raping a dozen children and leaving their dead bodies in ditches by the side of the road, that you find they were forcing 8-year-olds to fellate them when they were teenagers? And that if the people at that time had reported it, LIVES may have been saved? I’m not saying that these particular kids will become rapists or murderers, but it would not surprise me at all if they do–and yes it pisses me right the hell off to find that there are people who think you shouldn’t take action in the early stages to prevent that. And who try to convince everyone else of the same. THAT is why I’m so pissed off about his “views.”
Elsewhere in my rage, he went and insulted a friend of mine, implied that she was abusing drugs and alcohol, etc. when she very clearly was not, and when she was in an extremely fragile emotional place and needed support. He told her that she was wrong to report a very fucking serious crime against her own very young child (who I have met–I was also there the day she got her nickname, and posted a photo of that event in the other thread) in a thread where she was seeking the camaraderie of her friends. He then carried on about it, defending his asinine position in a place where it was increasingly out of place. I would be pissed regardless of who it was, but the fact that I care so much about norinew makes it that much worse. I was so angry that I was shaking when I read Sunrazor’s posts. So that’s why I’m pissed off about his “comments.”
Frankly, I’m disgusted that you think it’s an overreaction. He’s spreading dangerous misinformation that could directly impact the lives of a lot of children and create a lot more victims. That you think that is something to be shrugged off as “oh, he just has a different opinion” is sickening.
As for the whole “about face” because things have “changed in 10 years” I think it’s crap. Yeah, a long time ago people didn’t report stuff like this to the cops because they didn’t take it seriously. And those perpetrators got worse and accumulated more victims and many are sitting behind bars today because of what happened when it finally got bad enough and somebody did report it. Or found the body, or whatever. The fact that in the past many people were too ignorant to realize the seriousness of the situation doesn’t make them any less idiots. People used to think it was no big deal if guys beat their wives bloody every night, either. Does that mean that it’s all just fine and dandy if someone says “oh, well, yeah he broke his wife’s nose three times and she lived in constant fear of him and always wore long sleeved shirts to hide the bruises… but I didn’t realize it was serious because 10 years ago a lot of dumbasses didn’t report stuff like that!” No, it’s still fucking stupid.
Like hell. That’s about as ignorant as people saying that there weren’t any gay people a hundred years ago, just because people kept such things in the closet. I’m sure a lot of the 40, 50, 60 year old child molesters out there today were grounded by their parents for the offenses they committed when they were teenagers. And I’m sure that a lot of their later violations didn’t get reported, either, both because stuff like that was reported less back in then in general AND because the victims realized that even when they told somebody, the kid still got away with it so why bother?
Yeah, that would be the fantasy world where everyone closes their eyes and pretends things are going just dandy.