I don’t know him that well. Just enough to say hi in passing most the time and occasionally chat for a few minutes. I see his wife more, as she takes the dog out for walks every day, but she’s a quiet type and never says more than hi.
So, a friend of mine is moving into the neighborhood with his wife and kids. He scanned the sex offenders’ registry and told me my neighbor was on it. I checked, and, yes, there he is. Conviction for forced rape. I guess I’ll assume he’s long since paid his debt to society, but it’s going to feel a bit weird saying hi to him from now on.
Did it have any more detail than that? It could be possible that he was 18 and was convicted of statutory rape for having sex with his 16 year old girlfriend.
If the conviction is “forced rape” that’s not “statutory rape,” which means you can have all the consent you want, but statuatorially, she’s not of age to give consent. So, “forced rape” distinguishes the two.
Well, I certainly learned by lesson Googling “forced rape” in hopes of a legal definition. I don’t recommend it to anyone who feels like having sex within the week. Ew.
It’s crazy how normal sex offenders can, and often do, appear. I’m working for a state probation agency and have had the opportunity to meet some. It turns out they’re generally the most compliant, polite, and easy to work with. Some seem creepy, but many don’t. And those are not just ones whose charge was statutory rape either, which seems to be the default suggestion in cases where the person seems fairly normal. In reality, a man with a statutory rape conviction often would not even qualify for community notification.
Yeah, it’s interesting how people are so eager to point out that the guy might just be a statutory rapist but no one ever points out that the crime could be even worse than it appears.
As you may be aware, many feel that statutory rape laws are far too strict and far too punitive for actions that are better labeled as “inadvisable” rather than “heinous”. Since the law and society both frequently make no distinction, filing it all under the term “rape”, those who feel that way often feel the need to mitigate the damage by pointing out that the term does not always refer to the terrible act it is typically associated with.
This is not appropriate in this case, of course, since the distinction was made by using the term “forced rape”, but familiar patterns are often used even when not appropriate.
Actually, this phenomenon is a good illustration of how rhetoric can be a double edged sword. A common way of vilifying something one disfavors is by associating it with something widely agreed to be very bad (such as associating underage sex with rape). And it works - but it works in both directions. As underage sex gets moved up the scale of awfulness, rape gets moved down.