He appears to still think he did nothing wrong. He’s describing it as a Romeo and Juliet story.
There is some similarity, in that Juliet also wound up dead. Bouchard doesn’t seem to have felt called upon to follow the rest of Romeo’s example (not that I think he should have, it wouldn’t have helped.)
If Bouchard were saying now ‘I’m so sorry, I screwed up both of our lives but hers much worse than mine and possibly also my kid’s life, who knows how he’d have turned out with a different start? When I was 18 I didn’t know any better but I know better now and I’m going to push better education about this in the schools so other 18 year olds will know better in the future!’ – that would be one thing. But that doesn’t appear to be at all what he’s saying.
Yeah. No credit for “I was just a kid” when it seems the lesson still has not been absorbed as an adult. Double plus so when I think it’s safe to infer from party affiliation that he’s just the sort of person to respond as a judgmental dick when hearing about teen pregnancy, sex education, access to contraception and (gasp) abortion! these days.
Inasmuch as I would find it troubling—perhaps even disqualifying—for a Democrat running for office to have a similar (quite possible criminal) background, I could at least envision a Democrat holding less regressive views on such things now.
You are also leaving out the why he’s coming forward about this
Bouchard said that he decided to open up about the pregnancy and marriage after he found out that a political opposition research firm had begun looking into the matter. He also said he been contacted by a “U.K. media reporter” whom he accused of working with the opposition research company.
So basically he’s getting his own spin (pathetic and dishonest in my opinion) because he was about to be outed.
Which pretty much eliminates the tiny, tiny sliver of sympathy I might have had for the 18 year old version of him who done fucked up (pun intended), which were very much lacking for the current him from the party of ‘family values’ - one more thing they’ve all but jettisoned in the Trump era.
Sort of. He killed himself because he thought Juliet had done so first, though. Then she wakes up, and kills herself because he’s actually done so.
When calling something a “Romeo and Juliet story” people tend to forget that it’s a tragedy. It’s not an example of a cute love story that worked out well.
Apparently Bouchard raised his son after his ex-wife’s suicide at age 20. The fact that the son is now behind bars on rape convictions makes it sound kind of creepy for Bouchard to describe him merely as having “made some wrong choices in his life”. Sanitizing criminal violence that way seems derogatory to the victims.
I think an acknowledgement that his son has “done some very wrong things”, or some other phrasing that recognizes actual wrongdoing more effectively than the euphemistic “made some wrong choices” expression, would have been more forthright.
And I don’t think that the additional remarks that you quoted significantly change the sense or tone of how Bouchard’s description comes across, so I disagree with your assessment that it was somehow not “honest” of me to leave them out.
That wasn’t directed to you, although you would have had no way to know that because of the ham-handed way I copied and quoted the post. I apologize. The ‘not honest to have left it out’ was to another poster entirely and I didn’t catch that it was included.I’m sorry.
I agree that ideally he could have been more direct about how wrong those choices were and how devastating they were to others. But considering his age and career I was surprised that he didn’t disown or disavow his son ‘… but I still love him’, while clearly labeling the choices as wrong. Better than a lot of politicians we both could name.
Again, I apologize for my bad quoting, there wasn’t anything the least dishonest about what you said.
I’m not exactly sure what the time was, but the Florida statutes for 1984 (pdf!), which is probably pretty close, say that sexual battery (defined as “oral, anal, or vaginal penetration by, or union with, the sexual organ of another or the anal or vaginal penetration of another by any other object” in Chap 794) on a child under 16 was a second-degree felony, and the victim’s consent was not a defense.
I’m having trouble finding a bio with his birthdate, but the Guardian says he’s 55.
In which case, if this happened when he was 18, it wasn’t “over 40” years ago, it was 37; which makes it 1984, give or take a year based on possible months of birth and how recently he’d turned 18.
When I was 20 a female friend tried to set me up with a 16-year-old. She was gorgeous and mature for her age and was really into me but I thought it was wrong, and told her she really shouldn’t be trying to date guys my age. I retrospect I wish I hadn’t been so principled. It wasn’t illegal (then and now the age of consent in Washington State is 16) and her parents liked me and were okay with us dating but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Not long after I dated and got engaged to a woman 20 years older than me.
5 years after that I married a woman 6 years younger than me. (I was 25, she was 19.)