I haven’t followed any of the R-said, D-said discussions about Kavanaugh, but is anyone really saying 17-year-olds don’t understand this? My sons are 15 and 17 and when we discussed this situation, neither of them had any problem identifying the situation as sexual assault. I wouldn’t have had any problems identifying it as assault when I was 17.
As for the hypothetical, my wife and I raised our sons to be respectful of everyone, and I have specifically talked to them about always being aware that what they are doing with a girl is consensual. Maybe I’m naive, but I just can’t believe something like this comes out of nowhere. I would think a man who would do something like this has already shown signs of entitlement or considering other people to be things he can use. Something like this would be so out of character for my sons that I have a hard time imagining what I would do. I guess I would start with a discussion of why they did what they did. Then, depending on what I heard, some kind of counseling - alcohol or drug or whatever else was enabling them to feel like they could do something like that. Then, I would listen to the counselors as to what other actions needed to be taken.
There is not a chance in hell I wouldn’t report this to the police, with or without him by my side. I would do the same if my DAUGHTER attempted to rape someone, regardless of either of their ages. I wouldn’t cover it up, I wouldn’t talk to the victim or their parents (For what, to make sure they didn’t press charges?) and I wouldn’t hit anyone. I would do the right thing and report it.
I can’t believe the responses I’m seeing here. Is this really how rational people act in regards to rape? No wonder we have this culture of rape acceptance. I would like to think my reaction is rational but then I was a 15 year old rape victim. I was also a 12 year old rape victim, and a 6-8 year old rape victim. I have a daughter who was drugged and brutally raped at a party and another daughter who was raped by three teens when she was six years old. I would have to take the needs of the VICTIM in to consideration, even if I loved the person who attempted to rape the victim. Even if it was my own offspring. It’s the right thing to do, don’t you think? It’s not up to me to punish my offspring for a criminal offense. It’s up to me to do the right thing and let the court decide that.
I had a female classmate from a large family who kept telling me that she wanted her brothers to rape me, so I would get pregnant and have to leave school. She would say this in front of teachers, who would tell me, “Just ignore her” and as for my parents, they told me that whatever I was doing to her to make her want to say that to me, I’d better stop because it was embarrassing to them. :smack: This family’s kids were all very intelligent, musically talented, athletic, and physically attractive - and most of them were also using drugs and alcohol, and sexually active, before they were in junior high school, which makes me wonder now if something untoward was going on at home. (Probably.)
I later told a therapist, “I hope she gets gang-raped and gets pregnant from it” and quickly added, “No, not really. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Even if a woman did deserve to get raped, which she never does, the baby is completely innocent.”
When I was a senior in high school, my “best friend” turned on me, and I never found out why. However, I think I’m the one who came out ahead, because she was later hanging out with kids who, along with her, cut classes, got drunk at lunch, etc., and as for her being sexually active? She was the kind of girl who would get in a van with a bunch of boys, who would tag-team her. By all accounts, she stopped doing this when the vehicle was returning to town, and the boys who weren’t driving opened the back door and threw her out on the highway. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when she explained that to her parents, and good grief, if I knew about it, certainly they would have found out what she had really done. Oh, and if my daughter was doing something like that, she would have been in very big trouble, and my son would have been in even bigger trouble.
Agreed X 100,000, but like I said before, parents who disregard this kind of behavior are probably that way themselves.
I’m sure everyone here can tell a story of this or that person about whom everyone said, “Do not allow yourself to be alone with them.” However, that doesn’t help with someone shoves a person into a room, like these guys allegedly did, or their victim-dar goes off and they target someone who doesn’t know them, or can’t defend themselves.
There is a lot of overlap between the above paragraph, and that house in every neighborhood where the kids are not allowed to go because of someone else who lives there. For example, there was a boy I grew up with who was Very Bad News, and also the son of a Federal judge, and when my younger sister became friends with his sister, I told our parents to never, ever let her go over there, even if they knew he wasn’t there. They had already decided on this, and had heard it from other people. I’m still waiting for the day when I fire up my computer, or turn on CNN, and find out that he’s been arrested for some kind of white-collar crime and then gets link to all the missing prostitutes, KWIM?
I graduated from HS in 1981, and my school’s yearbook didn’t allow things like this. And “Devil’s Triangle” sure sounds like some GAY behavior to me. (Two men and a woman - clutches pearls.) Younger Dopers need to understand that homosexual activity was not viewed the same way back then as it is now, assuming it’s true.
On a similar note, I remember being puzzled about Obama being part of the “Choomba Gang” (high achieving pot smokers) and wondering how that got in his HS yearbook.
To me, it would be extremely important to know the details of the case. What exactly happened? Did he hit her or choke her? Did he forcibly touch her privates under her clothing or try to put his hand or penis inside here? This is a much different scenario than a drunken teenager trying to kiss a girl and pressing himself up against her.
Both can be traumatic to the girl, but the first scenario shows a tendency towards violence and rape, and the second is more a case of rampant hormones fueled by alcohol.
Unfortunately, if a person is predisposed towards rape and violence, he is not safe in being in society. At the very least he needs treatment, which he’s not likely to get in jail. But at least he’s unable to continue to progress while incarcerated.
We don’t know all the details of the Kavanaugh case, yet many people seem to be lined up along political parties as to guilt or innocence.
For example, the boys who raped your 6 year old daughter, I would want them hanged (and I hope they were). Now in other cases where say your son says one thing happened and the girl says another - whom do you believe?
I cannot believe back then how many parents would just allow their kids to have these big booze parties (House Parties) unsupervised. Nowadays parents can be charged if they allow underage drinking on their property or if assaults occurred. These things happen much less now.
I wonder, where were the parents in all this? Why were they allowing the keg parties on their property?
What I have been reading is the school had gone way downhill with a booze/party/sex culture and it was a matter of time before something like this happened.
Because they wanted their kids to be “popular”, I guess. The aforementioned judge’s son allowed him to have keggers as early as 7th grade. That is not a typo.
In the summer between 11th and 12th grade, the school band went to Hawaii. I did not go for reasons I won’t go into here; my mother went in my place as a chaperone so we wouldn’t lose all the money we had paid into it. The decision I made not to go was one I have never regretted, in large part because the chaperones were acting worse than the kids, and one of the things was indeed buying booze for kids. Nowadays, that would get the parents arrested and the kids sent home C.O.D.
When my brother took the same trip in 1983, and my sister a few years after that (can’t recall exactly when), the no-alcohol and drugs thing was enforced.
And when my sister was in high school, my parents went out of town for the weekend, and had her stay with a trusted family friend, with no access to a car. I was in a club that took turns meeting in people’s houses, and because my place wasn’t big enough to host a gathering, I asked my parents if I could have one there, and they said I could, but not to tell my sister because she wouldn’t be very happy about it. Of course, the plans she had for a party went belly-up when our parents heard about them, and they had to tell her, “It would be kind of hard for you to have a party on Saturday night, because NWH is going to have one.” Yeah, and in my case, I knew who was going to be there, and that once the ashtrays were emptied and the folding chairs put away, you wouldn’t be able to tell anyone had been there. My parents did tell the neighbors what I would be doing, and they had no problem with it.
I understand your meta-point about tough love, etc., but sometimes protecting those you love first means keeping them out of jail and avoiding a life-time scarlet-letter style sex offender status.
I’m not saying it’s right, I’m saying it’s what I would do if my own child were at risk of going to prison and being labeled for life.
This thread is very difficult for me, since I do have a son around that age and I know (or, I believe) that he would never do such a thing. I’d like to believe he would actually step in to prevent such a thing if given the opportunity. So, I’m being asked to posit that that person I know and love were so accused. It’s hard to wrap my mind about it, because it really hits home.
If jail time and sex offender status were off the table, we’d put him into counseling, pay for her counseling if she wanted it, probably move away. But, if those things were an actual risk, as I mentioned, I’d probably do whatever I could to keep him out.
You say this based on what? I have teenage and former teenage kids and there seemed to be plenty of opportunities to go somewhere to drink if they were so inclined.
He would admit everything, apologize for everything, make restitution, perform charity work for womens’ causes, get therapy, pay whatever juvenile penalty is on the table, beg forgiveness from the victims (everything Brett Kavanaugh has not done, and will never do).
I would do all this hoping he doesn’t end up on a lifetime sex offender registry, and minimize any mark on his permanent criminal record. If he’s well and truly rehabilitated (rehabilitating) and repentant while a juvenile, I see no reason it should follow him around adulthood.
Of course this is just for an attempted rape. If it’s a completed rape then that’s an extra level of harm and it would be harder to be charitable. I don’t even want to think about that.
Note to self, work extra hard to teach my kid about boundaries, consent, and respecting women.
But your original post seemed to assume, highly unrealistically, that the parent somehow knows it was ‘attempted rape’ without any mention of the police being involved already. Kind of strange turn around now. Of course in 99%+ of cases if the girl/family has not filed a complaint with the police the parent of the boy would not know anything really bad might have happened, and even a criminal complaint doesn’t establish fact. Maybe parents who have video surveillance set up where their kids party? Or some other strange circumstance, but too unlikely to be a useful hypothetical. Life in general doesn’t work on the basis of what you’d do based on knowledge of the all-seeing eye.
In any normal circumstance a parents’ knowledge of a possible criminal act by their kind is going to be via the police knocking on the door. In which case you tell your kid not to lie to the police, you don’t lie to the police yourself, but get a lawyer before either of you say anything and follow the lawyer’s advice.
I assume the virtue signalling about sexual allegations by girls against boys being a special exception to this basic rule of common sense and responsible parenting would not withstand reality in the case of almost any actual parent, of sound mind. And a number of the responses have been ‘I don’t have kids but [what follows is therefore meaningless]’
It’s unlikely you are going to know that your kid committed a crime, and extremely unlikely you’d know how serious a crime in an ambiguous situation (groping over clothes v. attempted rape, maybe in the boy’s mind rape was the intention, but the kid is going to tell his parent rape was his final intention but he failed because the girl got away? that’s a ridiculous scenario, the parent is just not going to know that).
You make a great point. My original OP was flawed in that most likely you would hear about this from another source, your son will deny it, and so now you are left with who to believe?
BTW, its not that people will out and out lie. Well sometimes they do. But sometimes, especially if alcohol was involved, ideas get into their heads.
One thing I think we can all agree on is that a person who thinks this kind of behavior is OK is not going to admit it except in a place where they are with like-minded people, and this is definitely not one of them.
I hope they all do. They need to think back to that night of the prom and they almost got into Mary Jane’s pants if only she hadn’t found the door handle and could run so fast. I want it to gnaw at them. Does she remember; does she know where I am; am I about to get a letter from some lawyer. If they haven’t the courage to lay it out on the table, I want it to haunt them into their grave.
It might have been “the way things were” back then but it wasn’t right, and you don’t get a pass because you weren’t the only one doing it.
