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    HarvestMoonJE Reich
    6/19/16 2:41pm

    Hope my girls get the grades to gain admission to Wellesley.

    Because an all female college seems like the only safe choice to me lately.

    How awful that a parent can’t just be excited about their daughter going off to college.

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      Cestrumnocturn1HarvestMoon
      6/19/16 2:56pm

      Wellesley’s brother college MIT isn’t exactly a bastion of female empowerment.

      http://thewellesleynews.com/2014/10/09/rap...

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      HarvestMoonCestrumnocturn1
      6/19/16 3:02pm

      MIT is a half hour drive away. I'll take those odds.

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    BrightEyesJE Reich
    6/19/16 2:46pm

    Good for the jury to see through his bullshit and laughable defense. “He was too drunk to understand his actions”. Meanwhile, this scum sucker managed to pass out condoms to the other players, took video of the crime and sent it to friends as it was going on. He was sober enough to understand not leaving dna evidence/a possible pregnancy/std, how to work a camera and then text/email the footage to his friends. Oh that’s right, we should just give him a pass because he was “far, far away from home”.

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      IHaveThoughts Thinks 2016 Has No ChillBrightEyes
      6/19/16 3:03pm

      I dont get this “too drunk to rape” logic anyway. If I get wasted, get behind the wheel of a car, and kill someone it doesn’t stop being a crime because I was drunk, it just becomes negligence. I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it now. Irresponsible drinking does not absolve you of responsibility for your actions.

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      helgaperezBrightEyes
      6/19/16 3:07pm

      “He was too drunk to understand his actions”

      Do people ever try this defense with any other crime? Do people say, “Your Honor, I was too drunk to understand that I was driving a car, running stop lights, and crashing into other cars!”?

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    IncomingMsgFromTheBigGiantHeadJE Reich
    6/19/16 2:37pm

    “...but after it was discovered that the foreman at the first trial was a survivor of statutory rape, the both cases was overturned, resulting in a retrial.”

    I understand the need for impartiality, but given that at least 1 in 5 women have been sexually assaulted, does this mean that at least a fifth of women can’t sit as jurors on sex assault cases (without risking a mistrial)? Like, as a result of society’s allowing this culture to go on for so long, as a result of society’s allowing women to be victimized, sex assault victims are no longer eligible to serve as jurors for sex assault/abuse cases? Wtf.

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      AmyIncomingMsgFromTheBigGiantHead
      6/19/16 2:48pm

      Excellent point. Plus I love your username.

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      justlurking42IncomingMsgFromTheBigGiantHead
      6/19/16 2:52pm

      You’re right, and no I don’t think women who have been sexually assaulted can be automatically disqualified from sitting on a sexual assault jury. In the case of the mistrial for the Vanderbilt guy, IIRC the foreman lied during jury selection and concealed that he was a victim of stat rape. That is grounds for a do-over, not because the juror can’t be impartial but because the judge has to interview him about it in the presence of counsel to determine whether he can be impartial or not, and each lawyer gets a certain number of challenges to kick potentials off the jury for almost any reason. So it was a mistrial because all those rules were skipped. While you can’t just ban all sexual assault victims from juries, a defense lawyer can get rid of the ones who stand up before the judge and say “I believe all rapists should be punished with summary castration.”

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    Kendra ForrestJE Reich
    6/19/16 2:29pm

    Every conviction feels like progress until I remember that it means another woman was raped for that to happen. I hope they sentence him so hard the fucker rots in prison.

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      Vox PopulistKendra Forrest
      6/19/16 2:42pm

      Let’s hope he doesn’t appear before another judge Persky.

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      randilynisFINDILYNVox Populist
      6/19/16 2:51pm

      http://jezebel.com/stanford-sex-a...

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    justaburner9JE Reich
    6/19/16 4:17pm

    Someone explain why the Stanford case — where the male was found guilty of ‘fingering’ a blacked out woman — received 10,000x the attention this HEINOUS caught-on-tape gang raping of a drugged woman received.

    Stanford has a little more name recognition, but Vandy is very elite, so it’s probably not that. Is it a matter of the public being numb to meathead football players raping? Is it the Stanford kid looks harmless? Puzzling.

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      Kazuhira (master) Millerjustaburner9
      6/19/16 4:24pm

      I think it’s mainly because convictions are so rare, and that even when there was a conviction the judge decided that the minimum sentence was too harsh and would “ruin the rest of his life” without even mentioning the future of the person he violated.

      That’s not even mentioning the ridiculous apologists the guy was surrounded by talking about the fact that he can’t even enjoy steak anymore becaues he was being held responsible for his actions.

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      ad infinitumjustaburner9
      6/19/16 8:03pm

      In part, because the Stanford case was such a clear illustration of how often rock-solid evidence and even a conviction doesn’t stop the system from bending over backward to protect rapists.

      In larger part, because the rapist and his family and friends continue to insist, on the record, that he did nothing wrong by sexually abusing a passed-out woman and that the whole thing is the victim’s fault for being such a dirty slut. Because the rapist’s father told the court his son didn’t deserve to be punished because he only got “20 minutes of action,” rape isn’t a violent crime and he doesn’t enjoy steak as much as he used to. Because a friend of the rapist told the court that rape is caused by rape victims, not rapists, and if everyone wasn’t so goddamn politically correct we’d understand that there’s nothing wrong with raping unconscious women. Because the rapist apologized repeatedly for getting drunk, but not for committing rape, because he still sees nothing wrong with dragging an unconscious woman behind a dumpster and sexually violating her. Because the judge stated on the record that he was giving a convicted rapist a slap on the wrist because he didn’t think it was fair that committing rape should have a negative effect on his life.

      None of these are particularly unusual attitudes, but they’re not usually spelled out so explicitly in the public record. This case gave a lot of people an intimate view of rape culture, which they’ve never paid any attention to before, and it shocked and horrified them. Hence the seemingly outsized outrage.

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    the north is full of sparkling snowJE Reich
    6/19/16 2:22pm

    Good. Rapists get tried, occasionally. Not nearly as often as I’d like. Victims are tried every time.

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      HarvestMoonJE Reich
      6/19/16 2:56pm

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        PersnicketyPantsHarvestMoon
        6/19/16 5:42pm

        I always thought this video was perfect, because by changing it to tea it really shows the absurdity of rape apologists.

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        Chinou's castle needs a cleanerHarvestMoon
        6/20/16 12:47am

        Thank you HarvestMoon, I’ve been trying to explain to my 13year old the concept of consent.

        She said (quite rightly) “Why do *I* have to be always saying no then? Why can’t the other person just listen to me when I say no?”

        I am afraid I do not quite have the answer to that one yet. I said I would work on it with other, wiser people than myself.

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      HarvestMoonJE Reich
      6/19/16 2:53pm

      I prefer this photo. No “harmless boy” court costume.

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        ZOIKS!HarvestMoon
        6/20/16 11:42am

        Needs more flames coming out if his eyes and a forked tongue.

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        CoffeePleeeaseHarvestMoon
        6/20/16 1:02pm

        I know we shouldn’t beget violence with violence, but man, oh man does he have a punchable face.

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      CaptOtterJE Reich
      6/19/16 2:59pm

      I insist that from now on we refer to this man as "two-time convicted rapist, Brandon Vandenburg".

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        TerataDeVilleJE Reich
        6/19/16 2:49pm

        Can we swap this asshole for Anton Yelchin? I’d rather this waste of space be in the ground than sweet Anton.

        2016 sucks.

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