Can someone PLEASE explain to me, why Mike Tyson, a CONVICTED RAPIST, is still able to walk around holding his head nice and high, with barely a blemish to mark his very public persona ... Because I just don't get it. These assholes who rape women barely get a slap on their wrists, before our wonderful judicial system lets them back out onto the street to do it again. They're rehabilitated, they say, able to go out into society and be a productive member ... No chance that they could reoffend. My view is far different from what our judicial system would have you believe.

Once a rapist, always a rapist. Do you think that is unfair of me to say that? What if I said, once a murderer, always a murderer. Would anyone argue with me then? Does serving your time mean that you've paid the debt to your victim(s) and that once done, you become completely exonerated of all your crimes. Somehow I doubt that.

But rape is seen differently, because it involves body parts. An intimate crime between rapist and victim, where the offense is too personal for people to understand. Where his crime becomes her shame, an albatross left to hang around her neck for the rest of her life. Does she ever get rehabilitated?

But we let them go and we put them back out onto our streets with our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, our friends ... Because they've served their time. We let them return to their lives, even those spent in the spotlight, in a profession that applauds violence and yearns for more. How much shock can we really express, when that hatred comes bubbling up to the surface for all to see? What else are we left to question then? The following is a statement made by Mike Tyson, showing just how well rehabilitation has worked for him. Ask yourself, if you dare, whether or not you would want this man sitting in your living room right now ...

(SNIP)

May 29) -- Mike Tyson said he's so angry about his rape conviction 11 years ago that he wants to rape his accuser and her mother now. In a television interview scheduled for broadcast Thursday night, the former heavyweight boxing champion repeated his claim that he was innocent of raping beauty pageant contestant Desiree Washington in 1991 in an Indianapolis hotel room.

"I just hate her guts,'' he said. "... She put me in that state, where I don't know. I really wish I did now. But now I really do want to rape her and her... mama.''

Tyson, 36, was convicted in 1992 and was sentenced to six years in prison. He served three years before being released on parole.

He made the comments during an interview in Miami Beach, Fla., with Fox news anchor Greta Van Susteren, who was reviewing the trial.

(END SNIP)


If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.
~ Margaret Fuller

If you need help, someone to talk to, or would like to learn more about sexual assualt, click on the selected links provided below.

Websites:
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network
Welcome to Barbados

Recommended Reading:

After Silence
Returns of the Day
Why I respect TORI AMOS (note: no affiliation to the Stacie mentioned in article)
Lucky: A Memoir
The Lovely Bones
Telling


A Fear of Being

Sometimes I am a coward,
leaving on the light, rather than sleeping in the dark.

Pretending I'm not home, when a knock sounds on the door
and a stranger stands outside.

Sometimes I am a coward,
when a man stands too close or stares too hard ...

When a simple conversation has me grasping for words to say,
or when I cannot find my tongue to speak.

When voices raised in anger, have me searching for places to hide,
and I shrink back into the shadows to avoid detection.

Sometimes I am a coward,
holding back myself from those who would know me,
letting a river of betrayl, determine the course of my journey.

When in wanting love and to be loved,
I turn away from opportunity, to stand high on my wall of safety,
that no manmade ladder can hope to climb.

Sometimes I am a coward, choosing to stay at home,
rather than face the world at large,
pretending to be content
within my small sphere of being,
though all the while secretly dreaming of escape.

Sometimes I am afraid of being whole,
of finding the missing piece that completes my puzzle ...

Scared at the daunting prospect of just being me.
Myself.

The women who doesn't need the light on, to fall asleep.
~ Written by Stacey (11-15-00)