When someone calls you from the Washoe County Jail, the first thing you hear is a calm, computerized operator warning you that your conversation may be recorded. It's a lot like the one the phone company uses to inform you that the number you've dialed has been disconnected, if a little less human; a little less friendly. And it never says "we're sorry" or encourages you to have a nice day, because they aren't and you won't.
"I'm in some trouble," Elva said from what sounded like very far away. My humor reflex kicked in and I almost shot back, "Yeah, that's what the robot said," but I managed to stifle. If you need somebody to crack jokes in a crisis, Matt Farley's your man. It always makes me feel better and helps me focus, but I've heard rumors that some people don't feel the same way. I suspected that if I were sitting in an institutional waiting room while a jailer processed my information, I might be one of them.
"There's things I should've told you," she said, and then told me some of them. Most were things she'd previously alluded to, others I'd suspected and one caught me like a short left hook to the ribs, the kind of shot that makes your heart palpitate and your guard drop. For a second, my brain struggle to reconcile the new information with the old but couldn't. No matter which way I turned things, I couldn't make them all hang together. I decided to set them aside and await further developments. As with any story, I'd either piece together something resembling the truth later or I wouldn't, and asking a lot of stupid questions now wouldn't do any good.
The immediate point was that the version of Elva I knew and cared about, whichever carefully polished fragment of the whole girl she might have been, was locked up with the rest of her. And I wasn't sure how I felt about that at all. I've always had some white knight in me, and he wanted to storm the castle, battle the guards and make big promises. But another part of me, the guy who has been lied to by one coed too many, had no problem letting her fend for herself. They fought to a draw before I could speak.
"Well," I said after the robot turnkey announced that we had 30 seconds left before he broke the connection. "I'm really sorry things went this way. Maybe we can talk about it after you get things taken care of. But...I don't think I'm going to do this."
If you're ever feeling particularly good about yourself, try hanging up on someone you genuinely like who's just begun to cry inside a correctional facility. I guarantee your attitude will even out in a big hurry.
The thing that really bothers me, though, is how eager I was to overlook the truth. If the county hadn't gotten involved, I might never have figured things out. I consider myself to be pretty skeptical, but I never thought twice about the answer I got when I asked, "What did you you do today?" (If you said, "Meeting with my probation officer, Alex," you're today's winner.)
Even though it's scary to contemplate, most of our lives are still built on trust. We trust the bank not to lose our money. We trust drivers not to pop up onto the sidewalk or crash into our living rooms. We trust our friends not to do anything completely out of character. And when someone goes off the reservation and starts abusing trust, folks get violently angry, especially when the perpetrator escapes punishment. What most people don't talk about, though, is that sometimes when violators do get caught, we almost wish they'd gotten away with it.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Attorney generals don't make babies
Forced Perspective: Attorney generals don't make babies
I've been struggling for days with how best to break some appalling news to you all, but after much soul searching, I think the best way is to just come right out and say it. It's my sad duty to inform you that sometimes teenagers make bad decisions regarding sex.
We'll pause here to let the fainter of heart pick themselves up off the floor. I know this must come as a blow to my readers, who have of course never so much as considered going down that unwholesome road except with a lawfully wedded spouse, but my sources tell me its so. However, you may take some small comfort in the fact that the entire corrections system of the great state of Georgia is apparently as surprised as anyone to realize that teens might take an occasional tumble in the green grass behind the stadium.
According to the New York Times, Genarlow Wilson was a 17-year-old honors student when he fooled around with what turned out to be the wrong girl. I say "was" because he's spent the last two years in prison for engaging in consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old. My guess is when he finally gets out, which could be in 2015 under the grossly misapplied statute he was tried under, he won't be likely to pick up right where he left off. What he'll be likely to do is injure someone or stick up a 7-Eleven, at which point a judge will skim his record and think to himself, "Hmmm. Registered sex offender. Black kid with dreadlocks. Problem with authority. Back to the joint, kiddo."
Before that happens, it's only fair to look at the facts behind the aggravated child molestation charge. It seems that the encounter happened in 2003 at a New Year's Eve party near Atlanta. Wilson was videotaped engaged in the act with the alleged victim and also charged with having sex with another girl, who was 17 at the time. In that case, the prosecution contended that the girl was too inebriated to render consent, an allegation the jury eventually rejected.
No one has seen the video besides the jury, reporters and lawyers, but both teens are reportedly pretty drunk throughout. A rational judicial system might consider that evidence that all the unsupervised minors involved had voluntarily entered into a situation which, though they might later regret, was just one of those things that happens when you're young, attractive and stupid.
But of course, the Georgia legislature knew better. Because of the tape, Wilson went up the river under a newly strengthened law designed to target child molesters. As much as I'd like to, I can't blame the jury, because the law is the law, and photographic evidence doesn't leave much room for argument.
But I can blame the fools who wrote the law and every pandering jackass who voted for it. See, if Wilson had been taped having standard sex with a 15-year-old, he would only have been guilty of a misdemeanor. (That section of the law is called the "Romeo and Juliet" exemption, which shows you just how seriously these lawmaking tools take this matter. Whee! See how literate I can be when I talk about sex crimes?) The loophole was later closed, but the new measure was not made retroactive. So, Wilson was set up to do 10 years in federal prison for something that many teens do and all teenage boys wish constantly they could do.
On Monday, Judge Thomas Wilson (no relation) made a brief stand on behalf of the non-Puritains in America, calling the youth's detention "a grave miscarriage of justice" and ordering him freed immediately. But within hours, the state's attorney general, Thurbert Baker, filed an appeal that will keep Wilson in custody until "further guidance" is received from the trial court. So, basically, he's been teed up to be punted like the political football he's become and there's nothing a judge or jury can do about it.
Here's the thing. I have very strong suspicions that Wilson is not a good guy. It's been my experience that guys who have sex with more than one random minor at any single party are not moral people. He probably had a misdemeanor charge coming, if not for this than for something else he got away with.
But the girls who hook up with guys like this are not generally proper young ladies, either. And though I'm all for shielding victims of violent crimes from public ridicule, a tape exists of at least one of these girls, um, not being a victim. Not to be crude, but if the guy has to serve 10 years for an act that was literally performed upon him, I think it's only fair that the performer be forced to at least go on the record here.
Further, I'd sure like to know whose daughter the girl in question is and what her race is, because I have an inkling that at least one of those factors is driving this whole crazy machine. There are powerful people everywhere who'd rather not see their daughter on tape with any male, and I bet things get even more heated when we're talking about a potentially interracial couple in Georgia. The prosecutor has reportedly said that both females in the case are African-American, but no names have been released yet, and I think it's about time.
Finally, and I know there might be some hurt feelings about this, Wilson appears to have done exactly what every 17-year-old guy in America would do if he were able to. Speaking from experience, teenage boys think about sex a lot and will pretty much take it as it comes. I'm not saying they shouldn't be held responsible for their actions, but I am saying that any male prosecutor who characterizes a 17-year-old boy trying to get laid as a deviant is a damned hypocrite who should be disbarred. I bet a list of the names of court servants who checked out the video in question from evidence for "further review" and didn't return it for a few days would be pretty instructive.
In the end, all I know is that Wilson will probably spend much of the rest of his life behind bars, whereas Paris "DUI" Hilton and her ilk will be free to roam taxpayer-funded roads until they overdose and broadside an innocent driver on the 405. That's to say nothing of Wilson's "victim," who probably needs counseling if she was getting trashed and indiscriminately handing out party favors at the age of 15. It seems that the legal system goes through increasingly elaborate acrobatics to ignore the causes of problems (i.e. biological drives the kids were not prepared to deal with because their sex ed class was changed to abstinence-only before being cut altogether) and then put on a huge show of crucifying their products.
Personally, I'd like to see a show of hands in the courtroom from people who had no interest in getting naked when they were in high school. Then I'd lock everybody else in the judge's chambers with Wilson and his "victim" for an hourlong chat about how the world works outside of the AG's selfish little mind. And then I'd send everybody home to their families. Some people haven't seen them in a couple years.
I've been struggling for days with how best to break some appalling news to you all, but after much soul searching, I think the best way is to just come right out and say it. It's my sad duty to inform you that sometimes teenagers make bad decisions regarding sex.
We'll pause here to let the fainter of heart pick themselves up off the floor. I know this must come as a blow to my readers, who have of course never so much as considered going down that unwholesome road except with a lawfully wedded spouse, but my sources tell me its so. However, you may take some small comfort in the fact that the entire corrections system of the great state of Georgia is apparently as surprised as anyone to realize that teens might take an occasional tumble in the green grass behind the stadium.
According to the New York Times, Genarlow Wilson was a 17-year-old honors student when he fooled around with what turned out to be the wrong girl. I say "was" because he's spent the last two years in prison for engaging in consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old. My guess is when he finally gets out, which could be in 2015 under the grossly misapplied statute he was tried under, he won't be likely to pick up right where he left off. What he'll be likely to do is injure someone or stick up a 7-Eleven, at which point a judge will skim his record and think to himself, "Hmmm. Registered sex offender. Black kid with dreadlocks. Problem with authority. Back to the joint, kiddo."
Before that happens, it's only fair to look at the facts behind the aggravated child molestation charge. It seems that the encounter happened in 2003 at a New Year's Eve party near Atlanta. Wilson was videotaped engaged in the act with the alleged victim and also charged with having sex with another girl, who was 17 at the time. In that case, the prosecution contended that the girl was too inebriated to render consent, an allegation the jury eventually rejected.
No one has seen the video besides the jury, reporters and lawyers, but both teens are reportedly pretty drunk throughout. A rational judicial system might consider that evidence that all the unsupervised minors involved had voluntarily entered into a situation which, though they might later regret, was just one of those things that happens when you're young, attractive and stupid.
But of course, the Georgia legislature knew better. Because of the tape, Wilson went up the river under a newly strengthened law designed to target child molesters. As much as I'd like to, I can't blame the jury, because the law is the law, and photographic evidence doesn't leave much room for argument.
But I can blame the fools who wrote the law and every pandering jackass who voted for it. See, if Wilson had been taped having standard sex with a 15-year-old, he would only have been guilty of a misdemeanor. (That section of the law is called the "Romeo and Juliet" exemption, which shows you just how seriously these lawmaking tools take this matter. Whee! See how literate I can be when I talk about sex crimes?) The loophole was later closed, but the new measure was not made retroactive. So, Wilson was set up to do 10 years in federal prison for something that many teens do and all teenage boys wish constantly they could do.
On Monday, Judge Thomas Wilson (no relation) made a brief stand on behalf of the non-Puritains in America, calling the youth's detention "a grave miscarriage of justice" and ordering him freed immediately. But within hours, the state's attorney general, Thurbert Baker, filed an appeal that will keep Wilson in custody until "further guidance" is received from the trial court. So, basically, he's been teed up to be punted like the political football he's become and there's nothing a judge or jury can do about it.
Here's the thing. I have very strong suspicions that Wilson is not a good guy. It's been my experience that guys who have sex with more than one random minor at any single party are not moral people. He probably had a misdemeanor charge coming, if not for this than for something else he got away with.
But the girls who hook up with guys like this are not generally proper young ladies, either. And though I'm all for shielding victims of violent crimes from public ridicule, a tape exists of at least one of these girls, um, not being a victim. Not to be crude, but if the guy has to serve 10 years for an act that was literally performed upon him, I think it's only fair that the performer be forced to at least go on the record here.
Further, I'd sure like to know whose daughter the girl in question is and what her race is, because I have an inkling that at least one of those factors is driving this whole crazy machine. There are powerful people everywhere who'd rather not see their daughter on tape with any male, and I bet things get even more heated when we're talking about a potentially interracial couple in Georgia. The prosecutor has reportedly said that both females in the case are African-American, but no names have been released yet, and I think it's about time.
Finally, and I know there might be some hurt feelings about this, Wilson appears to have done exactly what every 17-year-old guy in America would do if he were able to. Speaking from experience, teenage boys think about sex a lot and will pretty much take it as it comes. I'm not saying they shouldn't be held responsible for their actions, but I am saying that any male prosecutor who characterizes a 17-year-old boy trying to get laid as a deviant is a damned hypocrite who should be disbarred. I bet a list of the names of court servants who checked out the video in question from evidence for "further review" and didn't return it for a few days would be pretty instructive.
In the end, all I know is that Wilson will probably spend much of the rest of his life behind bars, whereas Paris "DUI" Hilton and her ilk will be free to roam taxpayer-funded roads until they overdose and broadside an innocent driver on the 405. That's to say nothing of Wilson's "victim," who probably needs counseling if she was getting trashed and indiscriminately handing out party favors at the age of 15. It seems that the legal system goes through increasingly elaborate acrobatics to ignore the causes of problems (i.e. biological drives the kids were not prepared to deal with because their sex ed class was changed to abstinence-only before being cut altogether) and then put on a huge show of crucifying their products.
Personally, I'd like to see a show of hands in the courtroom from people who had no interest in getting naked when they were in high school. Then I'd lock everybody else in the judge's chambers with Wilson and his "victim" for an hourlong chat about how the world works outside of the AG's selfish little mind. And then I'd send everybody home to their families. Some people haven't seen them in a couple years.
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