Link – Woman charged with sexual assault after 13 year old fathers child
Dodge County Attorney Oliver Glass says he’ll prosecute the sexual assault case like any other case.
“You hear the jokes, ‘oh good for him’ and that kind of stuff, but no, the trauma for either sex can be real and therapy may be needed,” said Glass. “It’s the first case I can recall that I’ve had where the sexes had been reversed.”
While I appreciate the fact that officials are taking this case seriously, and going to treat it as the crime that it is, I would really like it if the article used the word rape somewhere, because that’s what this was.
But, it’s still progress from people who would claim that he’s just unlucky that she got pregnant, but that being assaulted wasn’t damaging. There’s too much of that.
Just so you know, victim advocates, lawyers, and police officers are taught to call it sexual assault because that is a broader term and the victim may not be ready to call it rape. And really they are supposed to call it sexual violence. I just attended a state Victim Assistance Academy and that is what we were told to call it on day one.
From your point-of-view it is obviously rape. But from that boy’s point-of-view, he (or his parents) may not be there yet. It is not your place to put a term on the abuse that he is not ready to use.
First, I wasn’t aware there had been a push to use that term in place of rape. Probably because in most cases where the genders are reversed that’s exactly the word they would use. So if this media member is following recommendations and using that term for all sexual assault, I’ll take back my criticism. If, on the other hand, they, like most media, use the word rape freely and easily when a female is the victim and a male is the abuser, then there is no excuse for not seeing a male victim in the same light. A victim of sexual assault is a victim of sexual assault, no matter their gender or the gender of the person who assaulted them.