rape

Unethical Comment Thread Of The Month: IJR’s Story On The Cheerleader Rapist

/ Jack Marshall / 48 Comments
"Hi, I'm Molly, and I just raped you son. A simple thank you will suffice..."

“Hi, I’m Molly, and I just raped you son. A simple thank you will suffice…”

Well, read it and weep, as poker players say.

I’ve written about this disgusting phenomenon before, when ethically-challenged bloggers, pundits and commenters snicker about how great it is for the under-age male victims of sexual assault by attractive female teachers and other comely predators. The complete ignorance of the requirements of basic adult responsibility, the wrongfulness of abuse of power,  the law of consent and so much else exhibited by these blights on civilization is truly frightening, though it tells us a great deal about where Donald Trump’s support comes from among other things.

I am distraught. On one hand, reading this kind of thing makes me wonder why I bother. Really. How can one man, or a thousand, reverse or even retard the corrosive effects of so many idiots whose contempt for decency and whose ethical darkness is so deep, cynical  and shameless? On the other hand, what better choices do those of us who understand and care about the values of society have? To sink into catatonic despair? To self-lobotomize and join the mob of corrupt fools, grinning and drooling as the U.S. becomes Hell? To shake out fists at the moon until something pops and we are dragged to the padded room?

The story that generated these comments involved former Baltimore Ravens cheerleader Molly Shattuck, who was accused of raping a 15-year-old boy last summer in Rehoboth, Delaware. Shattuck decided to plead guilty to one count of fourth degree and  admitted that she performed oral sex on the boy, who was a friend of her son.

This classy mom (she has three kids) was sentenced to spend every other weekend for the next two years at a work-release detention center, plus she must pay the victim’s family $10,650 and register as a sex offender. Yes indeed, this is very lenient compared to what would have happened if an adult male had sex with a 15-year-old girl.

The Attorney General called it a “classic case of grooming behavior” as he argued for more than probation.  What the commenters don’t comprehend is that how a victim feels about criminal conduct should have little influence on the proper punishment of the criminal. Should the battered spouse of a man who has dominated and cowed her into believing that she “deserves it”  ensure that her husband is treated more leniently than the wife-beater whose spouse resists and objects? Well, this is one of the things the commenters don’t comprehend. There is so much more. (I have checked the comment threads on this story on other websites. They are essentially the same.)

Read it and weep.

Yechhhh.

Continue reading →

Baylor, The Rapist, And The King’s Pass

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

crownThe King’s Pass is among the most corrosive of the many unethical rationalizations. Also known as “The Star Syndrome,” this conduct and this sensibility rots organizations, large and small, public and private. It destroys trust and undermines loyalty and performance. The rationalization, which essentially holds that the enforcement of laws, rules and policies should be withheld against the most powerful, the most popular, the most accomplished and the most productive members of an organization on the theory that they are too valuable to lose, is essentially un-American, defying the national principle that all are created equal, and that the laws apply with equal force to everyone, large and small. The King’s Pass isn’t driven by ethics, but by non-ethical considerations overcoming ethics. An organization that jettisons a star will often suffer itself. Management may be criticized, and the sports team, the institution, company, government agency—or nation— that loses its star might suffer substantially with the removal of a significant asset. Yet not insisting on accountability from a misbehaving or even corrupt “star” will have far worse consequences over time.

Sam Ukwuachu, a former freshman All-American at Boise State University before transferring to play football at Baylor University, was convicted this week of sexually assaulting a former Baylor soccer player in 2013. Jurors in Waco’s 54th State District Court found the 22-year-old Baylor defensive end guilty of one count of sexual assault, but it was the revelation of Baylor’s cover-up that ought to resonate.
Continue reading →

The Smithsonian Institute Discovers That It Has Booked A Seat On The Bill Cosby Ethics Train Wreck, But It Has No Intention Of Getting Off

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
Cosbys and Cole

The Cosbys and Johnnetta Cole

When three new women accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault this week, the government’s Smithsonian Institution, “the nation’s attic,” suddenly found that it had been lured into assisting a clever PR ploy by the disgraced comedian. [ Full disclosure: I have worked for the Smithsonian recently, delivering a five hour lecture on the cultural and ethical influence of classic Western movies last December.] The revelations were the most graphic and disturbing yet ( Sample: “I was shocked. I didn’t know how I had lost so much time. My clothes were thrown all over the room and I felt semen on the small of my back and all over me…” ), and brought the total number of accusers near the half-century mark. Meanwhile, an exhibition of art owned by Bill and Camille Cosby will be on display at the National Museum of African Art until January 2016.

How many women will have come forward by then? Let’s start a pool! Continue reading →

Tragic, Corrupted, Complicit Camille Cosby

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Camile Cosby: author, psychologist, corrupt accomplice to a sexual predator

Camile Cosby: author, psychologist, corrupt accomplice to a sexual predator

Apparently Bill Cosby’s wife Camille is telling confidantes that she believes all the woman drugged by her husband consented to sex, and that he is being unfairly treated by the news media as well as being unfairly accused by…what is it now, 40 women? I haven’t checked in the last few days.

She also admits that she always knew about her husband’s “infidelities,” and accepted them. Translation: she accepted creature comforts, status and money to enable her husband’s wrongdoing.

That this is a very old, ugly tradition that includes mothers who allow their husbands to sexually abuse their children, and even more horrific examples where wives look the other way while husbands kidnap and murder. In Mrs. Cosby’s case, she has made a deal with the devil, accepting the benefits of a spouse’s wealth and celebrity in exchange for placing her conscience in deep freeze. She has been covering up for her husband, lying by her silence, and sometimes lying out loud, as when she said last year , “He is the man you thought you knew.”

Did you think you knew that that the man who played Cliff Huxstable and wrote books about ethics cheated on his wife and had sex with young women under the influence of the drugs that he gave them? Well, actually I did: maybe Camille was referring to me.

Camille Crosby allowed and enabled Bill to engage in these activities, which were wrong no matter how they are interpreted: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce For The Ages: Whoopie Goldberg

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Cosby3Let me point out, to begin, that anyone who maintained that Bill Cosby was not a rapist and serial sexual predator after over 40 women came forward with almost identical stories was already an ethics dunce, and too stupid to play with sharp objects as well. The man had settled a court case with a promise of confidentiality to avoid the evidence being made public! He had never directly addressed the accusations in public, relying on lawyers! There has not been the slightest chance that Cosby was innocent since victims 2 through 6 surfaced. Anyone dismissing the other, and still growing, group of victims is in denial, or immune to common sense. Such a person would date O.J. Simpson.

Whoopi is a smart woman, but she is racially biased beyond belief. She has never accepted that her pal Bill is a rapist, but because she is a smart woman, even though we all know that bias makes us stupid, I assumed that a point would come where she finally was honest with herself.

I overestimated something—her integrity, her group loyalty, her values, her brain pan.

A formerly confidential deposition has been released in which Cosby admits to procuring Quaaludes with the intention of drugging women for sex. So much for the whole narrative about fatherly Bob being a secret predator who drugged girls to make them easy to have sex with being “ridiculous” and “racist” and “slander.” So much for all those women being liars, as Cosby’s lawyers said more than once. To anyone rational, this revelation simply confirms what there was ample reason to be certain about anyway. Oh! That’s why all those women say Cosby drugged them! He drugs women!

But on  The View today, stated that the deposition has not persuaded her of anything, a classic example of “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts.” No rationalization or terrible argument was too low for Whoopie. She said she was a “former Quaalude user,” and so what? She said she doesn’t “like snap judgments”—snap judgments? These accounts have been around for decades. Whoopie has rejected judgment itself.

“I say this because this is my opinion, and in America still, I know it’s a shock, but you actually were innocent until proven guilty. He has not been proven a rapist,” she blathered. My response:

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!

Continue reading →

When “Oh, Grow Up!”, “That’s Ridiculous” and “You Need Help” Are Appropriate Responses

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments
Oops...I forgot the trigger warning...

Oops…I forgot the trigger warning…

Columbia University’s descent into madness continues.

Columbia University’s student newspaper recently featured four members of the school’s student Multicultural Affairs Advisory Board demanding that professors consider their students’ delicate sensibilites when teaching intense, violent or otherwise provocative material. This will give you a flavor of what the students advocate:

“Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” is a fixture of Lit Hum, but like so many texts in the Western canon, it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom. These texts, wrought with histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression, can be difficult to read and discuss as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background…Students need to feel safe in the classroom, and that requires a learning environment that recognizes the multiplicity of their identities. The MAAB has been meeting with administration and faculty in the Center for the Core Curriculum to determine how to create such a space. The Board has recommended three measures: First, we proposed that the center issue a letter to faculty about potential trigger warnings and suggestions for how to support triggered students. Next, we noted that there should be a mechanism for students to communicate their concerns to professors anonymously, as well as a mediation mechanism for students who have identity-based disagreements with professors. Finally, the center should create a training program for all professors, including faculty and graduate instructors, which will enable them to constructively facilitate conversations that embrace all identities, share best practices, and think critically about how the Core Curriculum is framed for their students.”

I take a lot of criticism on the blog for not expressing false respect when someone espouses a position that is cultural cyanide, or, in some cases, just plain stupid. This argument by the Columbia students would qualify. Some affirmatively bad ideas should not be pampered, mollycoddled or treated as if they deserve sustained attention and debate. It just encourages them. Long ago I feared that the multi-culturalism and diversity movements would run amuck, and indeed they have. Being literate,respectful and tolerant, as well as open-minded, toward other cultures is healthy and essentially American. Nevertheless, nations, societies and communities require a consistent culture, as well as the cultural values that a dominant culture contains. Ethics, among other critical features of a healthy society, is impossible without this, and chaos is inevitable. Continue reading →

Legal But Not Ethical: Sex With A Demented Spouse

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Rayhons

In Iowa, a jury has found longtime Iowa state lawmaker Henry Rayhons not guilty of sexually abusing his wife by having sex with her at a nursing home. A doctor had told Rayhons that she had advanced Alzheimer’s disease. and was  no longer mentally capable of consenting to sex.

At the trial, Assistant Attorney General Tyler Buller told jurors  that Donna Rayhons’ Alzheimer’s disease had worsened in the months before last May’s alleged incident of unconsented sexual intercourse by her husband. She had washed her hands in dirty toilet water, Buller said, forgotten how to eat a hamburger and thought her first husband was still alive. Dr. John Brady later testified that Donna Rayhons had severe dementia, and thus any positive reaction to her husband’s physical advances could be termed a “primal response” at best. Brady testified that Donna Rayhons’ cognitive capacity had declined dramatically in the months leading up to the alleged offense. He explained that she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s based on several tests, including  a standard cognitive procedure in which patients are asked simple questions. By  May, Brady said, Donna Rayhons scored a zero on that test, and any score below eight indicates severe impairment, he said.

On his blog, the Volokh Conspiracy, Prof. Eugene Volokh makes a valiant effort to justify, excuse, or perhaps be compassionate regarding a man having sex with his wife after she has forgotten who he is or even what sex is. He argues, Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Once Again, Bystander Ethics, The Duty To Rescue, And The Imperiled Child

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

clarkkentThe free-range kids debate already raised this issue, and now my colleague and friend Michael Messer, the talented and versatile musician/singer/ actor who teams with me in the ProEthics musical legal ethics programs Ethics Rock, Ethics Rock Extreme, and Ethics Jamboree, just posted about his traumatic experience on Facebook, writing,

“I’m standing in Central Park and witnessed a tourist father grab his (approx 5 year old) child by the arm and shake him… The. open palm smack his child in the head. Hard. Twice. I screamed to him, from about 50 feet, where I witnessed it: “HEY!!! YOU DON’T HIT HIM” he looked up, startled to be called out, and waved me off to mind my business. “YOU DO NOT HIT A CHILD IN THE HEAD”, I repeated, at the top of my lungs, hoping to attract attention. The kid cried and then got himself together and went off to play. No one else in Sheeps Meadow saw or took notice. For about 5 minutes after I kept my eyes on him so he knew he was now being watched. What is the role of a bystander in this situation?”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz for the day is…

What is the role of a bystander in this situation?

The answer is simple, really—its that oft-repeated Ethics Alarms mantra, “FIX THE PROBLEM,” at least as much as you can. Do something. Mike did the right thing, from a distance: show the abuser he’s being observed, protest, shame him. If one can, if one has the ability, the skill and the timely reaction and the child looks to be in genuine danger, intervene physically.

The latter course, however, carries risks, and also may be precluded by the natural reflex most humans have when they observe something unexpected and shocking. I discussed this issue when Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary was being pilloried in some publications for not immediately charging into the Penn State showers and stopping sexual predator Jerry Sandusky from sexually abusing a boy: Continue reading →

Ten Ethics Musings On The “Unethical Photograph Of The Year” And The Daughters of Villi and Mary Kay

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments
Here's my Jack Russell Rugby doing his imitation of the dog in "The Artist." It's a good antidote, at least for me, when I look at the Villi and Mary Kay family photo. Keeps the gorge down.

Here’s my Jack Russell Rugby doing his imitation of the dog in “The Artist.” It’s a good antidote, at least for me, when I look at the Villi and Mary Kay family photo. Keeps the gorge down.

I should have included these with original post, but the photo so nauseated me that I was barely capable of critical thought. I’m still nauseated, but better. So now I offer these ten question and thoughts:

1. Will this photo and its implication be used by cultural to excuse student-teacher sexual liaisons? They are grotesquely unethical when minors are involved, but professionally reprehensible even when the loving couple are college professor and student.

2. I presume it will. As I noted in the original post, this photo is a breeding ground for rationalizations, “No harm, no foul” among them, and of course, “It all worked out for the best.” This is like showing the modern China that arose out of Mao’s slaughter of millions with the face of the Great Leader superimposed over it all. It worked out so well! How can anyone argue with that?

3. Every time a grossly wrongful act creates some unanticipated good, consequentialism runs amuck. If Mary Kay  and Rape Victim Vili had produced children who had arms growing out of their mouths or who were drug-addicts and cat-burners, the same people who look at the photo now and say  “Awww!” would be pointing and crowing, “See?”

4. The proper comparison is a family created through incest. That taboo is so powerful still that a similar photo of Mom, Dad/Grandad and lovely Daughter–No, Sister! No, Daughter! No, Sister! (Sorry, I was having a “Chinatown” flashback) would not garner the kind of positive reaction too many are having to the Happy Fualaau. Continue reading →

Unethical Photograph Of The Year

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

ABC_mary_kay_letourneau_fualaau_vili_fualaau

Mary Kay Letourneau Fualaau and Vili Fualaau are seen here with their two teenage daughters, Audrey and Georgia. Both are older now than when mom raped dad, who was a student in her 6th grade class. She was 34 and married with four kids. They have been married for 10 years now, and 20/20 will be doing a story on the couple.

I won’t be watching.

Here’s the Rationalization List. How many will be applied to this cheery photo?

I count 13.

________________
Pointer: Rhonda Hill