re: #121 Yeah Sure WhatEVs

Well, that’s just fucking awesome.

OK, I just posted about child sexual abuse, and I have two things to say about this:

1) What percentage of people were sexually abused as children? RAINN says it’s 1 in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys. I’m going to state I believe those numbers are far higher.

rainn.org

In fact, I think in some American subcultures, sexual abuse is rampant, because of attitudes surrounding children, e.g., that they are parental property, that girls are less valuable than boys, and it’s just ok to sexually assault the weaker and less regarded.

2) It’s entirely possible that the two jurors did not realize they had been sexually abused until they actually heard testimony. I know I did not fully acknowledge I’d been sexually abused as a 9 YO until about 5 years ago, because I’d never really thought about what happened. (That said, my 9 YO self knew something terrible had happened. I wrecked my assaulter’s VW engine by disconnecting all the wiring in the aftermath of the assault. I got in trouble, not him. I couldn’t verbalize why I did what I did.) More recently, I didn’t realize that a vice principal (MR. FLOYD, IF YOU’RE STILL ALIVE 50 YEARS LATER) had compounded a sexual assault by a fellow junior high school student when he asked me intrusive questions about the actual assault, like “how far did he pull down your skirt”?

This is going to be terrible to say, but sexual assault is endemic in our society, we don’t acknowledge it, powerful forces try to cover it up and minimize it, and it’s entirely possible the jurors had no idea until they were in the trial what had happened to them.