Jacob Anderson, a former fraternity president at Baylor University, will avoid jail time and being registered as a sex offender by taking a plea deal after being accused of raping a 19-year-old at a party. In fact, he will simply pay a fine, waltz through some counseling, have three years of probation and then continue to live freely. Meanwhile, the young woman will walk around knowing that her rapist stole her virginity and her safety. Instead of being treated like a rapist, which in the court system isn't saying much to begin with (remember Brock Turner?), he was simply given a charge of "unlawful restraint."
The victim was most likely drugged and then left on the ground unconscious after the attacker had finished his revolting deed. Anderson was taken to court where he was let off too easy for comfort. The victim, identified in court documents only as Donna Doe, has had her innocence and purity stolen by a man that only wanted to use her for one thing. The victim said, "He repeatedly raped me orally and (vaginally) while choking me, gagging me and physically forcing my body into positions so he could continue to rape me." She added that he is "now free to roam society, stalk women, and no one will know he is a sex offender."
Doe is right, her offender will not only have tainted a perfect life that she could have lived but will now roam freely to commit these acts again against defenseless women.
To make things even sweeter in this case, it was discovered that all of the attorneys and judge in the case have a degree from Baylor University. Isn't that slick? A straight connection to protecting a boy from the country's largest Baptist university.
Do the connections provide an advantage to Anderson? Hell yeah, they do.
They provide a blanket of protection for a 23-year-old man who took advantage of a woman when she couldn't defend herself simply because of the name on their degrees. These attorneys and judge would never want to taint the "perfect" reputation of the university they attended, so obviously all protective measures would be taken for Anderson and not his victim.
So as Americans, what do we do? Do we continue to sit around and watch cases like these happen over and over again? Where we watch people like Jacob Anderson and Brock Turner walk freely after being accused of egregious crimes that ruin lives? In October of this year, I wrote an article surrounding rape culture. According to RAINN, an American citizen is sexually assaulted every 98 seconds. This isn't a woman's problem either. Men are susceptible to rape as well. So this case and other's like it just throw the middle finger in sexual assault victims of past, present and future's faces. It tells the young women and men of our nation that it's OK to rape and that the "justice" system will not protect you but your rapist instead. Every minute and a half, your neighbors, friends, peers and family members are susceptible to sexual assault, yet we still see cases like these slide through our "justice" system.
What is justice if rapists, looters of innocence, can walk free every day? What's justice when a kid with connections and money from mommy and daddy's bank account can walk clean if he obeys his three-year probation? What kind of country are we raising our youth in? I sure as hell don't want to raise my young boys to think that being a sexual predator is OK, and I don't want to raise my daughters to be scared every time they go out to have a good time.
Do you?
So what do we do? We start talking about sexual assault. We STOP referring to rape as the "R-word" and tell it like it is. Rapists rape people, and they get away with it. When American society becomes outraged enough, cases like this will cease to happen. But the main problem is that rapists know they can walk away clean and America doesn't do anything about it. Rapists know that at the end of the day the only real harm will be done to their victims, not them. What's three months in jail when you've ruined someone's whole psychological view on life? Nothing. It's nothing.
So it's time to act, not to remain stagnant. It's time to write your local legislators for harsher legislation and punishments against those who sexually assault. Tweet them, write them a letter, talk to your friends and family about it. I hope that reading this, you're just as outraged as I am because it's time for the American public to do something.
