Torrington High School Sexual Assault

Immediately after Ma’Lik Richmond and Trent Mays were sentenced to short stays in juvenile detention two powerful women in media took to the airwaves to lament the young rapists’ ruined futures. Adult women who made massive sacrifices to rise to the top of their professions and find themselves hosting TV News or reporting from courtrooms. These are educated women. Arguably the cream of the crop.

Just hours after the verdict the victim in the Stubenville rape trial was threatened via Twitter and Facebook by 15 and 16 year old girls who are currently in juvenile detention.

It would be easy to look at Stubenville, a town that appears more interested in football than academia or financial success, and assume that they’re not a very bright group of people and their teens just don’t learn their lessons.

Except that we have the same problem in Connecticut. And we probably have the same problem in a million small towns but these are the cases that have hit the national news.

I’ve never felt like a local slutwalk mattered but, to be fair, without the internet I’d never have seen things like this before. Slutwalks matter.

In Connecticut two adult football players from Torrington High School have played out the year even though their coach (Dan Dunaj) knew that Edgar Gonzalez and Joan Toribio were charged with sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl. I don’t know the particulars of this case but Gonzalez and Toribio have accused and if they are guilty so be it. That makes them bad people, it doesn’t make them sick or victims of culture. People who sexually assault other people are bad and ought to be incarcerated, not because they can be rehabilitated but because they should not make it dangerous for other people to walk the streets.

Much like the town of Steubenville, Torrington kids are willing to excuse and even honor their accused sex offenders. I hold us all responsible for this. Every time we call a woman slutty (I’m very guilty of this), or whorish and every time we teach our daughters how to not get raped while forgetting to remind our sons to not rape we have made the world a little more dangerous.

Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow use CNN as a platform to teach women how to revictimize one another and younger women use the media they have at their fingertips to do this in Torrington.

Ladies, this is what we’ve taught our daughters. We have failed.

Our sons are no better. This is the chatter of dangerous boys

These kids sound like our newscasters. We are 100% to blame.

In India women are jumping out of hotel windows, breaking both legs and risking death to get away from rapists.

In Punjab a woman and her father who reported sexual harassement to the police was beaten roadside… by the police. The video is disturbing.

We are no better. We are a nation at war with young women. How dare they be sexual? How dare a 13 year old girl look like a 13 year old girl? And girls who flirt want it, we all know that right? 14 years old and kissing a 17 year old boy? Obviously you want sex, you’re going to get it. And then after you’ve been raped girls like Lory Ramirez and Shelby Kulinski will shame you, will say you wanted it and protect the boys who are alleged criminals.

They do this because we’ve trained them to. They do this because we do this.

If a crazy or drunk lady is walking down the street naked you do not have permission to put anything in her vagina, not your finger, not your penis, not your mouth. If a girl passes out at a party but was horny and kissy before passing out you still do not have permission to put anything in her, touch her breasts or any other part of her body.

Why is it when guys pass out at a party we see this?

And when girls drink too much we rush her to the emergency room for a rape kit?

Stop telling our daughters they deserve to be raped.

And don’t you dare joke about men getting raped in prison. When you do that you’re part of the problem.