Letters to the Editor
LeCastor
Published Letters: 1912 Editor's Choice: 86
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So it continues...
[Read the article: American woman, stay away from me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I guess i'm not surprised to see Parson Jim and Brightstar continue to bash American women. It's easier than actually going out to meet with some. :)
Perhaps everyone should read that article on newyorkmetro.com about UrbanBaby -- those women are scary. But to say that all american women are the same is just plain stupid, and pathetic. To say that I'm single because all american women are so awful is about as convincing as blaming it on El Nino. It's probably you who is the problem, not American women.
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Sentences for Sex Crimes
[Read the article: What's the matter with Florida?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Slate did an article, and it says that either women got the same sentences as men, or more than men.
Are women getting lighter sentences? It's not clear they ever did. In the 1991 study Women and Men Who Sexually Abuse Children: A Comparative Analysis, researcher Craig Allen studied 75 male and 65 female offenders in the Midwest. "Relatively similar proportions of female and male offenders had charges pressed against them (52% and 55%, respectively)," Allen reported. "However, more female offenders (30%) were put in jail than male offenders (25%)." Five of the 65 women were in prison during the study, which inflated the female number. But at best, the gender comparison was a wash.
Have the numbers changed since then? Since the government doesn't break down current data, Slate intern Ben Raphel went back through the Nexis database from the beginning of 2005 to last Thursday, identifying every case in which the terms "teacher," "sentence," and "sexual assault" appeared. Lots of cases don't involve the term "sexual assault," so this list is partial, but we stuck to that phrase to be consistent. Raphel found 43 offenders—26 male and 17 female—of whom 37 had been sentenced.
At first glance, the sentences look biased. The men got an average of more than 11 years; the women got less than two. But compare the crimes, and the story gets more complicated. Most of the men molested victims younger than 15; most of the women didn't.* Half the men molested multiple victims; only three of the women did. Ten men on the list had multiple victims, including victims younger than 16. These men earned an average sentence of more than 17 years, drastically inflating the average.
Only two female teachers fell into the under-16, multiple-victims category.* One was younger than any of the male offenders in that category, and her victims were older (15) and fewer (two) than most of theirs. She also had the good luck to be prosecuted in Vermont, where she got a one-year sentence. The other had sex with a 12-year-old and two 13-year-olds in California. She got six years, the maximum under her conviction. The Nexis search turned up a third woman in this category. She wasn't a teacher, but she had molested more victims (five), was as old as many of the men who committed similar crimes, and was prosecuted in Colorado. No slap on the wrist for her: She got 30 years.
At the other end of the gravity spectrum, two of the women confined themselves to single victims 16 or older. One got a two-year sentence; the other got a one-year sentence—an average of 18 months. Did they get off easy? Before you answer, look at the four men who, like these women, targeted single victims 16 or older. They drew an average sentence of 14 months. For comparable crimes, men got less jail time than women did.
In the middle categories—crimes against single victims under 16, and crimes against multiple victims age 16 or older—men did get heavier sentences. One reason is that women's victims were, on average, fewer and older. But let's broaden the variables and the pool of data.
In 1994, summarizing her work with 800 male and 36 female offenders, psychologist Jane Kinder Matthews reported: 1) "None of the women we have worked with has coerced others into being accomplices." 2) "Women used force or violence in committing their crimes far less often than men." 3) "Women tend to use fewer threats in an attempt to keep their victims silent." 4) "Women are less likely to initially deny the abuse, and they are more willing to take responsibility for their behavior."
Six years later, L.C. Miccio-Fonseca, a clinic director in California, compared 18 female to 332 male sex offenders and found that males "had more legal problems" and "more sexual partners than females did," despite the fact that 39 percent of the females said they'd been raped themselves, compared with 4 percent of the males. A 2002 study of registered sex offenders in Arkansas added:
In comparison to males, female offenders in general were slightly younger at the time of arrest for their first sex offense. Females were significantly more likely than males to be a first-time offender at the time of arrest for the sex offense. Males generally had a higher number of sex offenses in their criminal histories compared to females.
Two years ago, in Sexual Exploitation in Schools, Kansas State University Professor Robert Shoop confirmed that many of Matthews' findings applied to abuse of students. "Women seldom use force to compel sex or threaten victims to keep them silent," Shoop reported. Whereas female teachers like Mary Kay Letourneau and Julie Feil tried to marry their students (and Letourneau succeeded), "Most male school employees who sexually exploit students do not have a romantic attachment to their victims." Shoop added that "it is far more common for men to exploit a series of students over time. Such behavior is rare among women."
Systematically, any female offender who targeted multiple kids or a kid under 16 was forced to register as a sex offender, ending her career. Systematically, sentences of three years or more were handed out to women who abused multiple kids or kids under 14. Letourneau, who grossly violated her probation, got seven years. Sarah Bench-Salorio, the teacher who had sex with a 12-year-old and two 13-year-olds, got six years. Tani Leigh Firkins, who assaulted a boy dozens of times beginning at age 14, got nine years. Silvia Johnson, who plied multiple victims with drugs and booze, got 30 years.
http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=3944&qt=female+teacher+sex+sentence