Pity for the Monsters?
Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmond are children of God. He loves them.
God also loves the sixteen year-old girl they raped. She is a daughter of God.
Today, I was flabbergasted and disgusted as I watched video of CNN’s Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow sympathizing with the teenage rapists. They were high-school football stars with promising futures. Now they are registered sex-offenders and will be for the rest of their lives. When they are released from juvenile detention (in as little as one or two years, but at the latest, when Mays is 24 and Richmond is 21), perhaps they will have difficulty getting jobs or getting accepted to a good college. Wherever they move, their names will show up on sex-offender registries and concerned citizens may protest their presence. They certainly won’t be able to live close to a school. (Their victim was, after all, a minor child.) When they, themselves become parents (assuming they are not already, which may be a false assumption), they may never be able to take their children to a park or any other place frequented by children, at least not without supervision. (Or maybe they will. The laws do vary in different states and cities.)
It is possible that the lives they once envisioned for themselves are beyond their reach now. (Or perhaps not. The NFL, like Hollywood, the music industry, and political parties, can have a peculiar variety of moral blindness when it comes to “talent”.)
The poor dears.
I watched Mays apologize for his actions in a hollow monotone. (He really needs to work on that delivery. It wasn’t at all convincing.) I watched Richmond tearfully declare that he was sorry and that he never intended to do… (Well, he didn’t actually say what it was that he had no intention of doing. Maybe it was that he never intended to get caught.) Then he sobbed and appeared to collapse into the arms of his attorney.
If these two monsters were truly sorry for what they did or had a smidgeon of regret or an ounce of humanity, why did they not admit to their guilt, take responsibility for their heinous crimes, and plead guilty? Why did they mount a defense of the indefensible? Why did they allow the victim to be verbally attacked in court, accusing her of culpability in her own rape? (After all, they said, she did drink some alcohol, so it’s gotta be partially her fault, right?) Are they sorry for what they did or are they sorry they are being punished for crimes they would not admit to? Were they sorry when they drugged the victim, dragged her by her wrists and ankles from party to party, digitally raped her (i.e., they used their hands rather than other parts of their anatomies), photographed her naked body, urinated on her, and then dumped off her unconscious and urine-soaked body on the front porch of her home? (Maybe they just wanted to make sure she got home safe.) Were they sorry when they posted nude pictures of her online and boasted about what they’d done? Were they sorry when they said online that they might as well have used different parts of their anatomies (instead of just their hands) to violate her, since everyone assumed they did? (I mean, they might as well have had fun, right?)
Their once-promising futures are shattered. They will be incarcerated for as little as two whole years, in Mays’ case (who was convicted of child pornography as well as the rape), and one entire year, in Richmond’s case. They will get credit for time already served. Then they will begin to rebuild their shattered lives.
Boys, as the saying goes, will be boys.
Perhaps, in time, they will turn to God and truly repent. Repentance is possible. So is forgiveness. So is redemption. But the first step in that process is the recognition of the evil in what they did. The second is true remorse—“godly sorrow,” as Paul put it. There’s much more to true repentance, but that’s the beginning. God does love them and He does want to help them. But the first move is all theirs. Maybe, just maybe, getting caught this time will prevent them from escalating their violence in the future.
But as for me, unlike Ms. Crowley and Ms. Harlow of CNN, I can find no pity for these demons masquerading as “boys”.
And what of the other pathetic little monsters and cretins who were there and did NOTHING as they watched the victim being dragged from party to party? Did they laugh? Did they mock? Did they re-tweet? Did they cheer the rapists on? Did they join in? Apparently, they did some or all of those things, because charges against other individuals are pending. Some of them were given immunity so they would testify against the rapists. But they were there and, at best, they did nothing. They didn’t call the police. They didn’t try to stop Mays and Richmond. They didn’t say, “Hey, dude! That’s not cool.”
What of the parents and students who tried to sweep it all under the rug so that the football team wouldn’t be affected? (No, sadly, I’m not making that up.) What of the parents who allowed their homes to be used for these alcohol-fueled parties for minors? Where did Mays and Richmond ever get the idea that what they did was in any way fun or even human?
When are we, as a people, going to start parenting and stop producing and enabling monsters?
And what of their victim? What about the horror that she has had to endure? Not only that night (of which, mercifully, she remembers very little), but later as she was vilified and blamed and told to keep quiet so that the team could have its “heroes”? And even later, when the football-hero-monsters who raped the girl allowed their attorneys (who were, after all, only doing their sworn duty) to psychologically rape the victim again in a public courtroom? The press hasn’t revealed the victim’s name (which is good), but everyone in that community knows who she is and what happened to her. Are there any of her peers who have NOT seen her nude pictures and read the vile, boastful, and unrepentant tweets of her rapists? How is she supposed to rebuild her life? Perhaps she and her family will move away, leaving behind family, friends, jobs, and lives, so that she can start over somewhere in anonymity. Even then, she’ll live with the fear that someone will post her picture and name online again. (After all, she did cost the football team two of its star players and ruined the lives of her rapists.) One thing is certain: this horrific crime will affect her all the days of her life.
The monsters get one or two years, and their victim gets a lifetime of consequences.
There’s justice for you.
So when are we going to stop blaming the victims? When are we going to stop minimizing the damage done to the victims? When are we going to expect men to act like men, rather than animals? I don’t care if that poor girl staggered into that party, completely hammered and stark naked, wearing only a sign that said, “Rape me!” She still would not have deserved what happened to her. Are men nothing more than beasts that have no self-control, no choice but to brutalize and rape women and girls, given the right stimuli? I’ve got news for you: in some countries, a girl or woman can wear a burqa and she can still get raped, and unless four men witness that rape and testify in her behalf, she may still be executed for her “immoral conduct”. There have even been cases where the victim did have four men testify in her behalf and yet she was later beaten, raped, and killed by those who should have protected her (i.e., her own family), because, obviously, she was “impure”.
No woman, no girl deserves to be brutalized and violated. Sexual violence against women is epidemic and getting worse. Even in nice hometowns in America.
Men need to stand up and protect women from the monsters. In other words, men need to be men again. Fathers need to be fathers. Protect our wives, our daughters, our sisters, and our mothers, and treat every woman with respect. We need to teach our sons to do the same. We need to teach our daughters how men should behave.
And women? Why on earth would you EVER, under any circumstances, blame the victim? Nothing she did, no stupid choice or action on her part means she deserved to be hurt. And demand that men be men, not beasts. Tolerate nothing less.
