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Sex Crimes: Then and Now: My Years on the Front Lines Prosecuting Rapists and Confronting Their Collaborators
"NOBODY KNOWS RAPISTS BETTER" After being fired from her post as Chief of the Special Victims Unit for refusing to "go along to get along," Alice Vachss published the incendiary Sex Crimes , described as " a stark, passionate closing argument in [her] broader case against the criminal justice system " by the NY Times, which named it as a Notable Book of the Year. Nick (Goodfellas) Pileggi called it " the single best book about prosecuting sex crimes in America, period. " Now, twenty years later, Alice Vachss becomes Special Prosecutor for Sex Crimes in a new environment ... on the opposite coast, in a small rural community. And asks the critical What has changed? Sex Then and Now shreds the myths about sex crime prosecution in America, revealing that the passage of time and a different locale are mere window dressing for horrors America has yet to face. For those who want something more than press releases and Trash-TV "coverage," this no-compromises ebook offers the brutal truth.
In Sex Then , (included free in this two-book package) the woman the press described as one of America's toughest prosecutors grippingly recounts her career and in the process offers a searing indictment of our justice system. Included are close-ups of her most harrowing cases, among them the predatory pedophile who headed a boy's club to get closer to victims; the serial rapist who terrorized the city as "The Stalker" and the violent incest offender who tortured his "property" (his own daughter.)
" My first lesson about sex crimes prosecution ," Vachss writes, " was that perpetrators were not the only enemy. " She shows how the system is heavily weighted against victims. In what has come to be her trademarked term, she brands as "rape collaborators" police officers and judges whose ingrained attitudes aid and comfort criminals; elected officials and attorneys concerned only with their political futures; fickle juries seemingly impervious to compelling evidence; and a legal system skeptical of cries of rape.
Asked in a 2007 interview in The Guardian " Does she miss putting rapists in prison? 'Hell, yes, ' says Vachss. Would she return to the front line? 'Am I willing to put up with the politics of running for office, or the backstabbing and infighting of being an employee of an elected official? That's a much tougher question.' " [Julie Bindel, " The rapists' enemy "]
Sex Now finds Alice Vachss, still the same, back in the trenches insisting to a " I don't have to prove motive. The motive for rape is rape, " and battling a system hell-bent on freeing a monster. Inevitably, Vachss reached a point of no return, " Years before, Richard A. Brown's response when he was asked why he fired me was that I'd done an excellent job. Ever-aware of the politics of prosecution, Brown had waited until he was elected, not simply appointed, before taking it upon himself to decide how much weight 'doing an excellent job' would or would not carry in his office. All these years later this new DA was about to make the same decision. " Reviewed as "even better than the original" Sex Now is an important and immensely readable sequel. What reviewers have said about Sex Then and Now
In Sex Then , (included free in this two-book package) the woman the press described as one of America's toughest prosecutors grippingly recounts her career and in the process offers a searing indictment of our justice system. Included are close-ups of her most harrowing cases, among them the predatory pedophile who headed a boy's club to get closer to victims; the serial rapist who terrorized the city as "The Stalker" and the violent incest offender who tortured his "property" (his own daughter.)
" My first lesson about sex crimes prosecution ," Vachss writes, " was that perpetrators were not the only enemy. " She shows how the system is heavily weighted against victims. In what has come to be her trademarked term, she brands as "rape collaborators" police officers and judges whose ingrained attitudes aid and comfort criminals; elected officials and attorneys concerned only with their political futures; fickle juries seemingly impervious to compelling evidence; and a legal system skeptical of cries of rape.
Asked in a 2007 interview in The Guardian " Does she miss putting rapists in prison? 'Hell, yes, ' says Vachss. Would she return to the front line? 'Am I willing to put up with the politics of running for office, or the backstabbing and infighting of being an employee of an elected official? That's a much tougher question.' " [Julie Bindel, " The rapists' enemy "]
Sex Now finds Alice Vachss, still the same, back in the trenches insisting to a " I don't have to prove motive. The motive for rape is rape, " and battling a system hell-bent on freeing a monster. Inevitably, Vachss reached a point of no return, " Years before, Richard A. Brown's response when he was asked why he fired me was that I'd done an excellent job. Ever-aware of the politics of prosecution, Brown had waited until he was elected, not simply appointed, before taking it upon himself to decide how much weight 'doing an excellent job' would or would not carry in his office. All these years later this new DA was about to make the same decision. " Reviewed as "even better than the original" Sex Now is an important and immensely readable sequel. What reviewers have said about Sex Then and Now
- GenresTrue CrimeNonfiction
426 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 27, 2016
Real superheroes don't wear capes and fly around the city. If you want to know what a real superhero looks like and does, read Alice Vachss's account of her work. She's amazing and inspiring. This should be required reading for anyone considering a law school or a career in law enforcement, social work, or psychology. There's some tough stuff here, things you'd rather not have in your brain, but education is often uncomfortable and this book is a real education.
November 11, 2018
I’ve watched Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, read all kinds of mysteries, and as a reporter covered police and the courts, including sex crimes. I realize, however, the more I learn, the less I know. This is especially true about crimes such as rape, which are so vile they are difficult to even comprehend,
For example, how many – other than victims and sex crime investigators – would understand that rape is not about sex but instead the need to control, torture, and terrorize?
Alice Vachss understands very well. In her book, THEN AND NOW: MY YEARS ON THE FRONT LINES PROSECUTING RAPISTS AND CONFRONTING THEIR COLLABORATORS she shows this with sometimes uncomfortable clarity based on her decades of experience as a sex crimes prosecutor. Vachss explains:
“…the deliberate humiliation of a human being by force and the twisted imposition of one’s sexual will on another are truly ugly... There’s nothing erotic about rape. Rape is neither sexual nor sexy; it is an ugly act of dominance and control...they use the sex act itself to make their abuse of power more personal.”
Vachss spells out this ugly truth through stories of the cases she has prosecuted during her career. Truths that most of us prefer not to even think about. As she explains, “People believe that if something is unthinkable, it can’t be true. I wish they were right. I wish it were fiction.”
One case involved “eleven first-degree robberies, twelve first degree rapes, nine first-degree sodomies, seventeen counts of either gun possession or gun use, two first-degree kidnappings, and seven other unlawful-imprisonment counts. In all there were twenty-two indictments…against one defendant…” In another case, the attacker “had a machete. He forced sex on her, several different ways and positions, in different locations. She bled a lot. Then he forced her to go through the house looking for valuables, making her separate the real jewelry from the junk. He made her lie on the bed beside him–an endless stretch of terror–while he watched TV…” Others included child rapists, serial rapists, rapists who spiked drinks and raped while the woman was passed out…
Vachss also talks about the politics of prosecuting crimes. About judges who are less than noble. About attorneys who may not be much a better than the rapists. About how guilt is often assigned to the victim. About how a privileged son of a “good family” can often get away with awful crimes.
Not that Vachss has only bad and ugly stories to tell. She has a number of successes. Though they may seem trivial in comparison to the evil, they are still worth celebrating. She wrote, “Sex-crimes prosecution may be a war where we lose a lot of the battles, but it’s one where we can never afford to surrender… the one truth that remained more important to me than all the rest is that what the public is entitled to from prosecutors is not any particular verdict but the willingness to step into the ring again and again.”
THEN AND NOW: MY YEARS ON THE FRONT LINES PROSECUTING RAPISTS AND CONFRONTING THEIR COLLABORATORS is far too valuable, and complex, to distill down to one review. Perhaps one of the most important lessons of this book might be that rape is not about sex. Vachss explains:
“People seem to have this idea that rape happens when a male gets so overcome by his sexual desire for a woman that he loses all self-control. That’s not what I saw in the crimes I prosecuted. It wasn’t that rapists were oversexed. If anything, they seemed to have an unusual amount of difficulty… [performing normally] … All the prostitutes who are in their graves because they laughed at a John’s lack of performance learned the hard way: These were crimes not of excess hormones, but of power, coercion, control.”
Rather than sex, rape is about inflicting pain:
“People who think rape is about sex confuse the weapon with the motivation…For most rapists the act of deliberately humiliating another human is integral to what they do…they look for that …opportunity to degrade and control–forcing the victim into acts of compliance… Humiliation is their foreplay…a rapist is a single-minded, totally self-absorbed sociopathic beast . . . a beast that cannot be tamed with ‘understanding’… they look for whatever vulnerability might insulate them from capture and punishment. Sometimes that means raping a child, because we seem as a country to doubt the word of children who say they’ve been raped. And sometimes that means trying to sell the rest of us on the concept that it isn’t really rape if the victim is someone we don’t like…The motive for rape is rape.”
For example, how many – other than victims and sex crime investigators – would understand that rape is not about sex but instead the need to control, torture, and terrorize?
Alice Vachss understands very well. In her book, THEN AND NOW: MY YEARS ON THE FRONT LINES PROSECUTING RAPISTS AND CONFRONTING THEIR COLLABORATORS she shows this with sometimes uncomfortable clarity based on her decades of experience as a sex crimes prosecutor. Vachss explains:
“…the deliberate humiliation of a human being by force and the twisted imposition of one’s sexual will on another are truly ugly... There’s nothing erotic about rape. Rape is neither sexual nor sexy; it is an ugly act of dominance and control...they use the sex act itself to make their abuse of power more personal.”
Vachss spells out this ugly truth through stories of the cases she has prosecuted during her career. Truths that most of us prefer not to even think about. As she explains, “People believe that if something is unthinkable, it can’t be true. I wish they were right. I wish it were fiction.”
One case involved “eleven first-degree robberies, twelve first degree rapes, nine first-degree sodomies, seventeen counts of either gun possession or gun use, two first-degree kidnappings, and seven other unlawful-imprisonment counts. In all there were twenty-two indictments…against one defendant…” In another case, the attacker “had a machete. He forced sex on her, several different ways and positions, in different locations. She bled a lot. Then he forced her to go through the house looking for valuables, making her separate the real jewelry from the junk. He made her lie on the bed beside him–an endless stretch of terror–while he watched TV…” Others included child rapists, serial rapists, rapists who spiked drinks and raped while the woman was passed out…
Vachss also talks about the politics of prosecuting crimes. About judges who are less than noble. About attorneys who may not be much a better than the rapists. About how guilt is often assigned to the victim. About how a privileged son of a “good family” can often get away with awful crimes.
Not that Vachss has only bad and ugly stories to tell. She has a number of successes. Though they may seem trivial in comparison to the evil, they are still worth celebrating. She wrote, “Sex-crimes prosecution may be a war where we lose a lot of the battles, but it’s one where we can never afford to surrender… the one truth that remained more important to me than all the rest is that what the public is entitled to from prosecutors is not any particular verdict but the willingness to step into the ring again and again.”
THEN AND NOW: MY YEARS ON THE FRONT LINES PROSECUTING RAPISTS AND CONFRONTING THEIR COLLABORATORS is far too valuable, and complex, to distill down to one review. Perhaps one of the most important lessons of this book might be that rape is not about sex. Vachss explains:
“People seem to have this idea that rape happens when a male gets so overcome by his sexual desire for a woman that he loses all self-control. That’s not what I saw in the crimes I prosecuted. It wasn’t that rapists were oversexed. If anything, they seemed to have an unusual amount of difficulty… [performing normally] … All the prostitutes who are in their graves because they laughed at a John’s lack of performance learned the hard way: These were crimes not of excess hormones, but of power, coercion, control.”
Rather than sex, rape is about inflicting pain:
“People who think rape is about sex confuse the weapon with the motivation…For most rapists the act of deliberately humiliating another human is integral to what they do…they look for that …opportunity to degrade and control–forcing the victim into acts of compliance… Humiliation is their foreplay…a rapist is a single-minded, totally self-absorbed sociopathic beast . . . a beast that cannot be tamed with ‘understanding’… they look for whatever vulnerability might insulate them from capture and punishment. Sometimes that means raping a child, because we seem as a country to doubt the word of children who say they’ve been raped. And sometimes that means trying to sell the rest of us on the concept that it isn’t really rape if the victim is someone we don’t like…The motive for rape is rape.”
July 1, 2018
All the evidence you need to know that Alice Vachss is a bona fide hero in every conventional sense of the word is right here in this book. It's harrowing in places, infuriating in others, but full of the kind of capital T Truth you always get from her.
Want to Read
August 27, 2017Non-fiction.
Read the earlier paperback during the 1990ies in my Andrew Vachss-phase, where I also read the German-discussion regarding the death-penalty (in German, with a German Philosopher, was not translated in English, as far as I remember).
So glad that a newer, revised edition is available for a good price as a Kindle ebook. Will read it again sometime.
Read the earlier paperback during the 1990ies in my Andrew Vachss-phase, where I also read the German-discussion regarding the death-penalty (in German, with a German Philosopher, was not translated in English, as far as I remember).
So glad that a newer, revised edition is available for a good price as a Kindle ebook. Will read it again sometime.
April 15, 2022
As an author of crime novels, much of my reading has been devoted to understanding justice as it's pursued in the United States. This is the first book I've read that vividly portrays how it should not be pursued: with an eye firmly fixed on the politics surrounding judicial appointments.
Mrs. Vachss focuses primarily on sex crimes, but does touch on other predators on occasion in the book. Still, her tactfully-described last case of a sexual predator akin to the Toy Box Killer—a case I'm familiar with, given it occurred close to where I live—made my skin crawl with its exposé of her attempts to try a case hampered by a superior apparently incompetent, spineless, and so threatened by the prosecutorial skills possessed by Mrs. Vachss that she would even stoop to sabotaging her own case, even when such actions could have set free an incredibly dangerous torturer/rapist. It's a side of how our system of justice can fail that I hoped to never hear.
If you have any starry-eyed notions that the courts always act in a manner that is just and fair, which is the promise each judge from the lowest court to the Supreme Court of the land makes when s/he raises his or her right hand and takes their oath of office, then you should read this book.
Mrs. Vachss focuses primarily on sex crimes, but does touch on other predators on occasion in the book. Still, her tactfully-described last case of a sexual predator akin to the Toy Box Killer—a case I'm familiar with, given it occurred close to where I live—made my skin crawl with its exposé of her attempts to try a case hampered by a superior apparently incompetent, spineless, and so threatened by the prosecutorial skills possessed by Mrs. Vachss that she would even stoop to sabotaging her own case, even when such actions could have set free an incredibly dangerous torturer/rapist. It's a side of how our system of justice can fail that I hoped to never hear.
If you have any starry-eyed notions that the courts always act in a manner that is just and fair, which is the promise each judge from the lowest court to the Supreme Court of the land makes when s/he raises his or her right hand and takes their oath of office, then you should read this book.
August 5, 2018
This book should be required reading for every American citizen who is interested in criminal justice, most particularly in the facts of the prosecution of rape. And for anyone who believes that human rights are of value and need defending. So many of us know only what that talking head said on tv, the neighbor’s gossip, the latest shock horror article in People. Alice Vachss is the real thing: a genuine real-life hero, who tells us how it works and what she did, including the horrendous ins and outs of the politics of what we now call rape culture, which is both gripping and deeply discouraging. With clarity and single-mindedness she defines those in power who repeatedly enable criminal predators: the collaborators. In an era of sleaze, lies, and a total disregard for the rights of the helpless, her story is a shining example of courage and devotion. She does not give up, will never give up. This is a rare attribute in our compromised nation today and one we should treasure. And she is a fine writer, too. Read this book. It will not leave you.
April 28, 2020
I decided to read this book for deeply personal reasons and found it to be a comfort in that it was clear that Alice Vachss did her absolute best for the victims of rape and abuse. Despite having her hands continuously tied by press seeking District Attorneys, she went to bat for all the victims she dealt with and realized that each had bravery that most would never know. While she has made many enemies along the way, Vachss understands that despite this, it is her role in the world to ensure that victims are heard and justice prevails.
September 20, 2018
Compelling memoir of being a sex crimes prosecutor.
Good read and a wake up call for us all on how our justice system really works. Tenacious and determined, Alice Vachs doesn't understand the concept of NO. We are all the better for it.
Good read and a wake up call for us all on how our justice system really works. Tenacious and determined, Alice Vachs doesn't understand the concept of NO. We are all the better for it.
September 26, 2022
Realistic and Honest
Alice Vachss illustrates the perspectives and disjointed systems that true victims are forced to endure. She also represents the few good people that work to help victims.
Alice Vachss illustrates the perspectives and disjointed systems that true victims are forced to endure. She also represents the few good people that work to help victims.
December 27, 2021
Amazing insight. Even after working in behavioral health for 6 years, I'm not sure how she can stomach the cases she has tried & seen. Such an inspirational call for ongoing changes.
March 11, 2023
The most inspiring and powerful book I've read in a long time
April 3, 2023
This woman is my hero.
February 12, 2019
Very interesting book. Prosecutor viewpoint about the difficulties in prosecuting rapists. Highly recommend
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews