It was just after 2 a.m. on a pitch-black Friday morning when Bernadette Greene-Placentia’s life changed. The Democratic candidate for Congressional District 8 strolled across a parking lot to repair a damaged campaign sign. It was a routine she’d followed all summer. This time, she only made it a few yards.
An attacker smashed her over the head. She blacked out. She woke up to find a strange man on top of her.
Greene-Placentia struggled to open her eyes. She felt a sharp pain below her waist. The attacker was pulling his penis out of her.
She heard him mumble something like, “-ic bitch, not a very good fuck,” which her mind filled in as “Democratic bitch,” she recalled. She wasn’t sure that was exactly what he said.
One leg was out of her jean capris. She wore brand-new tennis shoes and a campaign t-shirt. Another man came over. Greene-Placentia felt his weight nudging her left leg further apart. She began swinging her foot at him. “Not even worth it,” she heard the man say as he moved away. He wore black boots and had small feet, she recalled.
The two men left Greene-Placentia face down in the parking lot. The hatch of her silver Jeep Grand Cherokee was still open. The car was still running. She heard music.
She doesn’t remember pulling up her pants or picking herself off the asphalt parking lot. She doesn’t remember closing her Jeep’s hatch and putting her foot on the gas. She doesn’t remember pulling her car into the driveway and collapsing into her bed.
“It’s just these little tiny flashes of things that I do remember,” Greene-Placentia said in an interview with Phoenix New Times. “As much as I don’t want to remember, I’ve tried very, very hard to remember more stuff. But that’s where I’m at.”
wow, I don’t think people like this can be repaired. They should be locked away for life (with minimal comforts, basically a monk like life) and that energy should be spent on their kids and younger generation. Except ofcourse we are talking about the Trump administration, Trump probably thinks she got what she deserved. So yeah, quite hopeless.
I believe in rehabilitative and restorative justice. But a necessary prerequisite for them to work is that the guilty understand what they did was wrong and want to change. Rapists, much like domestic abusers, in our society very rarely feel that desire.
Someone who would do something like this has something seriously wrong with him, but it seems to me like it may be more likely to be an illness of society that he’s symptomatic of rather than an individual mental illness. He needs to be kept under control for the safety of others until we can find a way to make people like him eligible for restorative justice, which I doubt he will live to see.
I don’t think they should be in prison; wood chipper.
May I offer a compromise? Send their genitals to the wood chipper and put the rest of their body in prison.
Easy out, labour camps.
Forced labor is slavery, and that’s not ok even for prisoners. Besides being a human rights violation, it incentivizes governments to convict more people of crimes and to impose longer sentences (I agree that sexual assault crimes are under-prosecuted, but that is one of the only categories of crime for which that is true, at least in the US). It also does nothing to promote rehabilitation.
Very good points. My comment was thoughtless.
This is the way.
while I would agree for this particular crime, in general death sentence is very problematic. I have read somewhere that during certain periods as high as 1/20 death sentences can be wrongfully given. So I am ok if they live like monks in some tiny cell for the rest of their lives while wrongfully accused people at least get some chance for getting out and compensation (which is not ideal but way better than death I would assume).
I’m not a fan of giving the government the power to execute people either, but man I understand why people want it when stuff like this happens. I still think it’s the wrong decision but I can’t get mad at people who support the death penalty.
The solution to that is death penalty for the people who decide on it but are wrong, but this needs to come along with a robust all encompassing government whistleblower program as well as stricter rules on government officials and more forced transparency.
So who? The jury? The judge? The prosecutor? You would simply have no one attempt to give the death penalty in the case they could be wrong, which is almost always technically a possibility. Which is mostly just the same as not having it.
In the day an age of being able to deep fake convincing evidence on a whim, I dont think the government should have the power to kill anyone. Period.
Plus, death is too easy. Watching the world move without you in it though…
Reread the second half of my comment, those parts are necessary for the first part to even be imagined as remotely functional. Full forced transparency, no classified information, absolutely nothing can be hidden from the civilians (a necessary yet ALWAYS ignored part of democracy btw) on top of extreme protections for whistleblowers and a massive payout system for anybody who catches any wrongdoings by the government.
And you missed mine.
That its impossible to hold anyone to the standard you propose, because to allow it all, means it can be manipulated for others purpose.
Why give the execution power to someone else?
Yeah, as a concept I’m fine with the death penalty. There are people who absolutely aren’t worth the trouble and should be deleted but we need to do a lot of work on how our justice system functions before it can be trusted to determine guilt well enough for that.
While I’ve seen my fair share of rapist who got rehabilitated, I do not think this one will be able to, especially as those who do it as a form of punishment (which it was from the limited details) are really hard to cooperate with.
Fundamentally rehabilitation is a two way street. Society has to provide the tools and resources to help change, but the criminal has to want to change and choose to do so. I highly doubt this man will ever want to change.
I hate calling everything terrorism, but raping a political candidate over her party sure fits my understanding of terrorism, same as last year’s political assassination.