Boys in Custody and the Women Who Abuse Them | Hacker News Reader

Boys in Custody and the Women Who Abuse Them

propublica.org

187 pointsanchpop88 comments

> "But he also said that, in some cases, both female guards and the boys they molest share some responsibility.

> “There’s no such thing as consensual sex when you are supervising someone, regardless of their age, but the reality of it is that some of the guys in prison are very persuasive and some of the women are very persuasive,” Wilkinson said."

I guess we are still have a very long way to go on the cultural part of defining victim and perpetrator.

People will go to any lengths to blame abuse on the abused instead of the abuser if it means they don't have to make changes to society :(

The tendency of some to frame this sort of thing as good for boys (a sign of maturity, manhood, etc) makes it worse, kids of any gender should feel safe and not be pressured by adults into doing something they don't want to do or aren't ready for.

Very true. I'm a survivor of woman-on-boy sexual assault, and it's hard to talk about with people because the typical response to it is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hdbns1Xdk0

I assure you, it's not nice.

Sorry to hear it. I found this video a while back that helps the rest of us get an idea of how it's not actually nice: https://youtu.be/Ikd0ZYQoDko

Thanks for that video.

This video was the trigger for me to start talking about my experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnopu8iwMG0

Watching this adult, who I grew up watching on TV when I lived in the Dallas area, be able to openly talk about his experience and show emotion about it is what finally allowed me to start dealing with what happened to me.

This is another common reaction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f8sjzETQ5o

I know it's uncool to do this, but I'm gender-swapping it and I simply can't imagine someone making a statement like this regarding statutory rape and being able to keep their job afterward:

> "There’s no such thing as consensual sex when you are supervising someone, regardless of their age, but the reality of it is that some of the girls in prison are very persuasive and some of the men are very persuasive,"

These boys are being raped. It doesn't matter if they're perceived to be instigators, it is incumbent upon the staff to show them that there are boundaries that should not be crossed.

At the very least, juvenile victims of sexual assault are more likely to become adult perpetrators. Tolerating rapists operating as guards in male prisons will likely result in the creation of future rapists.

At the very least, juvenile victims of sexual assault are more likely to become adult perpetrators.

Do you have a citation for that?

I'm aware of head injuries playing a role in a lot of terrible crimes, but I've not heard this assertion before that victims of sexual assault are at greater than average risk of becoming rapists themselves.

Sure, it's called the victim-to-perpetrator cycle; first thing that came up for me was the Government of QC fact sheet:

https://www.inspq.qc.ca/en/sexual-assault/fact-sheets/sexual...

Thank you.

But quotes from your own source:

While a history of sexual victimization seems to be one of the risk factors that predispose an individual to commit sexual assault, it does not provide sufficient explanation for most instances of this type of assault. There is relatively little evidence that the victim-to-perpetrator cycle is a major factor in sexual assault.

These boys should be protected from being raped because they shouldn't be raped. Period.

It's a factor, not a major factor.

Further on in the document, it states:

> Experts maintain that, in the case of males, being sexually abused in childhood is an important risk factor for committing sexual assault later on in life, but that it is not the only risk factor that plays a role in the perpetration of sexual assault.

I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I spent a lot of years reading all the research I could find.

Victims of abuse of any kind fairly often get additional baggage heaped on them that they are now damaged goods and monsters who are highly likely to abuse others because of what was done to them.

I used to see the statistic that about 30 percent of children who grow up in abusive families will go on to abuse their own children while only 5 or 6 percent of "normal" people abuse their kids.

I generally like to turn that around and say "So you're telling me that in spite of learning all the wrong lessons, two-thirds of victims will be good parents and with no justification whatsoever, five or six percent of normal people will abuse their own kids for no real reason."

I am also hearing subtext for "We shouldn't let boys get raped because men are inherently bad people inclined to become rapists. Think about da womenz. These boys should be protected to protect women from them in the future."

I don't think it adds anything of real value to this discussion of the very real issue of boys being sexually assaulted while in legal custody. Boys already face more shame and stigmatization than girls without being told "And now we expect you to become a rapist!"

I've seen comments by male victims over the years on HN about how much baggage they deal with. It's generally much worse than what I had to wash off and it was mostly men who helped me wash it off.

So I don't much like seeing this minor factor talked about in this way given all that context.

> Think about da womenz.

Sadly, this is an effective means to have positive action for men gain acceptance.

> Boys already face more shame and stigmatization than girls without being told "And now we expect you to become a rapist!"

Well yes, even professionals Struggle to acknowledge that women can be perpetrators.[0]

0: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2010/08/20/women_sex_off...

This is uncalled for. dleslie made a factual claim and you asked for documentation, which he/she supplied. You seemed unable to understand that dleslie had supported the claim, so he/she pointed out to you that the document did, in fact, precisely support the words used. Now you are raising moral and emotional objections to the pointing out of simple and relevant facts.

It’s fun to think in black-and-white terms like this but surely you can understand that there are (infrequently) gray scenarios that come up where your simplistic morality falls apart.

I agree with your theory but I would never blindly convict someone based on it in practice.

Can you be specific about where the parent comment is engaging in black and white thinking?

I’d also argue that thinking about the morality of rape isn’t "fun".

The fun in the sentence points to “thinking in black and white terms” not about the morality of rape. It captures a larger set of all “thinking in black and white” instead the subset of what the specific instance was. English is funny that way.

Thanks for pointing it out. The fact that it’s “uncool” to do this also points out that there are a lot of ways that men are oppressed by gender stereotypes and the victim-perpetrator narratives that our society has barely begun to reckon with.

I don't think it's uncool, there's still a double standard about sexual abuse of boys by women in media, and it plays into gender roles that harm women as well as men.

A man in my antenatal class informed Police about being sexually abused by his dance teacher as a child, and never mind their backward mindset, it exposed a flaw in our laws where women were not perceived as being capable of being sexual predators.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/dance-star-tells-of-sexual-abu...

Women and men are different and in many cases men will not feel raped but rather that they "scored" with the warden. We need to focus on cases when men actually get raped by wardens or other inmates rather than trying to prove some false feminist talking points.

A groomed twelve year old girl will sometimes also feel “lucky” her 35 year old “boyfriend” is having sex with her. It’s still rape, the trauma just manifests later.

What’s your opinion on adult male prisoners who initiate sexual relationships with female prison workers, often for favors or sometimes even for help escaping [1]? Do you also see them as victims?

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-concrete-leads-inmates-fled...

I am somewhat shocked at this question as I feel like you didn't even try to make a good showing with it (such as by trying to at least argue that the prisoner wanted the interaction for something other than a tit-for-tat way to alleviate their court mandated suffering)... yes, 100% absolutely: someone who is in a shitty situation (being in jail) that someone who has some power over them (a guard) is parlaying into "have sex with me and maybe you will get a favor" is a victim.

encouraging male teens to understand such sex is, in fact, a crime, that it is never really consensual

Statutory rape. Something a lot of people have difficulty comprehending as actually rape.

Of course, the world still tends to imagine rape as a violent crime. In many cases, it's not. Date rape is another variation of this problem.

women forcing males into sex does not comport with society’s conventional definition of rape.

Last I checked, in far too many cases, the legal definition of rape literally makes it a crime that cannot be committed by a woman. Though hopefully that's changing.

< Last I checked, in far too many cases, the legal definition of rape literally makes it a crime that cannot be committed by a woman. Or by anybody, unfortunately. But this is also the institution never wanting to be accountable for its errors. These people place is a jail. Will see if they consent to have sex with their own prison guard.

“ Drawing on their sample, Justice Department researchers estimate that 1,390 juveniles in the facilities they examined have experienced sex abuse at the hands of the staff supervising them, a rate of nearly 8 percent. Twenty percent who said they were victimized by staff said it happened on more than 10 occasions. Nine out of 10 victims were males abused by female staff.”

It also puts the famous kickbacks for jailing kids in a whole other, revolting light.

This isn't abuse. This is rape. Let's call it what it is and eradicate it.

They both spent a lot of time together and there is nothing else to do (flirt with). I prefer to deescalate this over your approach of escalating it!

You are referring to rape. What is there to "deescalate"? Why would you want to "deescalate" someone who is going to commit rape?

Maybe they meant "defenestrate"?

I prefer to punish abuses of power rather than "deescalate".

Trying to cram fact patterns like described in TFA into the same bucket as violent rape is a great way to make sure neither is treated appropriately.

This is exactly what is done all the time with non-violent male-on-female rape, and that's taken seriously. Why is it any different here?

One person is literally a caged minor and the other person is an adult with unilateral power over them including legal authority to use violence against them or even write a report that extends their sentence.

It seems like it'd be incredibly difficult to obtain accurate data through a mass survey. I know in work places "anonymous" surveys are often given where employees know/think the data is not truly anonymous and as such do not provide honest input.

I'd imagine this survey could be impacted similarly, either by underreporting because of shame/fear or falsely reporting in an attempt to get their detainers in trouble.

This is interesting and important, but seems off-topic and has already devolved into a fruitless culture war in the comments. Going to go ahead and flag it...

Realistically this boils down to one thing: if the sexes in the described scenarios were reversed, the public would be losing their minds.

Equality means women can be pedos too!

Women cheat as much if not more than men. So this should not be a surprise.

Well if two people are stranded for some time on a deserted island and one is male and the other is female then they will probably have sex. For the boys they don't have opportunities other than possibly these guards. As any male who has been through puberty knows, juvenile delinquents are probably old enough to want those opportunities. For some of the guards the situation might not be that different.

I'd be very hesitant to just go after these guards as rapists. The way to solve the situation would instead be to do the obvious thing and simply require male guards for male prisoners, as old-fashioned as such a provision might be.

It is the responsibility of an adult not to have sex with minors that they have complete control over, even if the minor is trying to flirt with or otherwise attempts to solicit sex. If they cannot do this, the adult shouldn’t be allowed to be employed where they will be in close contact with minors that they are responsible for.

The counterpoint (not that I am saying everything is fine) is that there are often many minors the responsible adult can try to have sex with, at least one of which will probably be receptive. It's not clear that in every case there is coercion as most people would observe and define it which is why it's taken so long to start a discussion about female on male rape.

The counterpoint is that no responsible adult tries to have sex with minors.

100000BC to the 1980s would like to have a word with you?

My point here isn't necessarily to defend it but to demonstrate that you need to be trying harder to avoid dogmatic thinking. Parts of the world still happily practice child marriage, how are you going to convince them?

I would be inclined to add, "in modern society" to that phrase and leave it at that. No need to excuse or condemn the past or cultures that still haven't gone through the humanitarian enlightenment of western society.

It's pretty interesting to assert that ~100k years of doing things a certain way is wrong. Do you have the evidence to assert such a thing?

The posts above talking about reversing the genders are kind of right, but that does already exist: it's pretty common for lower class middle school/highschool aged girls to sell their bodies for drugs, alcohol, or just money. This is tolerated in those communities and is seen as "the thing you do while growing up."

I'd agree. They should not hold such jobs anymore. But I'm more concerned with prevention.

If you flip the sexes, would you still be 'very hesitant' to go after these guards as rapists?

If we were talking about 13 year old girls in detention having sex with adult male guards, and someone said "for the girls they don't have opportunities other than possibly these guards.. for some of the guards the situation might not be that different", would that be okay with you, or would you consider that rape?

Because I'd argue that there is only one word for a guard having sex with a 13 year old who is their prisoner, and that is rape. The sex of the guard or the prisoner should be irrelevant.

When it comes to statutory rape, it is the 'informed' part of consent that is missing; as a society we have agreed that people under a certain age have not developed the skills or life experience to identify and understand a coercive relationship, or to recognise that they are being taken advantage of.

So even if the victim is an enthusiastic participant, the reason we as a society consider this rape is because these are children who don't have the life experience or maturity to make an informed decision, and that full-grown adults should not be taking advantage of them.

When you add in the outrageously unbalanced guard-prisoner power dynamic, it is extra inappropriate.

Replying with throwaway because this is a contentious topic, but the issue with the approach to consent in English speaking countries isn't as nuanced as it should be. Most people would agree that a 13 year old having sex with an adult is unacceptable, however, maturity is different when someone is closer to 18 (17 for example) and isn't that different from a prison guard who might be 22. While the majority of cases in the article might involve guards well past 18, we don't know that for sure. Also, while in theory the sex of the victim shouldn't matter, especially in the society we live in today it certainly does.

>If we were talking about 13 year old girls in detention having sex with adult male guards,

Would you have male guards for 13 year old girls? If not, why have female guards for teen boys?

I think both sexes exist as guards in female prisons. You would not manidate all guards to be under 13 for fear of underaged sex.

The entire ordeal brings up a different point. What if the guard had a baby. Would the state be forced to pay child support?

My view on it is quite different. You have this idea of yours, you have the historic idea that children are still property of parents in an important way, there's the historical guarding of female chastity/purity and you have the idea that its a protection against very likely abuse of power. I don't take a gender neutral view on this issue either so a male doing this would be quite different. But society unnecessarily creating these circumstances would still count as alleviating.

> I don't take a gender neutral view on this issue either

Why is that? Just curious; like a biological prescriptivist sort of thing? Or something else?

Not OP but probably because it's prudent not to ignore the obvious gender differences. Promoting gender neutral views surrounding situations that are very gender relevant is willful ignorance.

Not for any single reason. There's the law of the excluded middle, a principle from logic. There is evolutionary thinking. There are anecdotal accounts of transexuals of the difference in sex drive. There's the physical size and strength differential. There is the historical thing of protecting women. I take all of these into account and try to form some sort of guess of what is likely.

> If you flip the sexes, would you still be 'very hesitant' to go after these guards as rapists?

I understand there is a variant of feminism that would consider this flip a no-op that leaves the whole situation unchanged. This viewpoint is that of the famous "rape" book, for instance, which in my opinion completely fails to substantiate this viewpoint with convincing arguments when data to the contrary abounds.

simply require male guards for male prisoners, as old-fashioned as such a provision might be.

So we change the problem from women raping boys to men raping boys? That's not a great solution.

It's impossible to be perfect but what matters is changing the odds. Only around 1.5% of the population is lesbian gay or bisexual. If that translates to prison guards we should see a pretty major improvement.

Or perhaps a better system in which rapists in positions of power aren't routinely given poorly supervised access to children. I think I'd prefer that, rather than just hoping that a job involving poorly supervised access to children doesn't attract people who'd take advantage of that.

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