Reverse Discrimination

Recently there was a story published about how a 36 year old single mother who had sex with a 12 year old boy 191 times being sentenced nine years in jail. Reading this story has brought up an interesting issue in my mind: reverse discrimination, specifically reverse sexism.

The first thing I have to say is that this woman clearly has something wrong with her if she’s actively pursuing 12 year old boys. The article gives the message that this boy most likely wasn’t very consenting to this, with sentences such as “Mr Bennett added: ‘The defendant groomed him by buying him gifts to keep him happy’” sticking out at me. However, when I first saw this article my first thoughts were of the 12 year old boys I knew in middle school and what they were interested in. Overall, though, it seems that in this case the woman took advantage of this boy and had to buy him gifts to bribe him into being happy. So we’re going to assume that this was, in fact, a case of sex with an unwilling victim–more commonly called rape.

And yet the word “rape” is not used once in this article. And then I think of what would happen if a similar case came around where a 36 year old single father had sex 191 times with a 12 year old girl, and the absolute media shit storm that would ensue. In Texas, repeat sexual offenders are classified as capital offenders, meaning they are eligible for the death penalty, and have an absolute minimum sentence of 25 years in prison (source). If this case had happened in Texas, there is a very good chance this man would be put on death row for his crimes.

I realize that this crime happened in England, but regardless, child molestation cases are taken extremely seriously virtually everywhere. However, I believe that, even though I’m not very familiar with England’s court system, a man would have gotten a longer sentence. This woman is 36 years old now–in nine years she’ll be 45: just old enough to qualify as a cougar. Gee, I can’t WAIT until she gets released again!

I think this case is interesting in that it really shows a gender divide as far as sentencing for crimes goes. While I can’t think of any off the top of my head and my Google-fu is broken for the night, I’m sure I’ve heard of cases where a man had sex with a preteen four or five times and got more than ten years in prison for it. This woman had sex with this boy 191 times, and her sentence is nine years.

I believe this case shows that gender discrimination can go both ways, especially with how women tend to get off easier for some crimes. What this woman did was disgusting, and she deserves to spend a much longer period of time behind bars as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately, women are often portrayed as victims, and sometimes the fact that they can also be perpetrators is missed by some people. So yes, while we should strive for equality between men and women, this also means not constantly treating women like victims in legal settings.