According to VICE, if you’re a 30-something therapist and you can take advantage of your underage patient, you’re actually the real victim in the situation—so as long as you’re a woman.
In a piece for VICE, Serena Solomon wrote about how “The Sex Offender Registry Leaves Female Sex Offenders Open to Abuse.” The article opens up with telling the story of particular offender, “Jenny,” a woman in her 40s, who had sex with one of her 16-year-old students. The article tries to depict Jenny as a sympathetic character by saying she receives gross letters from men describing their fetishes in the mail.
Most of the women in VICE’s article are ones who clearly violated their position of power to have sex with people (or had sex with people who were clearly too young to consent). The article mentions:
- Shawna Baldwin, a 34-year-old, who was convicted of having sex with a 14-year-old when she was 19
- ”Tanya,” a therapist in her 30s, who was convicted of having sex with her 17-year-old client
- ”Kim,” who is also in her 30s, and was convicted of raping an 11-year-old
The alleged “abuse” the women endure includes receiving letters, having men tell them about their fetishes, and being fetishized by men because of their status as sex offenders.
According to VICE’s Solomon, the problem with putting women on the sex offender registry is that it makes them susceptible to this kind of “abuse,” no matter how likely they are to reoffend and how heinous their crimes are. The list also apparently threatens the lives of sex offenders and their families:
These laws take away from public safety by sending some convicted sex offenders into a life of instability, homelessness, and poverty, according to Feige and Cortoni. The women I spoke to who are primary caregivers of children said their parole restrictions and the public registries put their families in harm's way too. For example, Baldwin must live at least 2,000 feet from schools, parks, and day-care centers. In the two years following her divorce, she was a single mom, and the only home she could afford was a trailer "in the middle of nowhere." At that time, she was raising two small children while dealing with a stalker, sex mail and the knowledge that her photo, address, and conviction are public knowledge. "It is very frightening," she said.
So if you’re wondering what’s worse than raping an 11-year-old, it’s being subjected to a law that makes it so you can’t live near an elementary school.
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