Rape/Sexual Assault:
AN EXTREMELY DISTURBING ATTACK

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February 2002

ByJudith Reisman, Ph.D.
Author of Kinsey Crimes and Consequences and guest commentator for NJ Family Policy Council

New Jersey news headlines proclaimed “Five boys Charged With Assault on 13 Yr.-old Girl,” on school grounds in broad daylight (January 13, 2002). The high school bullies were arrested for slapping, punching and raping the terrified 13-year old victim after luring her out of her middle school. When she ran back inside the school for help one of the boys followed the child and sexually assaulted her again.

Tragically, this latest school sexual violence is not the isolated incident some would like to believe. The U.S. Department of Justice quietly admitted to 19,000 reported rapes and sexual assaults of victims over 12 “in schools or on school property” in 1999, while USA Today (January 25) announced that of 274 college campuses, 60% confess to counseling students victimized by “stalking incidents.”

Since New Jersey laws governing sex crimes were changed back in the 1970’s, penalties for these types of crimes were diminished, and the incidence of sex crimes has skyrocketed. Even more disturbing is the fact that we are also seeing greater incidence of sexual assaults involving children. It is high time to revise these laws and institute stiffer penalties.

In the meantime, when a loving parent packs their child’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, they may want to add a can of mace as standard “school safety” issue. Prosecutors wonder if the five juvenile delinquents charged with aggravated assault should be tried as adults since (gasp!) they may get life in prison just for getting caught gang raping, battering and torturing a 13-year-old child on school grounds. If tried as juveniles they could all be free by age 18 and back in the saddle. Doesn’t that inspire a sense of security?

Even by 1983, the U.S. Department of Justice reported in “Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1983”, that over 75% of young parolees were “rearrested for a …serious crime…within three years of prison release and re-arrest for a similar crime was highest among rapists – 10.5 times more likely than non-rapists to have a subsequent arrest for rape.”

Media reports, commenting on the aforementioned sex assault involving juveniles asked “What are they exposed to in a sex-obsessed society that may send a message that anything goes, that demeaning, cruel behavior is somehow connected with sex, that such behavior is acceptable?” (Could it just be that pitiless pornographic programming by mass media, library obscenity and toxic, graphic school sex “education” helps breed this burgeoning mob of sexual barbarians?)

Some media also advised parents to ask themselves “what their children are learning about sexual behavior -at home, in school, from their friends, from the movies and television shows they watch and the music they listen to”, and to “talk” to their kids. It is naive to think that a chat with the kiddies will stop the violent carnage when the moral air we breathe is daily poisoned, and when FBI data shows a 418% increase in “forcible rape” for 1960-1999.

Instead, join a campaign to restore New Jersey’s “pre-Kinsey” sex laws. On the evidence, those laws did a pretty expert job of stopping would-be rapists, both in and out of school.

Let your children see you go into battle! Actions are louder than words.

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