“This is a story about a little girl ... walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl, suddenly a truck races up, two men jump out and grab her, they drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up, and rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on, first one then the other ... raping her ... shattering everything innocent and pure with a vicious thrust in a fog of drunken breath and sweat.
“And when they’re done, after they killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to bear children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice, so they start throwing full beer cans at her, they throw them so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones, then they urinate on her.
“Now comes the hanging, they have a rope, they tie a noose; imagine the noose pulling tight around her neck and a sudden blinding jerk. She’s pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking and they don’t find ground. The hanging branch isn’t strong enough it snaps and she falls back to earth.
“So they pick her up throw her in the back of the truck and drive out to foggy creek bridge and pitch her over the edge and she drops some 30 feet down to the creek bottom below.
“Can you see her? Her raped, beaten and broken body, soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood, left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl.”
- from “A Time to Kill,” novel by John Grisham.
How sick did you feel when the image of this poor girl was left in your mind? Sadly she is not alone. When someone is raped, if they manage to survive, they are left with scars that will never fully heal. If they are lucky, years of therapy might make them feel ready to try and live again.
So how is it that the rapist (if caught) could get the chance to only serve between one and three years, then get to move on? This may over-simplify what really happens to the rapist, however forgive me if I could care less about how hard their pathetic existence becomes due to this prison experience.
Sorry, there will be no tears shed for those sick and twisted individuals who feel they have the right to violate someone else. They should have thought about how hard life would be before they choose to rip someone else apart.
At the very least the rapist should have to spend the rest of their life in prison without any possibility of parole. Now this may seem strong but frankly I don’t care. Victims of rape must live with the terrible remembrances for the rest of their lives. Nothing can take away the images or erase the pain. There is no cure or “rehabilitation” that will take away what has happened.
The victim lives in a prison for the rest of their life and so should the rapist. At the very least if rapist is incarcerated for life they will be off the streets and this will prevent them from harming anyone else. While this provides little comfort to the victim, it is at lest a step in the right direction to help them heal.
Rape is one of the most heinous crimes a person can commit. The FBI rates rape as the second most violent crime to murder. Having never been a fan of the death penalty and after hearing stories from numerous victims, it has entered the mind. It became a whole “eye for an eye” mentality, finding myself wanting to find the rapist and inflict the most pain possible on to them.
I know this would not change what had already happened, but in some sick way I would feel better. This however would make me no better than the rapist. The only sentence that seemed morally right and did not make anyone sink to the rapist’s level would be a life sentence.
This way it was a decision made not out of anger, or hate, but one that is made to protect society and give comfort to the victims and their families.
Rape is one of those topics where you can find yourself becoming a fan of the death penalty, castration and the whole “eye for eye” mentality. Whatever the punishment, one thing remains the same; it will never compare to the “punishment,” pain and everlasting memory that the victim will carry. “Life in prison for the attacker is in no way equivalent to the lifelong mental prison that this victim will have to endure,” said an editorial by one such victim in the Times-Picayune.
The change must come before the crime is committed, to find a way to prevent rape from happening all together.
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