I can no longer hold my silence on this abominable case down in what proves to be one of the most backward...racist States in our country.... http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/13/teen.sex/index.html If this guy was white I absolutely guarantee you he would NOT be serving time much less 10 YEARS!!!! What in the hell is wrong with our supposed 21st century America when this kind of black witchhunt can still go on. Come on...these are high school kids doing high school things. This guy isn't a 28 year old Snoop Dog ass trying to take advantage of a 15 year old. It's a high school kid doing highschool "stuff". This sickens me.....and I'm talking about the law in Redneckville....Ga.
Check this out from a different article on the issue: "Partly as a result of Wilson's conviction, state legislators changed the law to make such consensual conduct between teenagers a misdemeanor, rather than a felony. But that change wasn't made retroactive, so it did not help Wilson." When Wilson and the girl had their consensual oral sex his "crime" was a felony molestation that carried a mandatory 10 year sentence of which he is now in year three serving. The outrage was so great in Ga. that they rightfully changed it as described above and yet somehow left this kid in prison to rot because the change was not retroactive. One of you conservatives....( read: pot users should be in prison ) here try and make sense of this because I can't. Anyone that tries needs to have their own sons as I do to worry about. This kid is being dealt some of the vicious, heavy-handed racist idiocy that I thought was eradicated from Mississipi by the early 70s.
Well, you asked for the conservatives to speak up... My opinion on this is that a 15 year old girl CAN'T give consent. This guy was 17 and depending on the crime, was capable of being tried as an adult. I have no issues with 15 year old on 15 year old or 17 on 17. This guy, within a stones throw of his majority, had sex with a 15 year old. What can you find RIGHT with that? I'm sure that 15 year old's father can't find anything right with it. You stated: If your sons take advantage of a young girl like this (which I'm sure they wouldn't) you DO need to worry about them... as MANY FATHERS need to worry about their daughters. One of my co-workers (father of three daughters) made the stupid statement that he didn't want a son because he would have to worry about what the boy might do. I told him that was a foolish attitude since with three daughters, he has to worry about what all of the boys will be doing. His oldest is now 13.
Obviously I remember this case very well as it happened in my neighborhood. The one thing that eventually tilted the public opinion against the boys was that the girls were 14 year old freshmen and these guys were seniors. About as wide a highschool age gap as you could get and yet my wife and I agreed that way too much was made of this publicly and yes the boys needed to be reprimanded and Granger lost his admittance to U Mich as a result. Jail time is a debatable issue but certainly prosecution and probation would be accepted by most in the community even if the 60-90 day jail sentence was not...which I don't think it was given most of the conversations I had with parents at the time. Again...highschool kids doing highschool things but the 14 year old newly freshman status of the girls who were seduced in effect by seasoned seniors was a difference maker. In any event these guys did more than the kid in Ga and yet he is in the midst of serving a 10 year prison sentence in state prison for breaking a felony law now reduced to a misdemeanor. THAT is the crime.
"If your sons take advantage of a young girl like this (which I'm sure they wouldn't) you DO need to worry about them... as MANY FATHERS need to worry about their daughters. One of my co-workers (father of three daughters) made the stupid statement that he didn't want a son because he would have to worry about what the boy might do. I told him that was a foolish attitude since with three daughters, he has to worry about what all of the boys will be doing. His oldest is now 13." _________________ I guess consensual is a broad topic. In the case of the Michigan boys they were probably close to 18 and it sounds as if they used seductive means to entice the girls but as a parent I say the girls have to act responsibly as well and unless undue coercion was used then probation and the whole public embarassment of the situation would have been sufficient punishment and certainly the rebuke by the University of Michigan was huge in terms of public humiliation. You can bet I used this Michigan case to always remind my sons how not to get lured into a similar trap because believe me there are many young girls these days who do not act responsibly sexually and it's funny how some of their parents would just want to blame someone else's kid for their daughter's bad behavior. In the case of these particular Michigan girls this is the way it came off by the way in the eyes of many in the local community. In any event getting into "some trouble" for engaging in oral sex with the 15 year old was appropriate for this 17 year old Ga kid but getting 10 hard mandatory years in state prison is absolutely detestable and unthinkable. I have to ask you Tom if this was your own son rotting away for 10 years when similar acts to follow by others resulted in a misdemeanor with little or no jail time then you would find that acceptable as a father and as a citizen of the state of Georgia?
I am in agreement that the penalty is probably too stiff. I am in agreement that when the law was changed (if the mandatory sentence was changed) the sentence should have been appealed and excellent reasons should have to be shown not to reduce the sentence. What we don't agree on is the fact that your liberal view seems to be that nobody is guilty... they are a product of their environment and society is guilty for any crime they commit. That is the typical liberal view and I understand that. The typical conservative view is simply: Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time!
One of the things that I always wondered about was, where are the liberals in these statutory rape cases? After all, aren't they the ones who are always fighting against parental notification laws? Aren't they the ones who always tell us that even underage girls have a right to control their own bodies? Well where are the liberals when boys like this are prosecuted for statutory rape? All of a sudden these young girls who need no parental imput on their surgical decisions now are too young to date slightly older boys.
"In any event getting into "some trouble" for engaging in oral sex with the 15 year old was appropriate for this 17 year old Ga kid but getting 10 hard mandatory years in state prison is absolutely detestable and unthinkable." I made this comment and yet Tom can say I hold no one accountable. As usual Tom reads into my comments what he chooses to see. That said.....I only believe what I said to be true because of the somewhat strange way that today's society has decided to come down hard on a 15 year old dating a 17 year old. It is a very weird development that has only become such a hot button in the last 10 years. Sorta like the GPD trying to make a public name for themselves by stinging a small-time pot buyer. When I was growing up in Florida in the early 70s neither one of those "crimes" would have been an arrest that you would ever have seen and the parents of the 15 year old girls in my community would have thought nothing of it either. Very weird how it has changed. Throughout history I believe 15 year old girls have been dating 17 year old guys and now this kid is doing 10 years of hard time for it. Whatever criminal he was NOT before he went in the slammer he most certainly will have the background to become now. How pathetic is that? These adults that allowed this to happen should be disbarred. When I was in 10th grade I had a friend who ogled along with me the very short skirt and glimpses of what was underneath as shown by a 12th grade assistant to the science teacher. She was very hot....very funny and she flirted with both of us. To my chagrin my buddy was eventually actually dating her and they were clearly intimate. It was a 17 year old hottie teaching a 15 year novice the ways of love and boy did I wish that was me instead of him. In the state of Georgia if this had occurred 5 years ago this sweet pleasant girl would be doing 10 years hard time in the women's pen for that. Doesn't that sound ludicrous? Or maybe it sounds just right to hardliners like Tom.