Conservative Republican News for Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC

 

BillJames.org   

 
 

 
    
Statutory Rape - The silent killer lurking in the "moral sewer"
After three month discussion - Democrats do nothing
Crime rages.....Issue ignored
Like recent East Charlotte murders...issue to hot to handle
Solution waits for a Republican majority
http://billjames.org/ListBuilder/listbuilder-email-8-9-2005-CL writes about Statory Rape in Charlotte.htm
  • CL writes about one more hidden aspect of the "moral sewer"
  • Bill James has asked that Statutory Rapes be investigated and prosecuted some three months ago.
  • For those three months the County has quietly debated the issue and the Democrats who control the Commission have concluded that it should be ignored.
  • Fact: Most Statutory Rape goes unpunished, unprosecuted.
  • Fact: About 155 Statutory Rapes resulted in Pregnancies over 4 years of which about 5 were prosecuted. 1/2 were not even known to the Police or DA.
  • See this Link for Stats and some solutions proposed by James.
  • Fact: Most occur in Inner-city.
  • Fact: Most victims are poor Black and Hispanic girls.
  • Fact: Most of the girls are 15 or younger and the "men" are 20 and older.
  • Fact: Issue called a "cultural phenomenon" in these neighborhoods by bureaucrats. (Glad I didn't say that.)
  • Fact: Hospitals won't notify Police or Social Services
  • Fact: County Birth Certificates won't be sent to Police
  • Fact: Social Services says "it not our job"
  • Fact: Perpetrators (mostly Black and Hispanic Men) excuse the behavior and also claim it is "culturally" acceptable in Black and Hispanic Inner-city communities complaining that they should not have been arrested for something that "everyone" in their neighborhoods do.
    "Although most of the sex offenders in the group expressed remorse, more than one felt it was "unfair" that he had spent time in jail for having sex with a young girl. He said it was common in his community here in Charlotte - or in other ethnic or racial communities in Charlotte - for girls younger than 16 and men as old as 40 to have "relationships."
  • Double Standard applied. What is unacceptable in "white" communities in Charlotte is tolerated and criminal activity ignored in Black and Hispanic communities.
    Response from the Democrat majority on the County Commission is:
    None of this appears to have fazed health committee chairman Norman Mitchell. After learning about the cases, he had this to say about spending any more of the committee's time on statutory rape: "I don't want to waste the community's time on one item when we have a lot of items before us."
  • Translation? it is "culturally" acceptable to prey on young girls in Black and Hispanic inner-city neighborhoods with impunity. It is rare that the individual gets caught; even rarer that it results in an arrest and virtually unheard of that it results in "jail time". Evidence suggests that the Mothers actually ENCOURAGE young girls to "hook up" for personal benefits.


See Creative Loafing Article Below for details.

Citizen Servatius
The Boys' Club
Victims of statutory rape still low priority with county
By Tara Servatius
Published August 3, 2005

http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050803/CHANEWS07/508030361/-1/CHANEWS
 

If county commissioners don't give a rip about statutory rape - if they're so determined to call it a "cultural phenomenon" and brush it under the rug - then who is going to protect young girls from men who could be their fathers?

The last time the Mecklenburg County Community Health and Safety Committee, which is made up of members of the County Commission, put this topic on their agenda, they learned that dozens of statutory rape cases in which young girls got pregnant had slipped through the cracks. Earlier this year, Commissioner Bill James succeeded in forcing county health officials to comb county birth certificates in search of cases in which young girls listed the father as men too old to have legally fathered their baby. In May, the committee learned that 66 of those girls' cases were unknown to either the police or the county prosecutor's office.

Because the district attorney's office wasn't able to consider prosecuting that large of a volume of new cases, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Captain Tim Danchess ended up investigating 19 of the 66 cases the DA agreed to take on.

None of this appears to have fazed health committee chairman Norman Mitchell. After learning about the cases, he had this to say about spending any more of the committee's time on statutory rape: "I don't want to waste the community's time on one item when we have a lot of items before us."

Health officials at the meeting assured commissioners that "it takes two to tango" and "these girls aren't stupid."

The meeting was so much like something out of the 19th century that Guardian ad Litem Suzanne Garvey, who spent years working with the Mecklenburg Council on Adolescent Pregnancy, had to take a few minutes afterward to calm down in the parking lot.

Vague promises were made to look into the problem at the end of the meeting, but since then, James said, the issue has hit a brick wall.

In North Carolina, if she's 13 to 15 and you're more than six years older than her, having sex with her is a class B felony. If she's younger than 13, having sex with her is illegal, period. At least that's the law.

What frightens me about this is that in all likelihood, the problem is much bigger than the cases the county turned up. A sampling by Creative Loafing of the birth certificates of young mothers during the last five years showed that more often than not, girls between the ages of 12 and 15 don't list a father at all. About a third of the girls who get pregnant have abortions.

The bottom line, as we've reported before, is that commissioners don't want to discuss statutory rape because it appears that more than half of the statutory rape victims in the county are Hispanic and a significant percentage are African-American.

Mitchell and his pals aren't the only ones who want to brush this under the rug. They may not be aware that they have a strong group of allies.

The discussion at a group therapy session for sex offenders that I recently attended sounded remarkably like the one the county health and safety committee had in May. Although most of the sex offenders in the group expressed remorse, more than one felt it was "unfair" that he had spent time in jail for having sex with a young girl. He said it was common in his community here in Charlotte - or in other ethnic or racial communities in Charlotte - for girls younger than 16 and men as old as 40 to have "relationships."

I must admit they have a point, albeit a twisted one. Why should a few do jail time for a crime many are so brazenly getting away with and that nobody seems to care about anyway?

James may be giving up on these girls, but I'm not. I've lived and worked in some rough neighborhoods in this city, and I'm tired of seeing girls just past puberty with their bellies poking out, their lives essentially ruined. Worse yet is seeing what happens a few years down the road, when the 22-year-old mom is still struggling to raise her seven-year-old child while simultaneously battling her alcohol/heroin/whatever addiction.

Capt. Tim Danchess said many of these cases slip through the cracks because while hospitals and health care providers are reporting some of the cases to police, they aren't reporting all of them.

UNC-Chapel Hill School of Government Associate Professor Jill Moore said part of the problem is a lack of clarity in state law. Moore says it's unclear whether the law that requires health care providers to alert police to the "grave illness and bodily harm" that may have resulted from criminal acts applies to the pregnancy of a 13-year-old girl. The county could lobby the legislature to clarify the law or study making changes to the reporting requirements here, she said.

Unfortunately, that would take an actual effort, which at the moment is more than the people who are supposed to be protecting these girls are willing to make.

 


Creative Loafing Charlotte
6112 Pineville Road
Charlotte, NC 28217
704-522-8334 (main)
704-522-8088 (fax)
©1996-2005

Creative Loafing Media All Rights Reserved.
http://www.cln.com/ 
 

Back to top

Mecklenburg County Government
600 East Fourth Street 11th Floor
Charlotte, NC 28202
Phone: 704-336-2472
Fax: 704-846-6538 Bill@billjames.org

Copyright © 2005 Commissioner Bill James

http://billjames.org  contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, genealogical and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on my site is distributed without profit. The fair use of a copyrighted work under this Section for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors normally considered and listed in the law include:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
 
If you wish to use copyrighted material from http://billjames.org  for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
 
 Bill James Biography | Bill James Photos | Bill James Political Cartoons | County Commissioners
Private Schools | Church links | Family Tree | Latest Political News | 1963 Eldorado