Posted on 08/20/2005 11:18:38 AM PDT by neverdem
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 19 - T. J. Parsell was a lanky pimple-faced adolescent bent on mischief. So when he found a toy gun one evening in 1978 while wandering home from a high school party, he thought nothing of pointing it at a store clerk and grumbling, "Your money or your life."
He got $50 for what he now calls "a stupid impulsive prank." The incident landed the 17-year-old Parsell in an adult jail, where on his first night, an older inmate spiked his drink with Thorazine and sexually abused and raped him.
"While my friends prepared for our high school prom, I was being gang raped," Mr. Parsell testified on Friday to a Congressional commission investigating prison sexual abuse and rape.
Mr. Parsell, now 45, and a successful software executive who lives on Long Island, was one of six victims of prison rape to relate disturbing accounts with a bipartisan panel of The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission here.
"What they took from me went beyond sex," Mr. Parsell said. "They'd stolen my manhood, my identity and part of my soul."
The panel, which also heard from state and federal legislators, law enforcement and prison officials and mental health experts, has been investigating the prevalence, cause and possible solutions to a problem that many experts say has escalated as the prison system is collapsing. Overcrowding, staff shortages and budget cuts have contributed to an often taboo topic.
"As a society, we have an obligation to protect the people we lock up, even though they have harmed society," the commission chairman, Judge Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court in Washington, said. "Some people say inmates get what they deserve. But they don't think about the overall impact on society."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
" Oh, boo-hoo. Between you and me, I'd rather be in solitary than get banged up the bung by Bubba. How about you?"
Full isolation is the most expensive type of prison to build and run, at least according to the Discovery Channel documentary on the subject which interviewed prison officials.
Who is going to pay for it, huh? huh? huh?
"You're ignoring my point: you want pie in the sky protection for inmates. I'm giving you the reality that it will COST."
No, I'm making the point that justice is when the sentence fits the crime.
You're ignoring my point. It's a constitutional point.
If we're going to build prisons to serve the cause of justice, then it's a travesty that some of them cause great injustice. Building a prison is expensive. Adding CCTV is a small percentage of the entire cost to build and run a prison.
Some prisons already have CCTV.
Some need them.
You seem to strangely enjoy the idea of the status quo.
Gosh, I'd hate to see your internet browser history.
So let me get this straight....by your train of thought a person who goes to jail for excessive unpaid parking tickets or littering and then gets gang raped in jail....its ok cause that person was in jail in the first place? Thats pretty sick thinking.
http://www.spr.org/en/pressreleases/2004/1105.html
Was this part of his sentence? I don't think his crime fit this punishment.
"T.J. Parsell was incarcerated when he was 17, for robbing a photomat with a toy gun as a prank. He was gang raped his first day in prison. “Afterward, they flipped a coin to determine who would be my man. I blamed myself for many years, thinking it was my fault, that somehow I deserved what had happened to me. This is quite common among gay rape victims in prison,” Mr. Parsell explained. After his release at 21, he put himself through college, graduated with honors, and has since become a leader in business and in the software industry. Mr. Parsell is a member of the SPR Board of Directors."
That's not your point. Your point, which you refuse to admit, is that you think we should be pouring a load of money into the prisons to keep prisoners safe. When confronted on that, you pull this evasive crap.
I don't have time to play these nonsensical games with you.
You make zero sense. True criminals? They are all criminals. That's why they are there. Hard time is good punishment for many of them. And good as a deterrance for druggies and other scumbags to think about before doing their crimes. If you can't take the "hard time" don't do the crime.
Of course getting raped may not be a big deal to you. LOL!
Ah, he's a Liberalitarian. Just another quasi-anarchist who wants to smoke dope.
Bull crap. Stop spouting that Leftist tripe you've been indoctrinated with. Individual cells with limited out time is the least expensive and you know it.
Y'know...you'd fit in much better over at libertypost.
" Ah, he's a Liberalitarian. Just another quasi-anarchist who wants to smoke dope."
You are a fascistic phony conservative who thinks that it makes you extra super conservative to be OK with cruel and unusual punishment.
You're also dead wrong.
Using an intoxicating substance other than alcohol or tobacco (which isn't "intoxicating") while knowing full well that it was against the law and could result in prison time.
"You make zero sense. True criminals? They are all criminals. That's why they are there. Hard time is good punishment for many of them. And good as a deterrance for druggies and other scumbags to think about before doing their crimes. If you can't take the "hard time" don't do the crime."
Here are some examples of what you think is OK.
# Chance Martin was gang-raped in an Indiana jail at the age of 18, after attending a party where all guests were arrested because one possessed drugs.
# Hope Hernandez was raped by a corrections official in a Washington D.C. jail shower, while heavily medicated to counteract drug withdrawal symptoms.
Did the punishment fit the crime?
It's not justice.
"Using an intoxicating substance other than alcohol or tobacco (which isn't "intoxicating") while knowing full well that it was against the law and could result in prison time."
As the law is written, is the punishment for that crime repeated rape?
A yes or no will do.
Frankly, Prison rape is easy to avoid. Don't break the f%#king law.
F&*k their dignity. They committed a serious crime, or else their sorry @$$es wouldn't be in prison.
Or merely be accused of such crimes. People are sometimes held pending trial.
Every time one of these threads comes up, it's surprising how many Freepers support such behavior.
You waste your key strokes. The people that support this kind of depravity are one of the following:
1. Openly sodomitical, and enjoy man on man anal sex.
2. Closet sodomites, and enjoy the above, as long as it's perpetuated on those they do not like.
3. Locically inconsistent.
Lurker
Logically
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