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 ...
Rapists make their victims suffer that indignity without remorse. Perhaps they will learn in prison why that is so wrong.
Call the waaaaaaaambulance.
I disagree. Killers, rapists, drug kingpins, kidnappers, child molesters, etc. should ALL be cast down with the sodomites.
If Dennis Rader (sp?) harmed or killed any children, he's in big trouble with other inmates no matter where he goes.
It may be necessary in order to control psychotic schizophrenics. I'm sure this drugging of normal inmates is not condoned. I believe that by itself is an assault, let alone the rape.
I believe folks that commit rape in jail should get a life sentence. If they are knowingly HIV positive, and they commit rape in jail, they should be executed.
The bottom line is, prisons have to prevent rape within their walls. If a victim contracts AIDS because of a prison rape, that's a lawsuit and a potentially grand settlement.
The classic example may be the guys who dragged the black man to death in Texas about five years ago.
There were repeated indications in the press that the perps, not long out of prison, might have been acting out hostility to black men based on their experiences in prison, if you get my drift. Nobody wanted to talk about it much because, if their "feelings" were given the break other victims get, it might "justify" what they did.
And of course we all no that white racism and hostility towards black people has no possible origin other than the evil built into the souls of white men.
Getting? You're much too kind. It's been silly for a while now.
Re: post 127.
Sorry about not reading all posts before replying.
I wonder how Valerie Plame is doing these days? I wonder how many new friends she has, how many packs of cigarettes she is worth.
I concur...but there's a major problem: once the rapist gets the life sentence, what punishment do you then inflict? Double-secret-probation life sentence?
And hell, sentencing an HIV-positive rapist to death is an exercise in futility. What with all the automated appeals, the HIV+ prisoner will die of his disease long before his date with the executioner comes up.
Personally, I think all prisoners should be in solitary confinement and only allowed out of the cell when fitted with a shock collar. No TV. No cable. No girlie mags. No working out to be an even greater menace to society when they get released.
Inhumane? Perhaps...but it's a far cry from being raped by bubba, ain't it?
Rape is cruel and unusual punishment. The Consttution prohibitis it.
Considering that prison rape has gone on for decades and AIDS has also been going on for decades, it's a certainty that some poor bastard already got this death sentence. So far, no successful suits and no large settlements.
In short, ain't nothin' gonna change any time soon.
Minor nit: the rape is not being committed by the courts.
Well...not in this case anyway.
Rader's first victims were a family of four, including a boy of 9 and a girl of 11.
I don't think he's going to be very popular in the clink.
Hahahaha. . .what a jokster. Just a little harmless fun. . .bad thing that happened to him, but his own actions put him there.
His own actions put him in jail...rightfully.
But no one should be tortured with gang rape while waiting for due process or serving one's term.
I've thought about this, and I'm quite reluctant to suggest it, since it involves a supremely immoral act. However, I think that if a person in prison gets raped, he should at least consider killing his attacker. I don't know how much good merely injuring the agressor in retaliation would do, and killing the sub-human bastard would hopefully deter other rapes and prevent the inmate from becoming someone's "bitch" (love-slave). He should just take care not to get caught, or it could be a lifetime in prison or the needle...
Call me cold, vicious, callous, whatever, but there, I've said it...
I was thinking along those lines for the recent recruiting shortfalls, especially in the Army and Marines. It wouldn't be the first time in history where a choice was made between joining the military or face the consequences of the judicial system.
As long as the accused person wasn't in police custody for a violent crime, serve until receiving an Honorable Discharge and have a clean slate as far as the police and courts are concerned.
I must have hit close to home by your violent reaction.
Shoving a gun in someone's face isn't a prank. Armed robbery is still classified as a capital offense in some states (although the liberal Supreme Court has temporarily blocked the use of the death penalty for the crime.) So what you consider a "prank" could have netted him a life sentence in more civilized parts of the country.
Impulsive? I think he is lying about that as well. Stealing a bicycle leaning against a tree might be impulsive. Armed robbery takes some advanced thought.
"Bent on mischief" - translates to 'not his first criminal act'.
The not so young punk is sill trying to make excuses for his criminal acts an minimizing crimes which could have ended in death rather than facing up to responsibility for his acts.
If someone is convicted of another rape while in prison, lifetime in solitary confinement would be appropriate.
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