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 ...
Funny how the liberals care more about the dignity of prisoners than the dignity of their victims.
I wonder how many of the posters cheering for or neutral on prison rape would consider the act an intolerable mortal sin if both parties were willing participants?
Great question. Sobering that you had to ask, but it's effective.
17 percent of all inmates in federal prisons are illegal immigrants and that doesn't even include state and local jails. You want to reduce prison overcrowding, there is you answer.
If you run an FBI fingerprint check, juvenile records are available.
Well, if you give a 0.5 to Scott Peterson or Natalee Holloway or Michael Jackson, i.e., watched one minute of coverage of any of it, I'd say about an 8.0.
If Rush Limbaugh goes to prison for drug abuse, does he deserve to be raped?
It was, wasn't it...
Who was that man that murdered all those nurses in the 60's I believe? That video that came out when he died showed him with breast and partying with drugs and alcohol...while in prison. I wonder how many were outraged that that had happened while he was locked up. He bragged that he had more fun in prison than out.
"Hahahaha"
"Who was that man that murdered all those nurses in the 60's I believe?"
Richard Speck. This is a messed up thread btw.
No. You would not have posted unless you either had a point to make or that you were lonely and just wanted some conversation.
The stupid ones are the ones who commit crimes knowing the may have to go to prison and "toss the salad".
Richard Speck?
You're right, it is a messed up thread.
Yep. Prison....still a bad place to go.
Losertarian?
Both cons and libs have signed off on the old-fashioned punishment of hard labor in favor of jail care. What a waste of taxpayers' money.
I say bring back the chain gang and the renting out of convict labor. This would have the dual benefit of bringing in money to the state and reducing the need for illegal immigrants. In return for good conduct, a convict would be permitted conjugal visits.
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