I remember this one time in my criminal justice class, we were reading about this kid that shot up a bus for some gang thing/reason, who is now in jail for life. And one of my first thoughts were why did this kid throw his life away.
Some kids got drunk (what is a pretty bad thing to start with) and some pretty bad things happen. It's a tragedy. I really never understood why some people seem to be happy when people get sent to jail. And we are talking about kids here.
But these weren't troubled kids in any way, at least not as far as I've heard. They seem to be quite popular and resourceful kids in fact, with everything going for them.
Yes, sending people - and kids especially - to jail isn't optimal, I suppose. Most people in jail do get out after a while, and whether they are better people or worse people because of their time in jail, is always something to discuss.
But even drunk 16 year-olds know that rape is wrong. Besides, it's already established that not being sober is not an excuse for any crime whatsoever.
Could you tell me what you think would be an acceptable reaction towards these two?
When you point out an action is ill-advised, you are, intentionally or not, shifting some of the blame to the victim.
Granted, that partial sentence wasn't necessary, and I only included it as a possible acknowledgement of what might go through people's heads if they try to excuse this episode. In any case, everyone knows that it's not smart to get completely wasted (or so I thought...), and I hoped I made it perfectly clear that I did not believe that her being drunk was in any way excusing their actions. I would really have preferred to leave it at that.
However, when the replies to that sentence seem to be essentially: "No, getting completely wasted isn't stupid, and nobody should ever expect anything bad to happen to them when they drink until they pass out - and especially not getting raped!", I don't feel like I can leave them unopposed.
Are drunk people to blame for what happens to them while drunk? Yes and no. In some cases, mostly when people should have been on duty, had certain responsibilities, etc., it's criminal for people to be drunk. People can get punished for just being drunk, even if nothing bad happens. If something bad happens then the punishment is usually higher than if something bad happened and they were sober.
Are drunk people in their spare time who end up beaten up, robbed or murdered to blame for what happened to them? They're victims of course, and won't ever be charged with having been drunk. But everyone can agree that being too drunk, and especially in certain situations and locales, is a stupid thing to do.
And I really don't see any difference between drunk victims of other crimes, and drunk victims of rape. Being too drunk isn't a smart thing to do! However, that doesn't in any way excuse the perpetrator of a crime.
And yes, I appreciate that victims can feel extra bad about what happened to them if they did anything less than perfect in the time before the crime took place. And yes, I am aware that victims of a crime usually think through everything that happened and ask themselves "could I have done something differently?". And yes, except murder and serious physical violence, rape is one of the worst crimes one can be a victim of.
But all that doesn't negate the fact that it is stupid to get too wasted, and that it was stupid of this particular girl to get as wasted as she did.
And in a discussion it should be possible to point all this out, without everyone starting to complain that one is "laying (some) of the blame on the victim"!
That is, of course, as long as the purpose with pointing it out wasn't for the very purpose of putting blame on the victim and removing it from the perpetrators, IMO.
