Community Corner
We must not trivialize sexual assault of boys
By Michael Crawford, Special to Lancaster News This originally was published in LNP on Monday, April 20, 2015
Not even 24 hours after ABC’s romanticized coverage of Mary Kay Letourneau – the former teacher who raped her 12-year-old student and later married him – “Saturday Night Live” performed a sketch that mocked, sanitized and glorified the sexual assault of male students by female teachers.
The sketch played out like a how-to guide for silencing male survivors through harmful messages around masculinity – that all forms of heterosexual contact are desirable and that sex is what makes a boy a man. Rather than treating these survivors as real victims, SNL told them they should be high-fiving everyone they meet.
Rape is not funny. Ever.
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Sexual violence is an epidemic in our country – nearly 1 in 6 boys will experience some form of sexual abuse before turning 18. These serious crimes and their harm to people, families, communities and society are preventable. However, prevention requires an informed society, and the press has a considerable role in providing this information.
It is outrageous that so many outlets distribute misinformation and distortions of rape. Words like “relationship,” “scandal” and “affair” hide the crime while making it more difficult for survivors to come forward about their experiences and easier for people who commit sexual assault to justify their behavior.
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At 53, Letourneau is still convinced her sexual interactions with her 12-year-old student were consensual. It is a crime for adults to commit sexual acts with children because children do not have adult-level maturity. The inherent imbalance of power between adults and children – let alone adults in positions of authority over children – is impossible for children to navigate.
We recognize this in numerous settings. A 12-year-old child cannot have a bank account without an adult co-signer. He cannot purchase alcohol, tobacco or other products that can compromise health. He cannot consent to his own medical care. Adults have to sign permission slips for nearly everything – including sex education in many school districts. A 12-year-old isn’t even permitted to sign up for Facebook.
Letourneau and people like her tell themselves that a 12-year-old is mature enough to father a child and commit to a lifelong partnership. It is how they justify their criminal actions. SNL’s sketch and ABC’s presentation of Letourneau and her now-husband as star-crossed lovers only serves to solidify those distorted thoughts.
Consider the press release issued by ABC: “In an exclusive interview with Barbara Walters, Mary Kay Letourneau Fualaau and Vili Fualaau sit down together on the eve of their 10th wedding anniversary, sharing intimate details about their headline-making marriage. ... Mary Kay tells Walters what makes their marriage work in spite of the huge difference in their age. ... Vili Fualaau, meanwhile, discusses his bouts with alcoholism, depression and why he believes the system failed him while he was still a minor.”
Sexual assault is complex and difficult to talk about. It is critical for the media to present facts about how offenders operate and promote a dialogue and an understanding of sexual violence that will help Americans make the needed cultural shift in how we perceive, respond to and treat sexual violence victims and perpetrators within both the criminal justice system and society at large.
We all have a shared responsibility to identify and respond to toxic messages in the media we consume. We can start with the understanding that sexual contact between a student and teacher is not comedy or a “rite of passage.” It is rape.
It is important that we, as a society, understand that if we do not challenge the presentation of sexual assault in the media, we only silence survivors and enable perpetrators.
Michael Crawford is a communications assistant for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. This op-ed was co-authored by Kristen Houser of PCAR and Christopher M. Anderson, executive director of MaleSurvivor. Find resources at pcar.org and MaleSurvivor.org.
