Scarlett Letter Redux

     There is an old joke: A psychiatrist is administering a Rohrschak test to a patient.  Each inkblot card the psychiatrist held up would elicit a sexual reference from the patient.  As the last card was laid on the desk the psychiatrist wrote some notes in a document, then turned to the patient: "Mr. Bottomly", he said, "each of your answers suggests that you are fixated on sex."
     "Me", said the patient, "you're the one showing me the dirty pictures."


     In September of 2009, the Oregon Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the case of, Oregon V Rodriguez/Buck (SO 55 720).  The ruling by the court challenged Oregon's measure 11 law, and required sentences to be proportionate to the seriousness of the crime.
     That the court ruled in this way should not be surprising.  That the bench let the original convictions stand, with lesser sentences, is what is disappointing.  The two defendants, Veronica Rodriguez and Darryl Buck, were convicted on felony charges of sex abuse of a minor.  Mrs. Rodriguez was convicted in 2005 of abusing a 13 year old boy at a Hillsboro, Oregon Boys and Girls Club.  Her crime was bringing the back of a boys head in contact with her clothed chest for about one minute.  at a distance one can speculate on Ms Rodriguez motive, but in gentler times, or if she were a matronly white woman, this conduct would have been construed as a comforting hug of a child suffering stress or illness.  That it should be considered, by today's Puritan descendants, a sex crime should be shocking to the sensibilities of any thinking person.  She may have been a strong Hispanic woman offering empathy, something feared by certain conservatives.  Perhaps we have forfeited the ability to think for the promise of security-we have neither.  Ms. Rodriguez served 16 mos in prison.
     In the case of Darryl Buck, he was sentenced in Linn County, in 2006, of touching the clothed buttocks of a 13 year old girl who was sitting next to him fishing.  When the girl stood up Buck brushed the dirt and grit off of the girls buttocks with two swipes of his hand.  The prosecutor had asked for a 75 month sentence, but the judge awarded a 17 month sentence, saying the larger sentence was grossly unfair given that the touching was "outside the clothes, and was not fondling."  It was not a situation where it was "forced".
     If it was not "fondling" and was not "forced", where is the child sexual abuse?  Speculating again, we may surmise that the young girl was familiar with Mr. Buck, perhaps related, and that his brush of a hand over the child's clothed buttocks could have been an innocent gesture.  Apparently some other puritan busybody turned a non-sexual situation into a heinous sex crime, and the prosecutor was too eager to add another poor sap, with no previous criminal history, to the long roll of sex offenders in Oregon's inmate population.
     Let us be clear.  There are real sex offenders walking around our communities, and they should be prosecuted and incarcerated.  To lump these two people, and more like them, into the same category cheapens the charge of sex offense; something like imposing the same penalty for petty theft as for 1st degree theft.
     As an observer with some perspective on these charges it occurs to me that the people who wrote and prosecuted some of these statutes are some of the same people who find nothing disturbing about a "spare the rod and spoil the child" mentality.  This same impulse, to ,make society safe for children, was the same impulse to invade Iraq to make society safe from weapons of mass destruction.  Where did that get us?  Compounding this is the obvious fact that there is one set of laws for the defenseless, and one set of laws for those with powerful friends.
     Rodriguez and Buck have served their sentences and returned to their families.  But unlike other felons convicted of say, embezzling or identity theft, or arson, a sex offender must wear the metaphorical "Scarlet Letter" when they return to their communities.  They must register with the state Police each year within 10 days of their birthday, or when they move, as a sex offender.  They are then placed on a database.  Additionally, they have restrictions on where they may live and work.  Such is not the case for an offender who is convicted on other charges.
     In the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, "The Scarlet Letter", Hester Prynne emerges from a 17th century Massachusetts jail.  She is asked to reveal the father of her baby, Pearl, but refuses.  She then is placed in the stocks and pelted with fruit and insults.  Rev. Dimmesdale, the unrevealed father, and Roger Chillingsworth, the cuckolded husband, stand by to witness her humiliation.
     Because of her talent with  needle and thread, Hester Prynne is able to provide a living for her and her daughter.  She proudly wears the scarlet letter "A", for adultery, embellished with gold thread.  Hester Prynne thrives as Rev. Dimmesdale is consumed with guilt, and Roger Chillingsworth is consumed with vengeance.  Nature, in the story, destroys her tormenters and provides comfort to Hester Prynne.  In the case of Ms. Rodriguez and Mr. Buck, the prosecutors, like the patient in the psychiatrist joke, are not forced to acknowledge their faulty vision.  Rodriguez and Buck's scarlet letter is not adorned with gold thread.