Today in Rape Culture

[Trigger warning.]

Q: When is a rapist not a rapist.

A: According to Australian Supreme Court Justice Dean Mildren: When he's lonely.

CHIEF Minister Paul Henderson said yesterday he did not believe a 13-year-old girl could consent to having sex with her teacher.

He made the comments after a Supreme Court judge said a teacher was not a rapist "as that word is ordinarily understood" because there was no evidence the sex he had with his student was not consensual.

...Justice Mildren said the teacher was not a "sexual predator" - but had suffered from a "life of loneliness".

Rage. Seethe. Boil.

What makes Mildren's fuckery even worse is that the teacher started what the article euphemistically describes as a "physical relationship" with his student "after the girl confided to the teacher that she was the victim of a sexual abuse."

So, a vulnerable 13-year-old survivor confides in her teacher, whom she is meant to trust, that she's been sexually assaulted, and he responds by launching a "physical relationship" with her. That is textbook predation. Even if there existed some scenario in which "loneliness" justified an adult man engaging in a "physical relationship" with a 13-year-old girl (note: that scenario does not exist), it still wouldn't be applicable to this guy who is obviously a sexual predator.

It really, really disturbs me how many men can more easily sympathize with male rapists than their female victims, how many men will twist themselves into all manner of logical contortions to make defenses and excuses and explanations for even admitted rapists, to the point of claiming they're not really rapists at all.

The "physical relationship" lasted four months. Mildren sentenced the teacher to two years.

[H/T to Lauredhel, by email.]