Today in Rape Culture

[Content Note: Rape culture; rape apologia.]

Alexander Abad-Santos at The Atlantic—Steubenville Rapist to Appeal Because His 'Brain Isn't Fully Developed' (emphasis original):

Since his defense strategy, claiming that a 16-year-old rape victim wasn't "so" drunk, has failed, the lawyer for one of the two Steubenville football players convicted of rape plans to appeal a guilty verdict, and is now claiming that the 16-year-old rapist's brain wasn't "developed" enough and his client should not have to be on a sex offenders list for life. Walter Madison, the attorney for Ma'lik Richmond, went on Piers Morgan Tonight on Tuesday, explaining why he would appeal Sunday's verdict by 37-year juvenile court judge Thomas Lipps, and especially his sentencing of Richmond to at least one year in a rehabilitation center and the requirement to register as a sex offender. You can watch the video below, but here's the key "logic" from Madison:

I don't believe that a person at 75 years old should have to explain for something they did at 16 when scientific evidence would support your brain isn't fully developed ... when evidence in the case would suggest that you were under the influence.

[...]

"We have the right to appeal and that is a right we will be exercising," said Walter Madison, Richmond's attorney.

To review: Madison is arguing that a 16-year-old's brain is not fully functional enough to determine whether raping an unconscious girl is a bad decision. This comes after Madison made news during his last media tour, when he insisted before last week's rape trial that the Jane Doe victim's silence and unconsciousness amounted to consent. He said before the trial that the girl "made a decision to excessively drink... and leave with the boys," and that an Instagram photo of the girl being dragged by the then-suspects "doesn't suggest that a person is substantially impaired." The defense team for Richmond and Trent Mays then went on to argue in court that the girl's level of drunkenness should determine consent.

Also, as Judge Lipps reminded the perpetrator and his family before delivering the sentencing (which may not include extra time in juvenile detention or a lifetime on an offenders list based on behavior), if Lipps had decided to try Richmond and Mays as adults, they would have faced first-degree felony charges and much harsher penalties.

And finally, just to be clear: neuroscience says that teenagers have "underdeveloped decision processing centers," which is why teens take risks like stealing or doing drugs. Though, science doesn't say that you can blame the rape of an underage, unconscious girl on this kind of poor decision making.

Note: The sentencing "may not include...a lifetime on an offenders list." This barrage of bullshit is being unleashed on the possibility of Richmond ending up on a sex offenders registry as a result of being a convicted sex offender.

This impulse control rape apologia has been tried before, and failed, and it should certainly fail again.

Leaving aside the reality that there are legions of teenagers who engage in consensual sexual activity and legions of adults who do not, thus suggesting that the primary issue underlying rape is not, in fact, "immaturity" but hostility to consent, to pursue this line of argument is to elide the capacity of the human brain to understand the concept of "no" as young as six months of age.

By a year old, most humans have a basic grasp of "no," and, while enthusiastic consent takes a bit longer to grasp—that the absence of a "no" does not translate axiomatically into a "yes"—it is rank mendacity to suggest children much younger than 16 cannot comprehend simple lessons on not harming centered around individual agency. "Don't hit your brother" and "don't squeeze the puppy" are entry level lessons on the consent spectrum that most very young children have the capacity to embrace.

I'm guessing Richmond had those ideas, or some variation thereof, imparted to him along the way. What he doesn't seem to have been taught is that young women are no more his to harm than a sibling, a classmate, or a family pet.