NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/talk/rape/2757

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-09 | 5.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!L-Bueno
From: [e-mail] (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: talk.rape
Subject: THESE YOUTHS DISGRACED THEMSELVES
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun,  8 Nov 92 20:52:47 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world
Lines: 89

THE SCHANBERG COLUMN: THESE YOUTHS DISGRACED THEMSELVES
By Sydney H. Schanberg
(c) 1992, Newsday 11/06

       NEW YORK - On the afternoon of March 1, 1989, in comfortable,
leafy Glen Ridge, N.J., a retarded 17-year-old girl who has an IQ of 64 and
functions at the intellectual and social level of an 8-year-old, came upon
a group of popular high school athletes she knew and admired. Two of the
boys, twins Kyle and Kevin Scherzer, co-captains of the Glen Ridge High
School football team, lived nearby, and the group asked the girl to come
with them to the Scherzer home. Another member of the group, Christopher
Archer, allegedly promised her a date with his brother Paul - whom the girl
later described as ``my hero'' - if she would come to the house. She
agreed.
       In all, 13 of these golden-boy athletes gathered with the
retarded girl in the Scherzer's semi-finished basement. No adult was home
at the time. The orgy began. The girl was penetrated with a broom handle
and a narrow baseball bat. She also engaged in oral sex. Several of the
boys participated in the acts. Others crowded around the couch as the scene
unfolded (one of them later said it was like a ``group of guys watching a
friend feeding a tank of piranhas''). Two boys retreated from the basement
in squirming shame.
       Four of the young men are now on trial on sex abuse charges. Two
others will be tried later. The defendants' lawyers do not challenge the
above basic outline of the episode; they say merely that what happened does
not constitute a crime because it was consensual sex. They go further,
contending that the girl's retardation notwithstanding, she was the
coquette, the sexual aggressor, the one who lured their clients into the
encounter. Furthermore, the lawyers insist, the boys had not the slightest
idea at the time that she was mentally disabled in any way.
       That last argument approaches the fantastical, since the boys
clearly knew that she had been taken out of the regular school system in
Glen Ridge and placed in a special school for impaired children in a nearby
town. Not to mention the fact that anyone who talks with the girl for five
minutes becomes aware that she is retarded.
       Her impairment and its psychological effects help explain her
vulnerability to these boys, according to witnesses who have spent time
with the girl. These witnesses for the prosecution - a teacher, a
psychologist - have depicted the girl as anything but the defense's
manipulative seductress. They said her mortification over being retarded
and different from others her age had created in her a desperation for
friends and thus an overweening desire to please people and get them to
like her.
       ``She could be easily led by anyone who chose to lead her -
absolutely,'' her special education teacher testified. ``It would include
people she wanted to like her. ... She has poor social judgment.''
       The state's psychologist, who had examined the girl, testified
that she was mentally incapable of granting meaningful consent. ``As soon
as she gets into a social encounter and someone wants her to do
something,'' this witness said, ``I don't think she has any capacity to say
no. ... She does not seem to have the concept that she should be able to
choose what to do with her body sexually.''
       The defense tactics should surprise no one, since they are the
time-honored devices in rape and sexual assault trials, all designed to
smear the woman.
       One of the defense lawyers has been particularly inventive. He
is Michael Querques, who represents Kevin Scherzer and who distinguished
himself even before the trial began. He did this by getting a female friend
of the Scherzer twins, Mari Carmen Ferraez, to befriend the retarded girl
and then beguile her into conversations about sex that Ferraez secretly
taped. The purpose was to ask leading questions to coax the retarded girl
into saying she had a wonderful time in the Scherzer basement.
       For example, on one of the tapes, already played in court,
Ferraez asks the girl about the broomstick: ``Did you like it?''
       ``It was OK,'' the girl replies.
       ``Did you ... do the broomstick at all yourself?'' Ferraez went
on. ``Like if I wanted to, could I do it?''
       ``You want to do it to yourself?'' was the girl's reply.
       In another taped conversation, Ferraez reassures the girl that
she's her friend: ``I'm not going to tell anybody. This is your and my
secret.''
       Not content to rest on his entrapment laurels, lawyer Querques
came into court with a wondrous opening speech. He said, in effect, that
the girl was a nymphomaniac, a ``Lolita.'' Describing her as a
``full-breasted, full-bodied young lady,'' Querques said to the jury: ``She
thrived for affection, but she also thrived for the kissing, she craved the
caressing, she craved the embracing, she craved the euphoria because her
brain functioned that way.''
       As for his clients and the other boys on trial, he said they
were nothing more than ``pranksters'' and ``fool-arounds'' who were simply
responding to ``basic human boyish needs.''
       Querques also portrayed the boys as products and victims of a
country that is ``obsessed with sex.''
       ``What was considered perversion in 1940 is not considered
perversion at all today,'' he said. ``You bring them up that way and then
when they do it, you call them criminals.''
       Some perversion, however, never changes. Sexual abuse of a
mentally defenseless girl is as perverse - and wrong - in 1992 as it was in
1940. And it's also a crime.