US soldier's rape sentence cut due to Iraq stress

[Tab]

ROME (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier who raped a Nigerian woman in Italy was given a lighter sentence because the court deemed his tour of duty in Iraq had made him less sensitive to the suffering of others.

According to an Italian court document obtained by Reuters on Tuesday, James Michael Brown, a 27-year-old paratrooper from Oregon stationed in northern Italy, was sentenced to five years and eight months for rape in February 2004.

Brown beat and handcuffed the woman, a Nigerian resident in the town of Vicenza. He raped her vaginally and anally and left her to wander the streets naked in search of help.

The crime would have earned him an eight-year sentence, but the judges reduced the penalty due to the "extenuating circumstances" of the psychological effects of Brown's year of service in Iraq, the document said.

More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060307/ts_nm/crime_iraq_rape_dc_1;_ylt=ApaV4yLO3XWm8EFQtQ7ie8pX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. Lovely. A get out of jail free card.

I wonder if the woman was black....

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[Tanuki]

9. She was Nigerian

so yes, it is most likely she was Black. I agree that local racism was a likely factor in the light sentence. One can only wonder what the sentence would have been if a woman of local ethnicity had been similarly violated.

[Cronus Protagonist]

13. Not all Nigerians are black, that's why I wondered about it

n/t

[MadMaddie]

2. He should have gotten the 8 years....

Many soldiers have come back and don't commit crimes.....There is no excuse for what he did...

[LostinVA]

NO, I disagree -- he should have gotten 80 years

Yeah, I'm serious. Rapists are destroyers and thieves, and what they break and steal will never, ever come back.

[Tab]

11. The Italian judicial system

often hands down controversial rulings in rape cases - it's a concept they're still a little behind on. I remember something from a few years ago that some case wasn't rape because a girl was jeans - the thinking was that jeans are nearly impossible to get off if the girl doesn't want them off and therefore she must have been a willing participant in order for them to come off and therefore it wasn't rape.

And just the other week didn't they rule that rapes aren't as bad if the victim has already had a sexual experience as opposed to the rape being her first experience? I think they gave someone a reduced sentence because the victim had previously had sexual partners.

[LostinVA]

18. Was that Italy? It was someplace -- I remember reading it on her

[Tab]

39. Hmm

On second thought, it might have been Greece, but given how Italy typically rules in cases like these, it might have been them. As a rule, they're not very victim-oriented.

[TAPat]

16. Amen!!!

:toast:

[LostinVA]

17. Oh, it was just rape -- not anything important

[apnu]

44. screw that! cut his cock off!

Is it extreme and inhumane? Yes! Is rape extreme and inhumane? Yes! The punishment (ball snipping) fits the crime IMO.

[roguevalley]

38. so if his victim cuts some man's dick off with a knife, then HER

sentence will be reduced due to her Iraqi stress?

[Skittles]

40. you know they would hold it against women, being in the military

you know they would

[roguevalley]

42. unfortunately, you are right.

[izzie]

3. give me a brake

--

[seriousstan]

14. OK.....

[atreides1]

4. When you thought it couldn't get any worse

So now you can torture a man to death and get 6 months house arrest, you can rape a woman and people feel sorry for you because you were in combat! What's next, kill a child and get a medal????

But show up on a gay porn site and you get a dishonorable discharge!!!!

[marmar]

6. Exactly....

This is just the beginning of the untold spin-off horrors this war will cause. Fasten your seatbelts.

:scared:

[Karenina]

31. He realizes now that he gets a free pass.

May he be returned quickly to his home.

[Karmakaze]

7. Support the troops?

:eyes:

[Solly Mack]

5. I'm currently entertaining a fantasy that

involves a baseball bat...

Years and years of repeated attacks on women have left me less sensitive to the suffering of others

[TomInTib]

8. Hmmm... I am a combat vet and the bank is just down the hill...

See y'all later.

[fiveleafclover]

12. Try to get enough together

so that we can all have a DU cruise.

[BlueIris]

27. Okay, I know it is so, so wrong that I'm mentally laughing right now...

it's a sick, disgusted laugh, mind you, but it's there.

Thanks, Tom, for a small chuckle in these dark times.

[TomInTib]

29. I will get some for you, too, BlueIris...

Heck, we have 4 or 5 banks in our little town of 5000.

Maybe we will all have that DU Cruise.

[BlueIris]

33. Thanks, man! And you know, I really deserve it. As someone who

has been through some trauma, I find myself under a little bit of stress at times, and not too sympathetic to the feelings of others. In fact, maybe I'll head on over to one of my city's banks. We could get enough for two cruises!

[TomInTib]

35. And then we could sell the movie rights...

and buy Costa Rica and we could all move there.

[Karmakaze]

10. What the hell??

I could possibly understand (though not agree with) this ruling IF the soldier had raped her without all the violence. For example a "date rape" type scenario, but beating, handcuffing etc proves that this guy DID know what he was doing, the suffering he was causing etc, but did it anyway.

Not taking no for an answer is a whole lot different from beating a woman into submission then handcuffing her. In my opinion the soldier should get the maximum sentence (and probably more) and the JUDGES should get 5 years!

On edit: Doesn't the fact he used handcuffs alone PROVE premeditation? Wouldnt premeditation itself prove that he knew what he was going to do was wrong and that the woman would not want him to do it, and that he prepared for that eventuality? He KNEW what he was doing. There should be no "diminished responsibility" as the lawyers called it.

[Mend]

15. now the Nigerian woman can go and bludgeon him and be

excused because of the trauma of being raped is her "extenuating circumstance".....why do I think she wouldn't get away with that?

[Bush_MUST_Go]

20. I wonder why he wasn't tried in a military court?

In January, this administration was all gung ho about making sure American troops didn't visit prostitutes.

I think we'll see more & more troops resorting to rape instead of being caught paying for sex.



http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2006/20060110_3890.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2006 – Harsher punishments for Defense Department personnel who participate in human trafficking or support the industry by patronizing prostitutes are part of a bill signed into law today by President Bush.

"Human trafficking is an offense against human dignity, a crime in which human beings, many of them teenagers and young children, are bought and sold and often sexually abused by violent criminals," Bush said at the White House before signing the bill. "Our nation is determined to fight and end this modern form of slavery."

The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005 amends the military manual for courts-martial, making the punishment for using a prostitute the same as that for being a prostitute, said John Awtrey, director of law enforcement policy and support for the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

Under the new act, any servicemember convicted of patronizing a prostitute can receive a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and one year of confinement.

[BlueIris]

30. Right, because rapists only rape when they can't have "normal 'sex.'"

Jesus.

Rape and normal sexual congress have nothing to do with one another. The things that drive a man like this to rape a person have nothing to do with the things that drive normal humans to want to have sex with each other.

[BoneDaddy]

36. Absolutely 100% agreed

There is no excuse for what he did. I, like others in here, are hardcore when it comes to violent crime. Let the poor shlubs who get busted for pot out and keep these people locked up.

[arcane1]

19. like the effects of not having any more female soldiers to rape?

:shrug:

Military Hides Cause of Women Soldiers' Deaths
By Marjorie Cohn

In a startling revelation, the former commander of Abu Ghraib prison testified that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former senior US military commander in Iraq, gave orders to cover up the cause of death for some female American soldiers serving in Iraq.

Last week, Col. Janis Karpinski told a panel of judges at the Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York that several women had died of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women's latrine after dark.

The latrine for female soldiers at Camp Victory wasn't located near their barracks, so they had to go outside if they needed to use the bathroom. "There were no lights near any of their facilities, so women were doubly easy targets in the dark of the night," Karpinski told retired US Army Col. David Hackworth in a September 2004 interview. It was there that male soldiers assaulted and raped women soldiers. So the women took matters into their own hands. They didn't drink in the late afternoon so they wouldn't have to urinate at night. They didn't get raped. But some died of dehydration in the desert heat, Karpinski said.

Karpinski testified that a surgeon for the coalition's joint task force said in a briefing that "women in fear of getting up in the hours of darkness to go out to the port-a-lets or the latrines were not drinking liquids after 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and in 120 degree heat or warmer, because there was no air-conditioning at most of the facilities, they were dying from dehydration in their sleep."

-snip-

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013006J.shtml

[DELUSIONAL]

21. Oh bull shit!

Male Chauvinist Pigs reign in Italy.

[ConcernedCanuk]

22. This is disgusting! ALL rapists suffer from some sort of stress - "DOH!!"

.
.
.

Teach all them "macho" men to jerk off fer chrissakes . .

Women are not "tools" for men's pleasure

Do it by "HAND" there dude . . .

I do NOT believe in non-consensual sex for ANY reason

Rapists are only one notch above child molesters IMO

And anything less than a life sentence is an insult to the victims

The victims will live with that abuse memory in their minds and emotions for the rest of their life -

So the offenders deserve life imprisonment at the least.

That's this Canuks' thots on THAT

[NaturalHigh]

23. What a dumbass decision by the court.

I don't doubt that the guy was suffering from a lot of stress after serving in Iraq, but that doesn't excuse his crime.

[progressivebydesign]

24. Such bullshit. Women always get cheated

It's a man's world. He should get the FULL sentence, and counseling. Is this the defense-du-jour?

[Mandate My Ass]

25. Perhaps he does have PTSD from combat, but now she has it too

from the brutality and viciousness of the attack. I doubt she'll be excused or given leniency if she acts out and hurts someone. Holy crap, what a disgrace. The cycle of violence started by Bushco is in full swing and getting worse by the hour.

[BlueIris]

26. Great. Does this mean he's coming back to Oregon?

I have enough rapists to worry about here. Jesus.

[David Zephyr]

28. 8 months for raping her. If it were S. Dakota, she'd have to have his baby

It is simply appalling how this administration and its policies from its Pentagon to its "friend of the court" actions have been sytematically killing women. Yes, killing women and girls.

And it's high time for men who claim to be progressive and liberal and yet, who sit on the sidelines in these battles, to get off their asses and begin speaking out about it.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

[Mithras61]

32. Actually it was 5 years and 8 months...

but even so, it's still ridiculously low...

[Poll_Blind]

34. And will he register as a sex offender when he gets back? NO!

There's alot of talk about the gray areas in the sex offender laws but when I hit this passage:

Brown beat and handcuffed the woman, a Nigerian resident in the town of Vicenza. He raped her vaginally and anally and left her to wander the streets naked in search of help.

I knew the law was made just for scum like him. But will he have to register? Doubtful.

PB

[raggedcompany]

37. In South Dakota, this story would be reported under the headline...

"Expectant father, an "Operation Enduring Freedom" hero, held in European prison."

[entanglement]

41. From the article:

"Brown, who is being held at a U.S. military prison in Mannheim, Germany, may never serve his rape sentence as, under Italian law, he may be allowed to return to the United States pending an appeal to the conviction.."

[BlueIris]

45. Egh. So...he IS coming back to Oregon?

Ew.

Once again, we're not Detroit or anything, but we really do have enough rapists as it is.

[Az_lefty]

43. she was imprisoned, tortured and raped...

and this asshole gets a lighter sentence????? This is outrageous! I agree with the above poster who said he should have gotten 80 years.
:grr: