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A brief overview of sexual misconduct law and prosecution

Roger W. Shuy

in The Language of Sexual Misconduct Cases

This chapter shows how sexual misconduct cases are dealt with in US law and how offenders can be prosecuted. It first defines the term “sexual misconduct” and then characterizes the person who ... More

This chapter shows how sexual misconduct cases are dealt with in US law and how offenders can be prosecuted. It first defines the term “sexual misconduct” and then characterizes the person who commits sexual misconduct. It then notes the parts of the U.S. federal statutes, state statutes such as the Texas Penal Code, and the Model Penal Code that are used to deal with issues of consent, knowledge, mutual agreement, force, intent, and ages of the participants. This chapter also discusses the most serious offense of sexual misconduct (rape), the difference between sexual harassment and sexual misconduct, physical sexual misconduct (not including rape), and the ways sexual misconduct can be proven.Less

Mending Fences; or, What the Public Saw

Karin E. Gedge

in Without Benefit of Clergy: Women and the Pastoral Relationship in Nineteenth-Century American Culture

At the same time that ministerial misconduct exposed the flaws in separate spheres ideology, the accounts of two dozen clergymen’s trials disclose the ways they worked to repair and reinforce the ... More

At the same time that ministerial misconduct exposed the flaws in separate spheres ideology, the accounts of two dozen clergymen’s trials disclose the ways they worked to repair and reinforce the damaged boundaries. Caught in a disgraceful liaison that threatened a career, ministers usually escaped conviction or severe punishment. In the course of these trials, clergy were rescued from the dangerous domestic sphere and “masculinized,” portrayed as valiant combatants in monumental political or theological battles that secured their positions in the public sphere and acknowledged their value to the church and to society. Only two of these men were Catholic priests, yet most enjoyed a cultural immunity similar to the medieval privilege of “benefit of clergy.” Women, however, were “feminized,” depicted as vulnerable victims in need of the protection of fathers and husbands within the domestic sphere and suffering public ignominy if they strayed beyond it. In short, clergy learned to stay out of the domestic sphere and women to stay in it.Less

Introduction: When Consent Isn’t Sexy

Joseph J. Fischel

in Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice

This chapter surveys current activist and scholarly debates around consent to argue that the conceptual terrain is the wrong one. We should jettison or at least downgrade consent for our sexual ... More

This chapter surveys current activist and scholarly debates around consent to argue that the conceptual terrain is the wrong one. We should jettison or at least downgrade consent for our sexual justice politics.Less

Introduction

Roger W. Shuy

in The Language of Sexual Misconduct Cases

This introductory chapter is concerned with sexual misconduct cases, particularly those involving children. It reviews how sexual misconduct cases were dealt with by previous authors and books, and ... More

This introductory chapter is concerned with sexual misconduct cases, particularly those involving children. It reviews how sexual misconduct cases were dealt with by previous authors and books, and emphasizes that the present work highlights several aspects that have been previously ignored. These include the language evidence of sexual misconduct that occurs in the workplace and sexual misconduct cases that occur between two adults. The chapter then explains how linguistics can help the analysis of sexual misconduct cases. It ends with a summary of the eleven cases presented in this book, where the author also acted as an expert witness.Less

Gone Astray; or, What the Public Feared

Karin E. Gedge

in Without Benefit of Clergy: Women and the Pastoral Relationship in Nineteenth-Century American Culture

The gender ideology of separate spheres that emerged in nineteenth-century America prescribed public roles for men and private roles for women while, at the same time, asking clergy and women to ... More

The gender ideology of separate spheres that emerged in nineteenth-century America prescribed public roles for men and private roles for women while, at the same time, asking clergy and women to serve together as moral guardians of the republic. The cultural no-man’s land they occupied proved to be dangerous territory. Four highly publicized trials reveal nineteenth-century Americans’ fascination and horror with clerical sexual misconduct and crimes against women: the 1832 murder trial of New England Methodist minister Ephraim Avery; the 1844 presentment for moral “impurities” of the Episcopal Bishop of New York, Benjamin Onderdonk; the 1857 criminal adultery trial of Boston pastor Isaac Kalloch; and the 1875 church hearing and civil trial for adultery of the renowned preacher, Henry Ward Beecher. The verbal and graphic images generated in each of these trials tapped deep cultural anxieties, showing clergy and women regularly transgressing the too permeable boundaries of separate spheres and calling into question their roles as moral guardians and the utility of gender ideals in regulating social and sexual behavior.Less

Was the Pericope Adulterae Suppressed?: Part II: Adulteresses and their Opposites

Jennifer Knust and Tommy Wasserman

in To Cast the First Stone

This chapter addresses the possibility that the pericope adulterae was deleted rather than interpolated. Contemporary scholars have often suggested that the unusual history of the pericope adulterae ... More

This chapter addresses the possibility that the pericope adulterae was deleted rather than interpolated. Contemporary scholars have often suggested that the unusual history of the pericope adulterae can best be explained by its seemingly radical content. In a world where adultery on the part of women was heavily censured, this story may have pushed the limits of Christian mercy too far, especially since the earliest Christians were often accused of sexual misconduct. In addition, the woman showed no apparent signs of repentance. Nevertheless, outright deletion or intentional suppression are both highly improbable: scribes and scholars were trained never to delete, even when they doubted the authenticity of a given passage, and the widespread affection for stories about adulterous women across the ancient world belies the thesis that this story was censored.Less

Scripting by Requesting Directives and Apologies in a Sexual Misconduct Case: Idaho v. J. Mussina

Roger W. Shuy

in Creating Language Crimes: How Law Enforcement Uses (and Misuses) Language

This chapter describes an actual case that was anonymized at the request of counsel. Joseph Mussina was a physician who had previously performed an abortion for an immigrant client who kept calling ... More

This chapter describes an actual case that was anonymized at the request of counsel. Joseph Mussina was a physician who had previously performed an abortion for an immigrant client who kept calling his office about her physical and marital problems. In a bizarre series of calls to him during his busy office hours, she at first tried to get the doctor to script her about what she should tell her husband since she falsely believed the doctor wanted to marry her. Later, she tried to elicit an apology from him for having sexual relations with her during her previous visits. These taped conversations were the entire evidence used against the doctor. Linguistic analysis showed that he never admitted to having engaged in any inappropriate behavior. The speech act of apologizing is central to this analysis.Less

Using linguistic tools in sexual misconduct cases

Roger W. Shuy

in The Language of Sexual Misconduct Cases

This chapter reviews the way linguistic tools have been used by the defense attorneys as they attempted to counter the sexual misconduct charges made to their clients. It emphasizes the need for ... More

This chapter reviews the way linguistic tools have been used by the defense attorneys as they attempted to counter the sexual misconduct charges made to their clients. It emphasizes the need for defense attorneys, prosecutors, and linguists to consider the larger language units before they focus on the smaller language units. This is mostly due to the fact that these larger language units—speech acts, schemas, agendas, and speech events, among others—can help give the actual meaning of the smaller units that at first glance appear to be conclusive proof.Less

Intersections of Inequality with Correctional Staff

Barbara Owen, James Wells, and Joycelyn Pollock

in In Search of Safety: Confronting Inequality in Women's Imprisonment

Chapter 6 expands on the consequences of the obvious inequality between correctional worker and prisoner. Much of this inequality is routinely expressed in disrespectful and derogatory comments made ... More

Chapter 6 expands on the consequences of the obvious inequality between correctional worker and prisoner. Much of this inequality is routinely expressed in disrespectful and derogatory comments made by staff about women prisoners. Narrative and survey data is used to describe how staff sexual harassment, misconduct, and physical violence are relatively rare, but are a serious concern to most members of the women’s prison community. The problem of staff sexual misconduct is not one of magnitude. Rather, the fact that any number of staff employed to provide care and custody of women prisoners harm women through sexually-based actions should be troubling to all of us.Less

A Rogue Cop and Every Strategy He Can Think Of: The Wenatchee Washington Sex Ring Case

Roger W. Shuy

in Creating Language Crimes: How Law Enforcement Uses (and Misuses) Language

Between 1994 and 2000, a Wenatchee Washington police officer with a warped imagination managed to enmesh 43 adults and 60 children in one of the most bizarre sexual abuse and sex orgy cases in ... More

Between 1994 and 2000, a Wenatchee Washington police officer with a warped imagination managed to enmesh 43 adults and 60 children in one of the most bizarre sexual abuse and sex orgy cases in history. He made no tape recording of his interviews with witnesses and he claimed to have destroyed any notes he may have made. His entire evidence of misconduct was the confession statements that he wrote down and had them sign. Based on the alleged verbatim confessions, along with trial transcripts of the targets’ testimony, it was possible to show that he used the conversational strategies of interruption, ambiguity, camouflaging, ignoring “no” responses, scripting, withholding important information, and inaccurately restating what they said.Less

The Police and the Public: Women

in Invisible Men: The Secret Lives of Police Constables in Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, 1900-1939

In the early twentienth century, police constables in Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool had both friendly and testy relationships with civilians, including women. Women was a major source of ... More

In the early twentienth century, police constables in Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool had both friendly and testy relationships with civilians, including women. Women was a major source of strain between the strong male culture cultivated in the police force which reinforced working-class male chauvinism and force expectations that men behave with the utmost civility. Contact with women was discouraged because the police image was particularly vulnerable when it came to how women were treated by constables. While constables were punished for any violence towards the public, stiff penalties awaited those who committed sexual misconduct and even minor verbal and physical offences against women, such as asking for or giving unwelcome kisses.Less

Unintended but still wanted sex

Roger W. Shuy

in The Language of Sexual Misconduct Cases

This chapter discusses the case of Stephen Ray, which serves as an example of the complicated twists and turns of sexual misconduct and its laws. It presents some background information on Stephen ... More

This chapter discusses the case of Stephen Ray, which serves as an example of the complicated twists and turns of sexual misconduct and its laws. It presents some background information on Stephen Ray and Brenda, the woman who accused him of sexual assault. The next section studies Stephen and Brenda's account and representation of the events that occurred in Brenda's beauty shop. It then shifts to a transcript of Brenda's confrontation call, where Stephen apologized for everything that Brenda was blaming him of, and studies the structure of a felicitous apology. The chapter ends by discussing six relevant statements that were made in that brief confrontation call, along with the unclear references that Stephen was making while he was apologizing to Brenda.Less

Entering into the World: University and Apprenticeships

Henry French and Mark Rothery

in Man's Estate: Landed Gentry Masculinities, 1660-1900

Chapter Two traces the growth of male autonomy at university and in metropolitan training: a key stage in the development of manliness and Gentry status. Sons often stretched the boundaries of ... More

Chapter Two traces the growth of male autonomy at university and in metropolitan training: a key stage in the development of manliness and Gentry status. Sons often stretched the boundaries of acceptable behaviour during these experiences. While parents feared the consequences of this new found freedom, this chapter argues that manly autonomy was the essential component in the formation of a mature gender identity. University remained both an intellectual and a social proving ground for young men. However, as university reforms proceeded in the first half of the nineteenth century, success in competitive examinations became a public indication of masculine ‘virtue’ among the English elite. The chapter also examines the pit-falls of late adolescence, particularly the enduring (but often hidden) sub-cultures of masculine violence, drunkenness and sexual licence.Less

The sheriff who didn’t know what hit him

Roger W. Shuy

in The Language of Sexual Misconduct Cases

This chapter takes a look at the case of Sheriff William Preston, who was accused of sexual misconduct by a secretary in one of the law enforcement departments. It notes that the sheriff had no ... More

This chapter takes a look at the case of Sheriff William Preston, who was accused of sexual misconduct by a secretary in one of the law enforcement departments. It notes that the sheriff had no previous records of sexual misconduct behavior, and was not a reported lecher. Despite the number of video and audio recording devices that were installed in the secretary's work area, the only piece of evidence available was an unclear recording of a conversation between the secretary and the sheriff. It considers the representations of both the sheriff and the secretary, which appear to be uncertain and ambiguous based on the recording. It also examines the inaccuracy of the transcript, as well as the sense of interpersonal trust that existed between the sheriff and the secretary before the accusations were made. The chapter concludes with a section on whether the sheriff apologized and/or confessed to his behavior.Less

Contemplation, Possession, & Sexual Misconduct

in Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, & Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism

The new mystical trends and contemplative techniques that were observed in the early years of the sixteenth century became associated by the 1640s with demonism in general and diabolic possession in ... More

The new mystical trends and contemplative techniques that were observed in the early years of the sixteenth century became associated by the 1640s with demonism in general and diabolic possession in particular. But opponents of the new forms of mental prayer and of passivity were not the only people to express such anxieties. Contemplative people themselves were equally uneasy. They, too, perceived the spiritual route they were pursuing as perilous, and they, too, articulated an inherent affinity between some forms of acquired contemplation and diabolic possession. Demons have always prowled after members of religious orders. Thus, the early history of the Dominican order was portrayed by its first chroniclers as a continuous struggle against the devil's relentless attempts to destroy the young order. This chapter first looks at the dangers of contemplation as they were portrayed by practitioners of passive forms of contemplation. It then examines four cases of pre-Quietist scandals in seventeenth-century Europe, in which the connection among the new forms of spirituality, sexual misconduct, and demonic possession was made explicit.Less

What's Wrong with Sexual Harassment

Katherine M. Franke

in Directions in Sexual Harassment Law

This chapter shows how sexual misconduct has been considered as a form of sex discrimination and how, through time, this has come to go without saying. Until recently, the “why” of sexual harassment ... More

This chapter shows how sexual misconduct has been considered as a form of sex discrimination and how, through time, this has come to go without saying. Until recently, the “why” of sexual harassment has remained underexamined by courts and commentators alike. It is to this issue that both legal scholars and the Supreme Court have turned their attention of late. Unfortunately, now, as in 1979, a number of foundational questions remain unaddressed in the jurisprudence that has evolved in response to this “fact” of our working lives. First, what does it say about our legal conception of gender-based subordination that we treat sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination? Second, why should we treat sexual harassment differently from racial or ethnic harassment, or other forms of seemingly “nonsexual” sex discrimination for that matter?Less

Three Case Studies

in An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending

This chapter presents three case studies illustrating the extraordinary recent history of legal responses to problematic sexual activities of children and teens in the United States. It intends to ... More

This chapter presents three case studies illustrating the extraordinary recent history of legal responses to problematic sexual activities of children and teens in the United States. It intends to provide an introduction to that part of the legal system concerned with child and adolescent sexual misconduct and to some troublesome trends in legal policy. Like other states in recent years, Idaho passed legislation in 1998 establishing the Sexual Offender Registration, Notification, and Community Right-to-Know Act. The first section of this statute contains a set of legislative findings which rehearses the factual assumptions that are the premises on which the regulatory scheme is based. The Idaho offender registration findings assert that sexual offenders present a significant risk of re-offending and that providing public access to information about such offenders assists parents in the protection of their children.Less