JAILBAIT
Big Narcissism picks a fight that it cannot win:
Kaitlyn Hunt’s parents insist that their daughter, a Central Florida high school senior, is being prosecuted for sex crimes only because her lover was another girl. The state attorney says that gender makes no difference; the age of the two girls is at the crux of the case.
Between Friday night and Tuesday morning, more than 100,000 supporters from around the world signed an online petition siding with Ms. Hunt’s parents. About 30,000 supporters, some from as far away as Australia, South Korea and the Netherlands, had joined the Facebook group Free Kate.
Steven Hunt Jr., Ms. Hunt’s father, wrote in an introduction to the online petition that he believed “Kaitlyn’s girlfriend’s parents are pressing charges because they are against the same-sex relationship, even though their daughter has stated that this is a consensual relationship.” A little later, he added, “Now she’s been expelled from school and is facing serious felonies — all because she is in love.”
A spokesman for the sheriff’s department, Sgt. Thom Raulen, said that there was no indication that Ms. Hunt had forced the younger girl into a sexual relationship. However, in Florida, a minor is not considered capable of giving consent, he added.
But to Ms. Hunt’s Facebook supporters, it seemed like a tale of high school love, archaic laws and antigay prejudice.
“People are frustrated with the current laws and stipulations against anyone, whether it’s for age or same-sex, and maybe the fact that people just think that what is happening is unfair, because that’s a lot of the comments that we’re seeing on the page, is that it’s just not right,” Nichole Mottau-Sweet, who began the Facebook page, said. “It’s the old quote ‘The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.’ Although no one considers what went on any kind of crime that deserves punishment.”
There was a plea deal on the table.
Prosecutors have offered Ms. Hunt a plea-bargain agreement that would allow her to plead no contest to a lesser charge of child abuse, and they have promised not to seek prison time. She could then be sentenced to community control, which could require an ankle monitor, or probation. The judge could withhold adjudication. That would mean she would not have to register as a sex offender, and her record could be expunged later.
A deal the kid turned down.
Kaitlyn Hunt has refused a plea deal from the state attorney. She was charged earlier this year with lewd and lascivious battery on a minor, after she admitted to having a same-sex relationship with a 14-year-old girl.
The plea deal that was offered included a charge of child abuse, two years of house arrest and one year of probation.
She now faces a June 20th court hearing. If convicted at a trial, the state attorney’s office says she could face 15 years in prison.
Did I ever tell you guys about a kid named Darrell Jackson? Single greatest high school football player I ever saw and not just because he went to my old school, Webster Groves. The kid could do it all.
Remember the late 1990′s through the early 2000′s, the golden days of the St. Louis Rams? Remember how beautifully Marshall Faulk could run, Kurt Warner’s howitzer of a right arm and the statistics that both regularly put up? If you invented a player who could and regularly did post Faulk and Warner numbers in the same game all by himself, you’d have Darrell Jackson.
In the second half of state title game Jackson’s junior year, Webster’s opponents literally drove 99 yards down the field for the go-ahead touchdown midway through the fourth quarter. Whereupon Jackson put Webster on his back and threw or ran the Statesmen to about the opposition’s 45 yard line.
Then with about two minutes to go, Jackson faded back and heaved one about 60 yards in the air and into the end zone where it was caught for a touchdown which put Webster back into the lead. The defense held and Webster had its third state football title.
The Statesmen went back to the title game the following year and lost but that didn’t hurt Darrell Jackson’s reputation any. Every major-college football program in the country wanted him and the University of Missouri was he decided to play for the Tigers.
That fall, Darrell Jackson set off for Columbia, Missouri and his inevitable college and professional football superstardom. So why have few, if any, of you ever heard that name before? Why was he playing, the last time
I checked, with a semi-pro football team called the St. Louis Bulldogs, a team that I’m not even sure exists any more?
Because early in his freshman year at Missouri, Darrell Jackson’s past caught up with him.
The kid could have gotten 150 years (30 per count). Fifty years was suppposedly the mininum. Jackson got four months in the county lock-up and five years probation, during which he was forbidden from playing college football. Too little?
St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch thought so although, according to that last link, the victim’s father did not seem too upset about it. Because, barring a change in the law, Jackson’s sentence will never be over.
He’ll be on that sex offender list for the rest of his life. And even if Jackson is a man among boys with the St. Louis Bulldogs, even if it was certain that he would still be a superstar, no NFL team will ever give Darrell Jackson the time of day.
One has to think that there are a great many other Darrell Jacksons out there. Maybe they were bright, well-adjusted high school seniors who had won scholarships to prestigious schools and were well on their way to personal and financial success.
Until the summer before their freshman year when they were caught doing that really hot girl in their Episcopal church youth group who was only 13 but looked a lot older and their lives came crashing down. Maybe their judges gave them hard time in the hole.
Considering what too often happens in American prisons, perhaps the experience broke them. Once they got out, maybe their parents scraped together enough money to get them some kind of college degree which they could never turn into a job because how the hell do you explain away that sort of felony conviction?
Lord knows, they had no friends back at their old church. That’s where the crime happened so nobody there will associate with them. So what should have been a successful career, a wife, a family and a big home in the suburbs becomes a job as a garbage man or on a landscaping crew, a room in a seedy hotel downtown, coming up with new excuses why the rent’s late and spending free time knocking back one Everclear after another in order to drive away the crushing loneliness.
You have to wonder how many crystal meth addicts started out as honor students who screwed up once.
Is all that fair? No. But in a fallen world, it is life. Actions have consequences and many lives have, unfortunately, been destroyed by just one mistake. It’s also why I have sympathy for Miss Hunt only up to a certain point.
Assuming she’s convicted, should Miss Hunt do time? She’s still pretty young so I don’t see the need for it. I don’t even think she needs to be put on a sex offender list, at least for the time being, as long as she’s given a very strict probation. If she breaks that, then all bets are off.
Whether Kaitlyn Hunt actually turns out to be a homosexual or not remains to be seen (Kathy Shaidle could do three hours on the number of twenty-something women she knew who once called themselves “lesbians” and who are now married to men and raising families). But you have to admit that she’s off to a great start.
Miss Hunt and her repulsive parents can play the victim with the best of them and can drop the “bigot” blast almost as well as Jim Naughton can. She already seems to have the same sense of whiny, spoiled-brattish entitlement as well as the same feeling that rules shouldn’t apply to her when she doesn’t want them to.
Wherein lies the danger for Big Narcissism in turning Kaitlyn Hunt into a cause.
Getting churches to declare that your chosen form of sexual expression is no longer a sin is one thing. Declaring that laws which hinder your sexual attractions need not be obeyed is quite different. If you think people don’t much like homosexuals now…
Kaitlyn Hunt’s parents insist that their daughter, a Central Florida high school senior, is being prosecuted for sex crimes only because her lover was another girl. The state attorney says that gender makes no difference; the age of the two girls is at the crux of the case.
Between Friday night and Tuesday morning, more than 100,000 supporters from around the world signed an online petition siding with Ms. Hunt’s parents. About 30,000 supporters, some from as far away as Australia, South Korea and the Netherlands, had joined the Facebook group Free Kate.
Steven Hunt Jr., Ms. Hunt’s father, wrote in an introduction to the online petition that he believed “Kaitlyn’s girlfriend’s parents are pressing charges because they are against the same-sex relationship, even though their daughter has stated that this is a consensual relationship.” A little later, he added, “Now she’s been expelled from school and is facing serious felonies — all because she is in love.”
A spokesman for the sheriff’s department, Sgt. Thom Raulen, said that there was no indication that Ms. Hunt had forced the younger girl into a sexual relationship. However, in Florida, a minor is not considered capable of giving consent, he added.
But to Ms. Hunt’s Facebook supporters, it seemed like a tale of high school love, archaic laws and antigay prejudice.
“People are frustrated with the current laws and stipulations against anyone, whether it’s for age or same-sex, and maybe the fact that people just think that what is happening is unfair, because that’s a lot of the comments that we’re seeing on the page, is that it’s just not right,” Nichole Mottau-Sweet, who began the Facebook page, said. “It’s the old quote ‘The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.’ Although no one considers what went on any kind of crime that deserves punishment.”
There was a plea deal on the table.
Prosecutors have offered Ms. Hunt a plea-bargain agreement that would allow her to plead no contest to a lesser charge of child abuse, and they have promised not to seek prison time. She could then be sentenced to community control, which could require an ankle monitor, or probation. The judge could withhold adjudication. That would mean she would not have to register as a sex offender, and her record could be expunged later.
A deal the kid turned down.
Kaitlyn Hunt has refused a plea deal from the state attorney. She was charged earlier this year with lewd and lascivious battery on a minor, after she admitted to having a same-sex relationship with a 14-year-old girl.
The plea deal that was offered included a charge of child abuse, two years of house arrest and one year of probation.
She now faces a June 20th court hearing. If convicted at a trial, the state attorney’s office says she could face 15 years in prison.
Did I ever tell you guys about a kid named Darrell Jackson? Single greatest high school football player I ever saw and not just because he went to my old school, Webster Groves. The kid could do it all.
Remember the late 1990′s through the early 2000′s, the golden days of the St. Louis Rams? Remember how beautifully Marshall Faulk could run, Kurt Warner’s howitzer of a right arm and the statistics that both regularly put up? If you invented a player who could and regularly did post Faulk and Warner numbers in the same game all by himself, you’d have Darrell Jackson.
In the second half of state title game Jackson’s junior year, Webster’s opponents literally drove 99 yards down the field for the go-ahead touchdown midway through the fourth quarter. Whereupon Jackson put Webster on his back and threw or ran the Statesmen to about the opposition’s 45 yard line.
Then with about two minutes to go, Jackson faded back and heaved one about 60 yards in the air and into the end zone where it was caught for a touchdown which put Webster back into the lead. The defense held and Webster had its third state football title.
The Statesmen went back to the title game the following year and lost but that didn’t hurt Darrell Jackson’s reputation any. Every major-college football program in the country wanted him and the University of Missouri was he decided to play for the Tigers.
That fall, Darrell Jackson set off for Columbia, Missouri and his inevitable college and professional football superstardom. So why have few, if any, of you ever heard that name before? Why was he playing, the last time
I checked, with a semi-pro football team called the St. Louis Bulldogs, a team that I’m not even sure exists any more?
Because early in his freshman year at Missouri, Darrell Jackson’s past caught up with him.
The kid could have gotten 150 years (30 per count). Fifty years was suppposedly the mininum. Jackson got four months in the county lock-up and five years probation, during which he was forbidden from playing college football. Too little?
St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch thought so although, according to that last link, the victim’s father did not seem too upset about it. Because, barring a change in the law, Jackson’s sentence will never be over.
He’ll be on that sex offender list for the rest of his life. And even if Jackson is a man among boys with the St. Louis Bulldogs, even if it was certain that he would still be a superstar, no NFL team will ever give Darrell Jackson the time of day.
One has to think that there are a great many other Darrell Jacksons out there. Maybe they were bright, well-adjusted high school seniors who had won scholarships to prestigious schools and were well on their way to personal and financial success.
Until the summer before their freshman year when they were caught doing that really hot girl in their Episcopal church youth group who was only 13 but looked a lot older and their lives came crashing down. Maybe their judges gave them hard time in the hole.
Considering what too often happens in American prisons, perhaps the experience broke them. Once they got out, maybe their parents scraped together enough money to get them some kind of college degree which they could never turn into a job because how the hell do you explain away that sort of felony conviction?
Lord knows, they had no friends back at their old church. That’s where the crime happened so nobody there will associate with them. So what should have been a successful career, a wife, a family and a big home in the suburbs becomes a job as a garbage man or on a landscaping crew, a room in a seedy hotel downtown, coming up with new excuses why the rent’s late and spending free time knocking back one Everclear after another in order to drive away the crushing loneliness.
You have to wonder how many crystal meth addicts started out as honor students who screwed up once.
Is all that fair? No. But in a fallen world, it is life. Actions have consequences and many lives have, unfortunately, been destroyed by just one mistake. It’s also why I have sympathy for Miss Hunt only up to a certain point.
Assuming she’s convicted, should Miss Hunt do time? She’s still pretty young so I don’t see the need for it. I don’t even think she needs to be put on a sex offender list, at least for the time being, as long as she’s given a very strict probation. If she breaks that, then all bets are off.
Whether Kaitlyn Hunt actually turns out to be a homosexual or not remains to be seen (Kathy Shaidle could do three hours on the number of twenty-something women she knew who once called themselves “lesbians” and who are now married to men and raising families). But you have to admit that she’s off to a great start.
Miss Hunt and her repulsive parents can play the victim with the best of them and can drop the “bigot” blast almost as well as Jim Naughton can. She already seems to have the same sense of whiny, spoiled-brattish entitlement as well as the same feeling that rules shouldn’t apply to her when she doesn’t want them to.
Wherein lies the danger for Big Narcissism in turning Kaitlyn Hunt into a cause.
Getting churches to declare that your chosen form of sexual expression is no longer a sin is one thing. Declaring that laws which hinder your sexual attractions need not be obeyed is quite different. If you think people don’t much like homosexuals now…
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