Rihanna & Chris...What I should have learned at Eight

After watching Rihanna discuss Chris Brown on ABC for the last two days I felt compelled to comment because the issue of domestic violence is important and deserves discussion. Most times when a major issue is in the news, I take to my laptop and the words just flow freely and quickly and it is like a bomb explodes in me and everything inside of me must come out.  

I must confess that this time it was different. I honestly found myself trying to walk a "fine line" around the issue; so as to see "both sides."  Huh? What the hell was I thinking searching for words that would comfort that which is uncomfortable, explain the unexplainable and defend the indefensible.  I'm still figuring out why...even as I type...

This should be easy for me...the ex-prosecutor.  For these are the facts:

• Battering on women is the most under reported crime in America.
• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States; more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.
• Three to four million women in the United States are beaten in their homes each year by their husbands, ex-husbands, or male lovers. 
• One woman is beaten by her husband or partner every 15 seconds in the United States. 
• About 1 out of 4 women are likely to be abused by a partner in her lifetime. 
• Approximately 95% of the victims of domestic violence are women. 
• Police report that between 40% and 60% of the calls they receive, especially on the night shift, are domestic violence disputes. 
• Battering occurs among people of all races, ages, socio-economic classes, religious affiliations, occupations, and educational backgrounds.
• Domestic violence is not only physical and sexual violence but also psychological.
• A battering incident is rarely an isolated event.
• Battering tends to increase and become more violent over time.
• Many batterers learned violent behavior growing up in an abusive family.

Then it hit me...even knowing what I know to be fact on the issue of Domestic Violence, I was trying to find a way to justify not put Chris Brown "on blast" for his behavior.  I was looking for an excuse for him "going off" in such a violent way.  I was searching for a way to justify his behavior because of his youth, immaturity, background, fame and temper or  her youth, immaturity, background, fame and temper.  I was also annoyed that this young couple had become the poster children for domestic violence when it happens every day to many more people who are not famous and who don't get the attention.  I was pissed that other people seem to get a "pass" for bad behavior.  I was disheartened that "sisters" were so critical of Rihanna and questioned her motives.  I was having trouble formulating my comments; because I was focused on the big picture of this issue.

And then my nephew Tyson flashed in my head.

About two years ago, Chris Brown was on tour and my then seven-year-old nephew Tyson desperately wanted to see him in concert.  When I tell you this kid loved him some Chris Brown...I don't exaggerate.  He danced like him, sang all his songs, had him on his IPOD...the whole nine yards.  Tyson doesn't ask me for a lot...so when "Auntie Star" gets a specific request...I jump through hoops to get it done.  So I pulled some strings and got some VIP passes for Tyson and the little girl from his class he adored "Cierra" (who he described as having eyes like "snowflakes"...yeah, I know...the kid is deep) and off they went (chaperoned by my sister and brother-in-law) for a night on the town in Richmond Virginia.  They had a great time and Chris didn't disappoint.  Tyson clearly because a junior stud in the eyes of Cierra...and "Auntie Star" was again "Fairy Godmother."

Fast forward about a year later to February 2009 Tyson now eight years old and all over the news is Chris Brown.  This time not for a cool new concert, but for beating up his then girlfriend Rihanna.  Now, as much  Tyson loved Chris Brown the performer, he could take Rihanna or leave her; but this wasn't about Chris' music today.  My Dad said Tyson purposefully sat with him and watched the news,  Entertainment Tonight, etc. about the "incident." He saw Rihanna's badly bruised face, he heard the 911 tape and then he very deliberately asked for a trash bag.  Eight year old Tyson got up from the sofa, gathered every CD, tee shirt and poster of Chris Brown he had and put it in the bag and gave it to his grandfather.  He said "here, I don't want it anymore."  My Dad (I adore this man so much...) then told Tyson he might want to wait to hear all sides of the story before jumping to conclusions.  And according to my father, Tyson asked one question:  "Did he hit her?"  Dad said, "it looks that way."  Tyson then brought it all home with one phrase:  "Pop Pop, boys don't hit girls."

Tyson didn't need a law degree, facts and figures, a 20/20 interview or a Larry King confession.  He knew a universal truth that he learned at an early age that gave him all the information he needed.  "Boys don't hit girls."  Period.

There is no question that Rihanna was brutally beaten by Chris Brown.  I'm not sure if she initiated, instigated, ignited or provoked the situation that lead to the altercation...and I really don't care.  Bottom line is Chris Brown repeatedly hit Rihanna in the face so hard that it left her bloodied, bruised and beaten...and that is unacceptable on any level.  Any man who would do so deserves to be prosecuted and punished and any woman who is the victim of it needs to run...not walk as fast as she can away from the situation because that relationship is toxic and dangerous.

There, I said it.  Thank you Tyson...

I wish no ill will towards Chris Brown, I'm proud that he took responsibility for his actions and took his punishment like a man.  I hope he gets the help he needs to control his anger, deal with the history of violence in his family and grows into the man he knows he can be.  Chris Brown deserves the chance to change, to grow and to prove himself to be worth of the adulation of his fans.  Those are my hopes for Chris...but my prayers are with Rihanna that she finds the strength and the courage to love herself enough not to ever accept that a volatile and violent relationship is love.

Love is kind, love is passionate, love is pleasurable...there is no hitting in love.

Innocence: Badly Beaten...and Bruised

October must be the month for school dances in California.
  
Three weeks ago, I flew out to Los Angeles to help my 15 year old god-daughter prepare for her first one.  I think I was more excited than she was at one point in the evening when she let me do her makeup and hair, help her pick out jewelry and once we figured out she was wearing open toed shoes...I even painted her toenails; 'cause that's what "Aunties" do!  She and her 5 girlfriends had chipped in for a limo for the evening and I cried as the baby I held in the front of a church 15 years earlier standing next to her parents...left for her first school dance.  I was so filled with joy for what this would mean in her memory bank.  The jokes they would tell, the stories they would have, the boys they would giggle about.  Oh, to be 15 on this night...I wouldn't want it again...but I sure as heck wanted the experience for her.


Fast forward just two weeks later and I imagine another family doing something very similar in Richmond, California.  A 15 year-old and her mother or "Aunties" helped pick out a cute dress, some high-heeled shoes and decided on the hair do that would "set it all off" because the big dance at Richmond High School was that night.  I'll bet she met her girlfriends at the dance, they laughed and danced and pointed out the cute fellas.  Boy was she going to have stories when her dad picked her up from the dance.  At 15, she probably walked out of the gymnasium thinking...this is the best night of my life...


She couldn't have be more wrong.  At around 9:30pm, she walked out of her school and accepted an invitation to hang a little bit longer in a courtyard...literally yards from the school.


What she walked into was not a group that wanted to add to the joy of her night, but a group of about a dozen boys and young men already well into gallons of vodka. I don't know if it was peer pressure that made her drink with these guys or a desire to just extend the fun of the evening, but soon after a few drinks of brandy, the guys starting propositioning and pressuring her for sex.  Probably sensing the imminent danger she was now in, the girl said no.  But these men weren't taking no for an answer.
  
What ensued was 2 1/2 hours of vicious and horrific beatings and raping, at times with a foreign object. The scene attracted onlookers, some calling others over by cell phone, and eventually there were as many as 10 men or boys sexually assaulting the girl while another 20 looked on, laughing and snapping pictures.  After suffering a horror that cannot be adequately described or imagined, the police finally rescued this semi-conscious, beaten, bloodied and brutalized child.


She has a long road to recovery.  I've interviewed enough rape victims over the years to know that no woman ever "gets over" a rape...the best you can hope for is to "get through" the trauma and re-build your trust in humanity.  I send this child and her family prayers of strength as she starts that process.
  
Becoming "whole" again is her job with the help of her friends and family, but we, as a society have a job also.  First and foremost, we owe it to her to find each and every one of her attackers, and all those who induced, persuaded, convinced, prompted, encouraged, instigated, incited, urged, goaded, aided, assisted and facilitated this attack to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.


We in the media owe it to her to report this story and follow this investigation with the same fervor and attention that we would give the family of a six year old allegedly floating through the sky in a makeshift balloon.


Law Enforcement owes it to her to passionately pursue justice on her behalf as if she were a 15 year old blond middle class girl gang raped by a bunch of thugs outside a suburban homecoming dance. The community where the attack occurred may be minority, poor and notoriously violent, but justice should be blind to race, economics and culture. When violence happens to wealthy photogenic "good" girls we  take it on as a nationwide pain; well this child of a working class community deserves our collective pain as well. 


I refuse to believe that I live in a society that deems the life and pain of a less privileged woman less important.  But allow me to remind you that when Kanye West hijacked the microphone from Taylor Swift at the Video Music Awards, the collective outrage was palpable.  Society cared so much that Twitter crashed and everything from Facebook to the talking heads of every news network, blog, and radio station across the country was awash in calls for Kanye's head. I pray that we show this young woman who will need a "village" to help her heal from the wounds of this attack that we don't live in a culture in which oceans of humanity will speak up for a celebrity who hardly needs attention or help, but have no voice for a girl is brutalized behind a school by two dozen men and boys. 

My 15 year-old god-daughter came home from her school dance with a cadre of memories that will last a lifetime...so did this 15 year old and it breaks my heart.  I can't close my eyes now without thinking of what she endured...and survived.  And none of us should sleep soundly until justice is done.

Celebrate our Differences!

“Diversity is the one true thing we all have in common. 
Celebrate it every day.”

Toxic Relationships

Toxic relationships are like broken glass.

It’s better to leave them broken...

than hurt yourself trying to fix it.

Thought For The Day...Discovery

"Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you,

they're supposed to help you discover who you are."

Roman Polanski: Crazy never takes a day off...

Please, someone tell me what would possess any reasonably sane individual to rise in defense of a man who at 44 years old, admitted having sex with a 13-year-old child? Is my moral compass off so much that it is now acceptable to admit to sexual acts with children? Should you be given a "pass" because you absconded from the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system 30 years ago because you thought you were going to have to go to jail?

I'm sorry Hollywood, I got my legal training in Texas and my practical experience in Brooklyn and where I come from, when a grown ass man has sexual intercourse with a 13 year old little girl, whether it's 3 days, 3 months or 30 yrs ago...it's called RAPE. Whether she was "experienced", a "virgin", or a victoria secret model in a g-string...it's called RAPE. Whether the victim forgives the assailant, doesn't want him to go to jail or saw his latest movie...it's called RAPE. Whether he is a school bus driver, a priest, a teacher or a world class director...people, it is called RAPE.

The fact that anyone has to explain this, argue this or even entertain the discussion is absolutely ludicrous. I know the victim has had to carry this burden for 30 years and wants the case dropped so she can put this whole sordid event behind her...but sorry, she isn't the only one a criminal case is about. She may have been satisfied with time and a civil settlement; but justice has not been served and society needs to know that this is wrong.

Thirty years ago, Roman Polanski pled guilty in open court to having had "unlawful sexual intercourse" with a girl who was not his wife that he "knew to be 13 years old" at the time; and that was the lowest level sex crime in the indictment. The original allegations and subsequent grand jury testimony of the young girl as to what happened is so graphic...it wasn't released to the public until years later. Not to obscure this debate with facts...but this young girl told the court and authorities that Polanski gave her champagne, drugs, took nude photos, got in the jacuzzi naked with her & performed oral, vaginal & anal sex on a 13-year-old.

If that is not "rape, rape", then I have sent a bunch of folk to jail in my former career as a prosecutor for a hell of a lot less.

Am I advocating that Roman Polanski be jailed or sent to prison for these crimes? Actually I'm not.

Subsequent information has come to light to suggest that his legal team has valid arguments for misconduct, abuse of process and serious grounds for dismissal of the original charges in the interest of justice. I'm in total favor of Polanski exposing the alleged misconduct of the judge & probably having the charges dismissed because of it. But he chose to live all these years as a fugitive and now that he has been caught, he must face the ramifications of all his actions...just like any other person.

Polanski is not above the law, the warrant is still valid, the case is still pending and there are legal procedures that should be followed. Bring him back to the US, allow him to make the arguments for dismissal and decide the case on the facts and the law.

Now "Hollywood" is coming out in support of Roman Polanski trying to apply pressure to the DA's office to drop the case. That is mind boggling to me especially given the comments Roman Polanski made in an interview soon after he left the US for France that were recently unearthed by another journalist. The Telegraph's Michael Deacon dug up an explosive interview that Polanski gave to the novelist Martin Amis in 1979, that included the following quote:

"If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But … fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!" [Telegraph UK]

Let's give him another Oscar!

I recently read the story of a 12 year old little girl who is pregnant down in North Carolina, other than my utter sadness at the sentence I just had to write...if it comes out that her child was fathered by a 44 year old man who babysat her...will we be ok with that?

What about Jaycee Duggard. She was kidnapped at 11 years old & raped repeatedly over 18 years & now has children by her assailant...aren't we prosecuting him? Don't we want this pervert under the jail? Suppose Jaycee said, "it's ok...I love him now...I forgave him years ago"...How would society feel?

Don't we go after abusive priests years after molesting kids?

I'm just asking questions that should make us think about the ramifications of accepting & dismissing deviant behavior when it comes to the abuse of children. Honestly, there is an elite angle to this story that really bothers me. My friend, anthropologist and sociologist Dr. Marc Lamont Hill asked me "I wonder how long Spike Lee would've been allowed to chill in France on a charge like this." That actually made me laugh out loud because if Spike Lee has done some skullduggery like Polanski...no one would be rallying behind him...unless they had a rope!

Why, you ask, is my heart heavy about this case? Because I can't help but remember the story I covered of young Genarlow Wilson from Georgia who at 17 years old was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in state prison for having consensual sex with a 15 year old girl. Wilson was an honor student, a football star and his high school's homecoming king before his conviction. The young girl, her parents and the videotape of the incident all said it was consensual; but the law said it was a crime and the sentence for this felony charge in Georgia was 10 years...mandatory.

Something tells me that Genarlow too knew he was probably going to get screwed over by the justice system before, during and after the trial; but he didn't have a passport, a plane ticket or a European chalet to escape to.

The Georgia law was ultimately changed, but it was not made retroactive to include Genarlow Wilson and he had to serve more than two years of his sentence until the Georgia Supreme Court finally stepped in to right this true injustice. Genarlow was released from prison two years ago this month and is now a student in college...and doing very well.

Who knows...maybe after the famous movie director is finally returned to the US and confronted with American justice, he and his Hollywood friends might want to consider doing a film about Crime, Justice and the American Way...based on a true victim, Genarlow Wilson.

Going Places!

“I see my path,

but I don't know where it leads.

Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it.”

-Rosalia de Castro