mama's gonna keep you right here under her wing

oh. dear. god. i have seen it all now. i have seen. it. all.

my facebook feed, like yours i'm sure, is filled with posts about that stanford swimmer. i haven't wanted to share my thoughts because mine certainly won't be so different from yours, but... i could not help myself after having read what that boy's mother wrote. i expected the father's attitude. i expected to read of his pathetic pleas for his son. i expected the father to view women with similar disdain.

but surely... the mother would not do so. surely not.

and yet, it is decidedly so that she is just as pathetic, if not more so, than the man she married and the child she bore.

she wrote this shit. about how her son shies away from any attention or recognition. about how he's endearing and kind. considerate and respectful.

she can't bear to decorate the new home she and her husband purchased the day before their beloved son--her heart and soul--used and abused an unconscious, intoxicated woman (the ten syllables by which the victim was known in media reports) beside a dumpster. she couldn't decorate it because she associates that home with the horror her son has been facing since dealing with the repercussions of his twenty minutes of action, as his father so eloquently put it.

this woman is appalled that her son will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. he'll never get to take his children to the park.

wake up, lady. the chances of this boy EVER HAVING children are about as good as my chances of flying to the moon.

she whines about how her family now knows only despair, fear, depression, anger, doubt, anxiety and dread.

the victim came to in a hospital with pine needles in her vagina. she'd gone to a party with her sister, who was in town for the weekend, from what i understand. she'd gone to have a good time. i'm pretty sure being tossed on the ground beside a dumpster and violated, treated as though she is nothing more than a rag doll, is not quite what she'd had in mind. i imagine her understanding of despair, fear, depression, anger, doubt, anxiety and dread is a thousand... a million times better than this mother's.

how awful that this boy, WHO IS A SEX OFFENDER, has been tried and convicted as one, should have to register as one.

she has cried every single day since january eighteenth. i'd cry every day, too, if my loins had produced that spawn.

he was a shy and awkward nineteen-year-old, far away from home trying to fit in with the swimmers he idolized.

so the swimmers at stanford are rapists, are they? the olympians are, too?

he's lost everything?

and this woman he's violated has lost nothing, i take it... at least as far this mother's concerned.

i do not have children, but i imagine the inclination to protect a child is fiercely powerful.

two men happened upon this boy as he raped this woman. two men saved her from god knows what else this so-called kind, considerate and respectful boy would've done had they not done so.

i don't have children, but were that to have been the case... should i have had a son who made such an unspeakable, unbearable, GODAWFUL choice and witnesses could corroborate the occurrence, i would haul my boy's butt to the nearest hospital and emasculate the idiot. and then i would spend the rest of my days doing whatever the hell i could for the unfortunate soul who'd fallen victim to his callousness.

i cannot fathom how any woman could defend this boy.