Sherrif Clarke

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

His office was sued by a woman who was raped five times by one of his employees.  Suppose you managed a bakery (you know, one of those bakeries that doesn't sell cakes to gay people).  One of your employees turns out to be a serial rapist.  His victim sues your company.  How can you NOT know that you have a personnel problem?

Boru

If we could all tell who all the people are who are raping others, then we wouldn't have as much of a problem, now would we?

I could go to the grocery store, shop for a good hour, pass 200 people, some of which probably raped, or likely even experienced rape at some point, and I most likely couldn't point out one of them to you.  I would gander you couldn't do it either.  Throw it that people who rape don't generally do it out in the open.   So how do you know?  Maybe you catch them, maybe you don't.  Maybe the victim says something, but many times they don't because of fear, and the nature of rape.  Rape is less about sex, and more about exerting power over someone else.  When someone is overpowered, they are less likely to fight back or tell.

When I was in college, domestic violence, especially against women, was one of the focal points of my education.  Part of it was because I volunteered in a homeless shelter and I got to see many of the effects up close.  A lot of your "bad guys" seem friendly, but that's also part of what makes them dangerous.  They present well, they don't appear to be suspicious, and they know how to manipulate.  Those very things are what they use to overpower other, and more times than not they'll use it to shift blame to their victim.  That's why you get women saying "Well it was just one mistake because I upset him, so he won't do it again."  He flatters her, apologizes, buys her gifts, then back at it once she drops her guard.

No one is arguing that rape is a bad thing, so maybe you could stuff your little lecture on that and let's get back to Sheriff Clarke.

NOTHING you just said applies to Clarke.  He ran what was, by all accounts, a medieval prison.  But let's stick to the rape case.  He had to know his sheriff's department was being sued.  There is no way he could not have known - the victim launched her lawsuit in 2013, Clarke didn't resign as sheriff until 2017.  In the intervening years, there were numerous complaints filed (pregnant inmates being denied care, women shackled during childbirth, a mentally disabled inmate dying after being denied water for a week, a infant born in the jail died) and there is no evidence that Clarke showed the least inclination to address these issues, the treatment of inmates, or the conditions at his jail.

To be clear, no one is accusing the sheriff of personally committing these atrocities.  But being sheriff means the decent treatment of inmates (i.e., providing medical care and not letting them die) was his responsibility.

He's a monster.

Boru