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May 03 2011
Raping Little Girls, Restorative Justice, and Community
Accountability

13 Votes
[Skip this if you dislike complexity and are prone to knee-jerk reactions]
Some of these black men are going to prison. There is no question about it. These men will be locked
up in cages for a very long time and I will be confronted again with the question of how it is possible
to be a prison abolitionist in the face of such horrors.
I have waited a while before writing about this tragedy. However I have been following the terrible
case of the 11 year old girl from Cleveland, Texas who was allegedly gang raped by 18 men ranging
in age from 14 to 27. I want to put my hands in front of my eyes, I want to plug my ears with my
ngers, I want to bury my head in the sand. There are no words to fully convey the horror of what was
allegedly done to this young woman; to this little girl really. No adequate words except perhaps I am
so sorry.
I want to focus on the communitys reaction to this brutal assault in order to say something about why
it is so difcult to address the issues of community accountability and transformative justice in the
face of such events. Akiba Solomon did a terric job of summarizing the communitys response in an
article a few weeks ago:
Cleveland has a population of 7,675 people. Its 46 percent white, 28 percent Hispanic
and 24 percent black. Now, if the media coverage truly reects conventional wisdom
among its 1,819 black folks, many in it dont see what happened to this girl as an alleged
gang rape but a case of consensual group sex gone wrong.
Relatives of the accused and a double agent ridiculously incompetent defense attorney
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James D. Evans III have focused on her much older appearance, her attention-
seeking, rumors of a previous sexual history in the Quarters, her alleged aspirations of
porn stardom, a Facebook page where the child reportedly bragged about sex, alcohol
and drugs, and her mothers neglect (not the fathers; never the fathers). In an interview
on the local news, Anita Ellis Hancock, the mother of a 19-year-old suspect, exemplied
this attitude. If you cant watch the video, an alarming excerpt:
FOX 26: What did you do? Did you talk to your son?
Hancock: Yes I did. Yes I did. I said, Baby, Im your momma. You can talk
to me. (The victim) said she was 17 years old and thats what he told me.
FOX 26: But Anita, a lot of people would say, This is an 11 year old
child. Even if she lied, shes eleven.
Hancock: I understand that. I understand that. Im not defending him. Im not
defending her. Im not defending no child because if it were my child, I
would feel the same way. My point is, where was her mother?
FOX 26: If this was reversed. If your son wasnt your son, but you were
the mother of this 11 year old, what would you do? What would you
say? What is justice?
Hancock: First of all, I would know where she was. Thats the justice. Not
knowing where your baby is is not justice. I feel like she should be
accounted for not knowing where your baby at.
FOX 26: What lesson does you son need to learn?
Hancock: ID. Identication. This (holding up nametag and picture) is what
you ask for baby.
FOX 26: So youre going to tell your son, next time he meets a girl to ask
for her ID?
Hancock: Identication.
When I read Ms. Hancocks words, I could feel the anger rising up in my body. I wanted to scream at
her. I wanted to tell her that it is not OK to try to protect your own son by shifting the blame from his
vile actions to others (especially to the victim and her family). I was disgusted and I could not nd
any compassion for Ms. Hancock. Heres what I wanted to hear her say:
I believe that my son was not involved in such a heinous act. I want to believe that. I dont know him
to be able to engage in such terrible behavior. But rst and foremost, I want to extend my deepest
regrets to the young woman who was allegedly harmed. I want to tell her family that I am praying for
them. I am a mother. I dont even know how I would react to this if it had happened to my daughter. I
hope that everyone will reserve judgment on my son until all of the facts are in.
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That would have been enough. It is understandable that she would not want to believe that her son
could be capable of such an act. But her willingness to blame the young woman for her own assault is
unacceptable and immoral.
So we are left with many questions and concerns. But the overriding one seems to be: If not, prison,
then how do we hold perpetrators accountable for causing this type of massive harm? Secondary
questions include how can we practice community accountability for violence when our
communities are so often overrun with victim-blaming and often crippled by oppression? and Is it
even possible to rely on a restorative justice model in instances like this? I will try to offer my best
thinking about all of these questions.
My friend Andy Smith, who is a co-founder of Incite! Women of Color against Violence and of
Critical Resistance as well as one of the most brilliant people I know, argues that there are real
limitations to restorative justice models for addressing violence. She writes:
The problem with these models is that they only work when the community unites in
holding perpetrators accountable. However, in cases of sexual and domestic violence, the
community often sides with the perpetrator rather than the victim (Smith 2010, p. 259).
Andys words resonate with Ms. Hancocks response to learning that her son had been accused of
raping a young girl. Her response as well as that of the community-at-large was to rally around the
young men who were accused of the crime. So where then does that leave those of us who eschew
using prisons to punish such violence? Andy captures our dilemma:
On the one hand, the incarceration approach for addressing sexual/domestic violence
promotes the repression of communities of color without really providing safety for
survivors. One the other hand, RJ models often promote community silence and denial
around issues of sexual/violence without concern for the safety of survivors of gender
violence, under the rhetoric of community restoration (Smith 2010, p.260).
So there it is in a nutshell: prisons dont keep victims of violence safe but one of the main alternatives
to prison being advanced to address such violence also has its limitations. One might be tempted to
throw ones hands in the air and say, you know what, the devil you know is better than the devil you
dont. In other words, we remain stuck with the ineffective prison system as the remedy when sexual
violence is perpetrated. This is not viable in my opinion. Andy agrees and suggests that our
challenge is to develop community-based models of accountability in which the community will
actually hold the perpetrator accountable (p.260).
And so for those of us who want to abolish prisons, our project MUST be to develop such
community-based models of accountability. We must test them in real-time and in real-life. We must
do this not because we want to prove that these models work. Instead, our charge is to develop
such models because we actually do care about addressing harm caused to real people by violence and
crime. I came to my anti-prison activism through my anti-violence work. I am passionate about
supporting survivors of violence. I count myself among those survivors so I have a personal stake in
these issues.
I started learning and reading about the concept of restorative justice in the mid-90s. However, I had
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already begun to understand what it meant earlier in my life. I was initially attracted to the concept of
RJ because I was interested in nding a way that would allow for addressing violence without relying
on the criminal legal system. Over the years, I have understood both the limits and the promise of RJ.
Restorative justice interventions only work when we can get everyone involved in the situation to
agree that a harm was done and that this was wrong. In these instances, RJ is a powerful option. I
think that using restorative justice practices (with a keen awareness of their limitations) is worthwhile
and I advocate this in my own work.
Yet about 10 years ago, it became clear to me that RJ would not be the vehicle through which we
might eradicate violence. The main reason was that the RJ movement became content to be co-opted
by the criminal legal system. Around 2002, I started learning more about the work of Incite!; its
emphasis on the role of the state as a purveyor and perpetrator of violence provided an explanatory
framework for what I felt was lacking in RJ. It turns out that what I wanted was not restorative justice
but rather TRANSFORMATIVE justice. TJ suggests that while we are all subjected to interpersonal
violence, people of color and other marginalized people are also the victims of state violence. For
example, the criminal legal system itself causes harm to people. Institutional violence can have as
much of an impact on our lives as interpersonal violence does. Incite! also offered the idea that we
who want transformative justice to take root must guard against romanticizing the notion of
community. Cleveland Texas is a case study of why this is important.
So what I am after is something more transformative rather than restorative. Developing
community-based models of accountability provide a strategy for achieving truly transformative
justice. Restorative practices have a role to play within community-based models of accountability to
be sure. However, we must also steep these models in an anti-oppression framework. The models will
also only emerge out of political and community organizing. Ultimately, this is how I believe that we
will eradicate violence. It is the only way. It is our best hope for truly ensuring that we can be safe in
our communities. Prisons wont do it. They havent so far and wont in the future. This is because as
arms of the state, prisons, themselves are purveyors and perpetrators of violence.
In conclusion, let me return to the beginning, to the question about how I can be an abolitionist in the
face of cases like Cleveland Texas. It is simple. I will once again lean on Andy, who perfectly
expresses what is also true for me:
[A]n abolitionist perspective is a positive rather than a negative project. That is, rather
than argue that all prisons should be dismantled tomorrow, our task is to crowd out
prisons with other forms of justice-making that will eventually demonstrate both the
ineffectiveness and the brutality of prisons (p.267).
Tags: mass incarceration, prison abolition, prison industrial complex, prisons, restorative justice,
transformative justice
Mass incarceration, Organizing, Prison, Prison Abolition, Restorative Justice, Transformative
Justice, violence | prison culture | 03 May 2011 |
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By Lasana Akaci, May 4, 2011 @ 12:17 pm
The spectre of prison culture has helped to perpetual the rape culture that is pervasive and
growing in the outer culture. The despicable practice of gang rape in the jails of America,
translates to the types of savagery that we see occurring on the streets to little girls and
OTHERS as we see from the testimony in this article. That needs to be addressed as well as
some many other evils and practices that go unaddressed because of the huge demographics of
peoples of colour behind those cold grey walls.
By frank, May 4, 2011 @ 2:00 pm
thanks for this.
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