Don’t sugarcoat predators Zamora, Epstein
Type “underage sex” into the Google search engine. The first result: “Statutory rape.”
That’s exactly the language we should be using when discussing the salacious cases against sex offenders splattered across national news as of late.
Take Arizona’s own Brittany Zamora. The 28-year-old former elementary school teacher was just handed a 20year prison sentence last week for repeatedly raping a sixth-grader.
Those two decades behind bars are the most lenient punishment she could face for her crime.
And yet, her lawyer, Belen Olmedo Guerra, pointed a finger at the boy, saying, “Brittany is not a predator and this was not between a young child and Brittany — this was a teenager.”
She persisted, chiding his “many, many behavioral issues.”
But let’s call a spade a spade. This is victim blaming, plain and simple.
“Saying a 13-year-old seduced her,” responded Russ Richelsoph, an attorney for the victim’s guardians, “that’s what you see from hard-core child predators.” In this state, anyone younger than 18
cannot legally consent to sex with an older person.
It doesn’t matter if the victim was a boy. It doesn’t matter if he flirted back. It doesn’t matter if he conducted himself poorly in school.
It doesn’t matter if the abuser was physically attractive.
Zamora was the adult in the position of power. Instead, she abused it.
And it is rape — not sex. It’s necessary that the public and media alike speak plainly on it.
Then, there’s Jeffrey Epstein. “When his troubles began, he was talking to me and said, ’What can I say, I like young girls,’ ” said Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff. “I said, ‘Maybe you should say, ‘I like young women.’ ”
Way back in 2008, he pleaded guilty to “one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of solicitation of prostitution with a minor,” reports the Miami Herald.
Legal jargon can be so cryptic sometimes. That last one simplifies to seeking out a child to molest — as, again, minors cannot legally consent to sexual activity with an older person.
The FBI had 53 pages worth of documentation indicting him for sexual abuse of “more than 30 underage girls.”
But instead, a secret plea deal was arranged with Alexander Acosta, who was then the Florida federal attorney — and just recently resigned from his Labor secretary position.
So the billionaire spent just more than a year in the Palm Beach County jail. He was even released earlier than expected.
To this day, he is a convicted sex offender in Florida.
In New York, Epstein is registered as a Level 3 offender: one with “high risk of re-offense.”
But things are looking much, much worse for him.
Money and power can elevate a man to deity status, surrounding him with celebrities and finery. They might even let him manipulate the judiciary system.
But they cannot quell all of the whispers — whispers turned into shouts about his “pedophile island” and the “massages” for which he allegedly paid minors.
He is currently under arrest, accused of the trafficking of girls “as young as 14,” states Vox.
It’s critical that we refer to those potential victims as children — because that’s what they were.
And kids do not have the agency to choose prostitution. They’re just abuse victims.
“There is no difference between raping a child, and paying to rape a child,” wrote Cindy McCain and Malika Saada Saar for the Huffington Post.
The terminology we use can determine how society reacts to these crimes — whether we minimize the violations or accept them in full.
That’s the first step in the right direction towards justice for exploited children.