The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Blame misogyny for Mollie Tibbetts’ death
“Don’t talk to strangers,” we tell our daughters when they are little. “Look both ways when you cross the road.” Later, we will warn them about the unintended consequences of alcohol and drugs, and unprotected sex. We will encourage them to feel confident and stand up for themselves, but exercise caution and avoid unfamiliar places after dark. Our society will urge them to heed the advice of doctors and maybe clergy, their parents and grandparents.
Meanwhile, bit by bit, we see the value of those lessons diminish.
It is likely none of those standard admonitions could have saved Mollie Tibbetts, whose body was found in an Iowa cornfield after she had gone out for an evening jog and was followed. We know from history that that simple act of running, which enhances women’s strength and independence, can also make them vulnerable.
Police believe they have the murderer, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, an undocumented immigrant who worked for Yarrabee Farms. Authorities have released no information on whether Tibbetts was sexually assaulted, but every 98 seconds in the U.S., someone is, according to the Huffington Post. Tibbetts was a college student and female, making her a member of a group three times more likely than women in general to fall victim.
In 1992, after 21-year-old Grinnell College student Tammy Zywicki was found murdered and sexually assaulted on her way back to college from her New Jersey home, I remember thinking how low the odds were that some sexual predator would be driving along the same route as hers and get access to her. Now I know better. More than 570 people are victims of sexual violence every day in this country. It can happen anywhere, any time.
It has happened on an Iowa doctor’s examining table and during outings with priests. It has happened on an overnight visit to grandparents. In those cases, there is often more than one culprit involved. Maybe the staffer who covered it up or made excuses. Maybe the bishop. Maybe even the grandmother. Enablers help 99 percent of perpetrators walk free.
A year after Zywicki’s murder, the body of a 36-year-old woman who had been moving to Des Moines from Denver for a supervisory job was found in a Des Moines area hotel. Once again, it underscored our precarious footing as women in a world dotted with unforeseeable risks.
“In the march for equal rights between the sexes, women’s safety remains an arena of profound sexual inequality,” I wrote in a column published Aug. 27, 1993, “a realm where inroads made by women in work and political office find no reflection. Threats to safety are a growing fact of life for everyone, but are an integral part of the way women experience the world. No woman is immune to assault, at home or on the street, in public places or in private ones.”
But now, rather than focus on reducing violence against women, some top Republicans from President Donald Trump to Gov. Kim Reynolds to U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst have another agenda. They rushed to blame Rivera’s immigration status. His employers, who are deeply involved in Iowa agribusiness, claimed his legal status had been verified, but later said he had presented false credentials. It’s conceivable they didn’t vet him properly or that they knew and hired him anyway, much like managers at the Agriprocessors meat-packing plant in Postville were accused of doing before the 2008 raid there.
Notice how after every mass shooting, some top Republicans are in a hurry to deny the proliferation of guns was in any way responsible. But in Rivera’s case, they’re in a big hurry to blame illegal immigrants as a group. There is political currency in conflating the lack of a visa with violence, even though studies show undocumented immigrants commit no more violent crimes than the nativeborn population. A 2016 study published in the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice showed the U.S. immigrant population rose 118 percent from 1980 through 2016 but the rate of violent crimes fell by 36 percent.
A U.S. Department of Justice report released in January found only 5.6 percent of inmates in federal, state and local prisons are foreign-born. And that includes people like me, a U.S. citizen who was a legal immigrant before being naturalized. Together, the foreign born are 13 percent of the U.S. population.
To their immense credit, some members of Tibbetts’ family used Facebook to criticize efforts to whip up hatred of immigrants over their tragedy. Billie Jo Calderwood, whom Vox reported is a relative of Tibbetts, posted, “Please remember, Evil comes in EVERY color.” And later, “Please do not compound the atrocity of what happened to her by adding racism and hate to the equation.”
The sister of Iowan Cara McGrane who was killed during the 1992 Drake Diner shootings in Des Moines posted last week about how her family had not bought into calls for the death penalty after that shooting. And Molly McGrane wrote, “there is never a time to generalize against any group of people.”
We can, however, make some generalizations about the violence against women that poisons our communities. We can work together to uproot it so that hurting females becomes not just illegal but culturally unacceptable. We must replace it with cultures of empathy and compassion. And when someone shows signs of trouble, we must intervene before it’s too late.
Then, someday, we will have truly honored Mollie and Drew and Lyric and Kathlynn and Jodi and Ashley and Anna Marie and all the other women who may have done everything we told them, but still had no chance.
More than 570 people are victims of sexual violence every day in this country. It can happen anywhere, any time.