(via Bound, Not Gagged)
This story is beyond sickening. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a man named Phillip Garrido and his wife pleaded not guilty to abducting Jaycee Lee Dugard 18 years ago, who they had allegedly kept imprisoned on their property since then. During this time, Dugard had two children, allegedly fathered by Garrido. Apparently authorties were notified recently after Garrido brought these two girls to the UC Berkley campus to discuss “holding an event related to God, the FBI and other topics.” Campus police were sketched out by Garrido and the “robotic” behavior of his daughters. Officer Ally Jacobs did a background check and discovered that he had been convicted of rape and kidnapping in the 1970s. She called his parole officer, who further freaked her out by revealing that Garrido supposedly had no children. A parole officer (presumably the same one Jacobs contacted, though the article is unclear,) visited the Garrido house and interviewed the family, including Dugard, who revealed that she was the 11 year old girl who had disappeared 18 years ago, and presumably was like “get me and my kids the fuck out of here right now.”
Supposedly here reunion with her parents has gone “well.” I can’t even imagine. At least she and her daughters are out of there and Garrido and his wife are in custody and being charged with a lot of things.
Police are now searching his house for evidence that links him to the unsolved murders of 10 prostitutes during the 1990s. Garrido worked in an area where some of the women were found.
The horror here is beyond words, and I hope that Dugard and her daughters will receive the help they need to heal and move forward. I would also like to echo a commenter on the Bound, Not Gagged post who argued that this guy would probably not have been able to get away with all this for so long if prostitution was not criminalized. Criminalization kills sex workers. I am tired of anyone arguing otherwise in the name of paternalistically “helping” the very population their prefered policies endanger and drive underground.
Similar Posts:
- Caty Simon and The Virtues of Vice (Part One) by Constintina September 3, 2009
- Questions…and generalized misanthropy. by Ren July 28, 2009
- New anti-prostitution laws will put women in danger by Jill January 6, 2009
- Confessed Rapist Allowed to Stay at UMass Amherst by Jill March 8, 2010
- When Self Defense Doesn’t Count by Cara October 24, 2008
Jaycee did or did not contact the authorities for many reasons. Maybe someone or many people within the local authorities were involved in Jaycees Hell
- They Kidnaps her in 1991 wearing an ankle tracking device
- They Possibly kidnaps Rapes, Injures and Kills many girls and children in the community while wearing an ankle tracking device
- Has a parole officer visit his residence often
- Had perverted parties that which the neighbors witnessed
- The neighbors knew he was a sexual predator
- The neighbors sometimes saw him with young girls
- He was know as Creepy Phil in the neighborhood
- Neighbors called the police about his perverted ways and that people were living in the yard, and a police officer checked it out
- He went to the FBI with the girls to give them information regarding this case
Am I the only one that thinks someone(s) with authority could have been involved in this evil
As far as Dugard wanting to get the fuck out of there, it seems that she “has strong feelings with this guy. She really feels it’s almost like a marriage”, according to her stepfather quoted in this BBC story.
It just gets worse.
I keep waiting for one, just one, news outlet to refer to the other victims as “women”, not “prostitutes”. Unless it’s really true that the only thing we know about the victims is their profession.
Gretchen, if a person was killing stock brokers, I’m pretty sure the media would report “where the bodies of ten stock brokers were found.” I know that the history books I read referred to stock brokers jumping out of windows on Black Monday.
I agree that they shouldn’t refer to women as prostitutes if the idea is to mitigate the severity of the crime “Oh, they were only prostitutes”
But if it’s just to describe the women by profession, then I don’t know that I see a problem, unless prostitute is, by definition, a derogatory word. (Is it? I know it’s used that way, is sex worker the preferred nomenclature?)
Ugh. It’s just entirely too much some days.
I can’t imagine how strong this woman must be to have survived this. Hopefully she and her children can manage something of a normal life.
Agree 100% re: criminalization.
Yes, because American police are honest and exceedingly scrupulous with regard to crimes against sex workers and would never, ever, use a high-profile arrestee as a scapegoat for the sake of getting unsolved crimes (which they don’t want to bother investigating, due to their contempt for the victims) off their record. Seriously, this kidnapping comes to light and then suddenly – what a coincidence – the guy is under investigation for a long list of unsolved murders that happened to take place in the same area? How very convenient.
And really: Criminalization kills sex workers? Rubbish. Being sex workers kills sex workers. Being in a situation where their livelihood depends on making themselves absolutely vulnerable to hate-filled monsters kills sex workers. Or do you think that somehow, if prostitution was magically legal, the police would stop treating sex workers with indifferent contempt and actually do their jobs? Churches would stop fulminating that filthy sluts deserve anything that happens to them before the baby Jesus dispatches them to an eternity of torture in Hell? Men would stop (1) hating women and (2) turning their self-hatred against the women they hire for the purpose? What will protect sex workers is creating an economic structure where no woman has to turn to prostitution to survive. Legalization is a facile and typically libertarian ‘solution’ – remove the laws and let the free market magically bring about a feminist utopia. Not going to happen.
There was a serial killer in Lansing, Michigan a couple of years ago who was targeting women, the youngest was in her thirties and the oldest was in her seventies. The ONLY vocation that the media seemed interested in addressing was that two of his victims were prostitutes. The other three? Not so important to warrant a mention.
Making sure that people know that the victims were prostitutes is important in our culture. It reinforces that women who work in sexwork are easy targets (which serves as a “warning” to “good girls” as well as subtly reinforcing privilege of the men who beat and murder sex workers), and it’s also an easy sensationalism point for your story because prostitutes = SEX! and they’re being MURDERED! It’s just like that episode of SVU you saw last week!
It’s really too bad we can’t decriminalize sex work. We’ve got such a fucked up culture here in the states, it’s not going to happen, and no one cares about the bodies piling up because hey, they’re just women. It’s not like they were important or anything. :(
I disagree that criminalization is what kills women in the sex industry. Men are what kill women in the sex industry, overwhelmingly. When women who work in the sex industry are killed, it is almost always by males. I am not okay with deflecting from that in order to highlight the harms done by criminalization.
“Unless it’s really true that the only thing we know about the victims is their profession.”
I’m guessing it would be hella difficult to actually establish, rather than just speculate, that they were working as prostitutes when they were killed if the investigators didn’t know anything about them.
I’m sorry but I don’t necessarily see the connection. I don’t believe de-criminalization (though I’m in favor of it) is going to prevent psychopaths from killing women–prostitutes or not.
“I’m sorry but I don’t necessarily see the connection.”
Generally speaking, men who engage in this sort of behavior don’t go from zero to murder in one incident. There is a pattern of anti-social behavior that grows increasingly violent or threatening. If you pick up on it before the criminal in question escalates to the point of murder or attempted murder, you can put the brakes on it by imprisoning the offender. Criminalization keeps some of the most likely targets of this behavior from reporting it to the police. When you have someone who’s gotten to the point of serial-killing, it also discourages witnesses who could help apprehend the murderer before the body count gets any higher from cooperating with police.
@Gretchen
I referred to the murdered women as “prostitutes” in the title of this post because I was coming at this story from a sex workers’ rights angle and thus found it directly relevant.
Everyone else debating the connection between criminalization and the killings:
You will notice that time and time again serial (and other) killers target criminalized sex workers because they are more likely to get away with it. Criminalized people are far less likely to contact the police or otherwise seek help or publicity because of the danger posed to them by doing so. Prostitutes and other sex workers are not equally protected under the law, and are thus disproportionately vulnerable and targeted. Men who hurt or kill sex workers tend to be taken more seriously and get caught if the “move on” to targeting women seen as worthy of protection. Criminalization creates a toxic, dangerous situation that culturally devalues the lives of sex workers and strips them of what should be basic human rights, and allows a guy like this to actually kill ten of them without getting caught. Odds are that if had targeted college students or yuppies he would not have been caught much sooner, possibly before killing anyone as he might have been operating in areas where his obviously sketchy behavior would have been noted and reported, as it was the second he set foot on the UC Berkely campus. Pointing this out in no way takes blame or responsibility away from the murderer.
All of what preying mantis said.
Plus, the stigma of sex work which is exacerbated by criminalization means that police forces rarely take crimes against sex workers seriously even when the crimes are reported.
Got it. Makes perfect sense. Thanks.
He would have been caught much sooner if the cops didn’t run a “catch and release” program on psychopathic rapists/murderers. I hold her as responsible as him. She should have put him down once she knew what he was. As it is, I hope someone removes his balls with a rusty knife.
By “her”, I mean the wife, not Jaycee.
Politicalguineapig — please stop with that meme about castrating rapists. It’s pointless, it’s inflamatory, and it will not stop rape and abuse. The problem with rapists and molesters is between their ears, not between their legs. In fact, a lot of rapists will ask to be castrated so that they can be released from prison as a way of avoiding responsibility for what they’ve done, in other words “it wasn’t me, it was my sex drive! I couldn’t control my testicles, if we just get rid of them, I’ll never be compelled to sexually abuse another person again!”
A man’s sexual drive is not in his balls. Men have been known to sustain an erection without their testicles. Removing a man’s testicles will not prevent him from raping someone: he may have to use a tool to do so, but his sexual pleasure from raping is 100% in his head as an act of power over his victim, not from the actual physical stimulation of intercourse.
I agree that rapists should be locked away and generally not given a “second chance” since their recidivism rates are so high. But jockeying for longer sentences and less parole for violent sex offenders is completely wiped out once you start frothing at the mouth with the “cut his balls off!” horseshit.
Sorry, I do have a tendency to froth. But the fact that these monsters tromp around freely really frighten me. And neurosurgery is, I’m afraid, not nearly so punishing as a swift chop or the hemp fandango.
I’m not debating that criminalizing the women who work in the sex industry is harmful to those women. I’m also not “debating” whether it’s criminalization, or males, who kill women in the sex industry. It’s not a debate. It’s a fact. Males kill women in the sex industry. And as someone who is in that industry, I’m not ever going to be comfortable with that fact being obscured. Stigma and judgment and apathy and jail are all fucked up things. Serial killers of prostitutes, however, are none of those things – they are males, period.
Bunches of paternalistic a-holes could go about their irritating business all day every day without women being murdered by men. And everybody and her brother could be in women’s corner on this, on our side, taking us at our word about what we want or don’t want – and males could go on murdering women. Paternalistic a-holes do not cause, nor would their absence prevent, men killing women.
So, you feel that the state should be allowed to exercise control over someone else’s bodily autonomy?
Paternalistic a-holes do not cause, nor would their absence prevent, men killing women.
Absolutely, judging from the fact that men kill women who *aren’t* prostitutes all the damn time as well.
But I think the point people are trying to make is that, given that men kill women, men find it especially easy to kill sex workers because criminalization puts them in a class of “disposable” people, whose murders will not be investigated as thoroughly as the death of people considered to be more valuable. A sloppy serial killer who preys on women who do not do sex work is more likely to get caught and stopped than a sloppy serial killer who preys on prostitutes, because criminalization keeps sex workers from going to the cops with information and keeps cops from caring a whole lot about solving the murder of sex workers. (A careful serial killer, sadly, can kill anyone he damn well wants and will probably never be caught.)
I suspect that both the phenomenon of men killing women *and* the phenomenon of prostitutes being considered “less than” other people are related to the same root cause, which is that men in a patriarchy feel entitled to use women for whatever they want, and inevitably dehumanize the women as a result. Or the other way around — women are dehumanized, therefore it is okay to use them. But given that the battle against patriarchy in its entirety is slow and difficult, it might save some sex workers from some male killers if sex work was decriminalized.
“Serial killers of prostitutes, however, are none of those things – they are males, period.”
The amount of violence isn’t immutable, though. I know the post is about a suspected serial killer, but it’s not just serial killers out there killing sex workers. A lot of the beatings and killings are being committed by men for whom the fear of getting caught is actually a deterrent; dealing with an essentially invisible population lowers or obliterates the fear that keeps them from infracting while interacting with people the law does protect. Decriminalization would make a dent in that. The police suddenly deciding to give a shit would make a big dent in that.
And not just that, but even if we take it as axiomatic that serial killers are completely beyond help, will kill no matter what, and the only thing we can do as a society is bring down the banhammer the second we know what we’re dealing with…there are still a lot of sex workers that could have been and could be saved by police refraining from the patronizing asshole routine in favor of catching the guy before he turns into the Green River Killer v1.5. Some authority figure handwaving away five dead sex workers doesn’t absolve the killer of any responsibility, but they do get their own load of guilt as enablers when it turns into ten, fifteen, twenty, etc. dead sex workers.
@mad the swine
I couldn’t agree more that there is no way the free market can bring about a feminist utopia, or much of anything else good.
First, what I and at least some of the other commenters here are advocating is decriminalization, not legalization.
Secondly, of course decriminalization won’t end misogyny or the horrors of the police department or anything else. What it will do is directly make some things better for sex workers. Sex work does not have to be inherently dangerous. Decriminalization would make it less so.
Judge Judy weighed in the other night on Larry King saying such sex crimes should be punishable by death since the criminals are hard-wired to act as predators. A reasonable alternative would be to decriminalize castration and then offer convicted sex criminals a reduction in sentence if they agree to a partial castration. 65% of sex criminals given partial castrations never commit another sex crime, which suggests cutting the testosterone production in the body enables such men to get control of their preditory compulsions. Our bodies have many reduntant organs: lungs, kidneys, testes. If one doesn’t work right, it is routinely cut out, allowing the remaining organ to function for the whole body perfectly well. A partially castrated sex criminal could still have sex, father children, etc. but perhaps the abuse cycle could be broken. Bismarck once said: “A generation that takes a beating is always followed by a generation that gives one.” He was talking about nations, but he could’ve been talking about the cycle of child abuse, since most abusers were once victims.