Rape of 11-year-old girl and rationalization of crime shows how far community has sunk morally

by Mikel Kwaku Osei Holt
At 16 years of age, I felt compelled to stand out from the crowd.

I believed myself to be immortal, and like many young bucks of my generation, I was easily swayed by the need to belong to something greater than myself, yet stand out from the popular crowd, to risk life and limb to accommodate my desire to be "cool," particularly before the girls, who gauged young brothers as much on their clothing and style as on our intellect.

Plus, you had to be somewhat of a "bad" boy to gain an advantage, particularly when it came to impressing the young cuties.

Thus, it was not surprising that I jumped at the chance to take a joy ride with some of my homies in a stolen car during my junior year of high school.

The four of us drove around the community until school let out at Rufus King. Then we "cruised" around the school, drawing the attention of the young ladies, trying, unsuccessfully to pick up a few strays, offering them rides in our late model GM vehicle.

None accepted our offer, but that didn’t deter us as we zoomed off enroute to North Division, where the pickings were thought to be plentiful.

We were laughing and joking and had the radio full blast; so engrossed in our merriment that none of us saw the large tree before we slammed into it near 16th Street and Keefe Avenue. Survival mode quickly kicked in and before the car had time to come to a complete halt, we existed the vehicle, each running at full speed in different directions.

I thought the incident was over until the next evening when the police showed up at my door with warrant in hand. My mother was shocked, my father angry and my siblings taken aback.

As for me, my initial fear of imprisonment quickly turned to disbelief and anger after learning that my aunt, who lived a few feet from the crash, had witnessed the accident and called police to report my involvement.

For months, I carried the burden of feeling betrayed. Years later, however, I thanked her after realizing she had saved my life, both literally and figuratively. I was on a path that converges at the intersection of imprisonment and wasted lives. I was not only straying down the wrong path, but was one or two criminal acts from self-destruction, imprisonment or death.

Fortunately, I was charged with a lesser crime than auto theft, and the sympathetic judge gave me an option of either juvenile detention or the military. I choose the latter, and during the next few years matured and walked down a different path, one that has led to my current position.

All because my aunt took the bold, and initially unpopular, stance of "dissing" me out to the police.

That defining moment of my life came to mind over the weekend after reading an article in the "Journal Sentinel" about the court case of one of the 14-year-old boys charged with the gang rape of an 11-year-old "child" within a stone’s throw of the "Community Journal’s" offices. As many as 20 boys and men participated in the "flipping."

The incident drew national attention, putting the spotlight on Milwaukee as just one more in a series of extraordinary heinous crimes involving tribes of devilish Black boys.

The incidents have also brought attention to what some are calling an erosion of morality and a cultural breakdown that has fueled stereotypes and cast a dark shadow over Milwaukee’s Black community.

As was reported in the local media, the 11-year-old, who has tested HIV positive, was enticed by a 16-year-old girl friend to participate in various sexual acts with as many as 20 boys and men last Labor Day.

Alderman Mike McGee, Jr., who organized area residents in the aftermath of the horrifying crime and actually had a hand in the capture of several of the assailants, allowed MCJ Editor Thomas Mitchell and myself to accompany him when he talked with the girl and family members a couple of days after the incident.

Shy, withdrawn and confused, the 11-year-old provided us with the sorted details of the incident, a blank look in her eyes that shielded the pain and confusion that will forever taint her life.

The girl’s mother died a year before and her father is reportedly in prison. She is being raised by her aunt and grandmother, and has essentially been a social outcast because of her medical condition.

Much has been made of comments from several of the participants that the sexual activities were consensual. Some of the assailants have also suggested she looks older than her age.

For the record, the girl looks, talks and acts 11. She is shy, easily impressionable and even from our brief conversation; I would surmise that she begs for acceptance and love. She is a child, no other way to put it, and a victim, raised in a situation not of her choosing, carrying the tremendous weight of a deadly disease and social ostracism.

I fought back tears for several days following our conversation, and publicly made the statement on both radio and television that it would be God’s just reward if the perpetrators ended up with AIDS.

I regret making that statement, although I am alternately obsessed and confused by the comments from defendants and relatives involved in the various trials.

Many of them have entered the dichotomous defense that they thought the girl was older, or that their actions were consensual, as if a preteen can make an adult decision with such lasting ramifications.

Some have even suggested that this wasn’t the girl’s first "experience," and she somehow, in this warped sense of rationality, was the perpetrator and the rapists were somehow the victims.

At a trial in juvenile court last week, the mother of one 14-year-old defendant boldly declared that her son was the victim of "little flipper girls," a slang term for a female who engages in sex with multiple partners.

To that asinine rationale, Judge Mary Triggiano, declared, "What he did was rape that girl!" adding the suggestion that the sexual assault was consensual "appalling."

The "mother" was also overheard offering reporters a copy of a police video of the girl’s initial testimony to police. It has been alleged that during her testimony to police, the child suggested that she willingly participated in the rape at the urging of the 16-year-girl she sought to impress as a condition of her friendship.

For the record, we’re talking about an 11-year-old, who under the laws of man and God is a child, incapable of giving consent to such a heinous assault. That she apparently didn’t fight off her assailants is irrelevant. She was raped and there is a hole in her soul that will never heal.

The comments from the mother, nonetheless, raise several questions that transcend the possibility of her merely trying to exonerate her son. It was also discovered that up to eight other family members of the boy had conspired to say that he was with them during the time of the rape.

Where do you draw the line? Conspiring to cover up a crime of this magnitude is not only illegal, it is immoral. Is this an example of a family sticking together, or of relatives willing to break the laws of man and God to exonerate the conduct of a "manchild" who like his colleagues, did not possess the moral fortitude to intervene and stop the gang rape, or at least walk away in disgust.

Plagued by the events of the trial, I raised the question to a half dozen people, including staff members of the MCJ as to how they would respond if their son had been involved in the case. To further complicate the situation, I made note of the boy’s testimony that he thought the girl was older and that the sex was consensual.

Interestingly, one survey participant said they understood, if not condoned, the conduct of the mother; four said there was no justification for her conduct and that the mother should be held as equally responsible. The last participant said they had to think through the situation and "unique" circumstances.

To that response, I posed a hypothetical question of how they would react if they caught their child stealing something from a store. All said they would turn in their offspring.

When I raised the stakes and said would they turn in their child if they committed a nonviolent act as an adult, the majority said yes.

When I amended that scenario to their child riding in a stolen car--my true-life situation--the majority said they wouldn’t turn them in, although they would admonish the child.

There was a consensus that the 11-year-old, no matter what the circumstances, was a victim and that all of the participants should be punished, albeit it to varying degrees, depending on their level of maturity, honesty and past history.

"What if the boy actually thought the girl was older and the sex was consensual?" I asked playing devil’s advocate.

On that point, I received more "ohs" and "uhs" than straight answers.

There was consensus, however, that the Black community is seriously undergoing a cultural transformation that does not bode well for our future. There was also consensus that too many women (it didn’t escape anyone that the boy’s father wasn’t in court, nor was there any reference to him in news reports) either condone the deviate conduct of their wayward children, don’t have a clue about how to properly raise their male child, or are themselves tacitly responsible for the misconduct of their offspring.

Of course, that’s painting with a broad bush, but can we dismiss the realities of Black America today?

A colleague at the paper noted that the grandfather of two of the boys involved in the rape turned them into police.

Apparently, he didn’t buy into the excuses and has a higher sense of morality and justice, although sadly, some will criticize him for his actions, trying to justify the assailants’ actions, blaming it on everything from racism to poverty.

But in my mind’s eye, there is no gray area between right and wrong. In the grander scheme of things, you are either part of the problem, or part of the solution.

Fortunately, most Black folks belong to that latter category as evidenced by their willingness to report crimes, even if it involves a family member. But that some people, apparently including the mother of the 14-year-old, can justify her son’s actions, speaks volumes about a subculture that, like cancer, is eating away at the fabric of our community.

We can trace that subculture to a lack of education (it’s no coincidence that 80% of the prison inmates are high school drop-outs and come from single parent homes); lack proper morals and a cultural value system. Few within this subculture subscribe to a religion and if they do, they are hypocrites who will some day discover that heaven really isn’t a crowded place.

Some link this phenomena to poverty, but I don’t fully buy into that theory. Most poor people don’t rob, steal, maim and murder. An empty pocket didn’t entice the 20 boys and men to rape an 11-year-old child.

Crime is a choice. And so is parenting, or lack thereof.

Hotep.