There are two primary differences between rape and murder. The second most significant difference is that murder is worse than rape.* No matter how visceral the description of trauma and pain, the victim of rape is still alive.
The first, and most significant difference is that we know, with absolute certainty, that a murder wasn’t a wholesale fabrication because of one fact: there is a lifeless body of a human being left behind.
These two factors do not always come without a connection. While the fashion trend of expressing horror in the most “horrifying” of language, rife with the deepest emotions of pain and terror, has become a staple of feminism, backlashes happen. It happened to Moises Arias-Aranda.
When authorities found the body of Moises Arias-Aranda in a maroon SUV parked along North Hydraulic last Christmas Eve, his hands and legs were bound with electrical cords, he had been stabbed in the back 36 times and had head and facial injuries. A piece of cloth tied to look like a noose lay beside him.
A woman connected with his killing told authorities that she and Diego Olivas had lured Arias-Aranda to a house in the 100 block of West 24th Street North in Wichita so Olivas could beat him up for raping her on Dec. 23, 2015.
Arias-Aranda was alleged to have raped “a woman.” He’s dead, and she’s . . . “a woman.” That woman is 21-year-old Amelia Wilson-Romos. It’s not that her name is hard to find. It’s not. It’s that Amy Renee Leiker at the Wichita Eagle decided to omit her name from this article. Why is this significant?
But, according to statements made in court during Olivas’ sentencing hearing Wednesday, the woman had been lying about the sexual assault.
False claims. The myth is that they never happen. The argument in support of this myth is both infantile and false, but if you want to believe, no myth is too ridiculous. Just suspend thought and bask in emotion. It’s like magic, everything you want to believe to be true miraculously is. So this never happened. Except when there is a dead body.
“This is an unconscionable and horrific crime, and no one is responsible for making you do anything,” District Judge Bruce Brown told Olivas before handing down the 226-month sentence.
“Even if a rape would have happened, it really in my opinion doesn’t at all mitigate” the circumstances or justify “people taking the law into their own hands,” he said, adding: “There’s no excuse.”
The judge is absolutely correct, in the sense that no one put a gun to Olivas’ head and forced him to commit murder. After all, the plan was to just beat up Arias-Aranda, which apparently was good with both Olivas and Wilson-Romos. Then again, Olivas’ willingness to beat up Arias-Aranda was predicated on her claim that she was raped. Her desire to cause harm finds no similar justification, poor though it may be, because she knew she was lying about it.
This detail was raised by defense counsel at sentence:
During the sentencing hearing, defense attorney Quentin Pittman called the killing heinous and said Olivas has “never shied away from that.” But, he said, it ultimately was the woman’s false allegations that “set off the chain of events.”
“She is ultimately responsible for that person’s death,” he argued.
It’s a tough argument to make, given that there is a huge chasm between beating a guy up, even upon the allegation of a false rape, and tying him up and stabbing him 36 times. No matter how convincing a story Wilson-Romos told, no matter how teary-eyed she was in falsely recounting the trauma she endured, the burden of murder falls squarely on the murderer.
But Wilson-Romos isn’t absolved of blame for the murder of Arias-Aranda. It may not have been her hand on the knife, but it was her brain the fabricated the lie, her mouth that told it and her face that conveyed the story that every feminist, every feminist’s ally, chooses to believe.
The stories told that flood the hearts and empty heads of women’s pain at every sexual encounter, whether rape in fact or rape in fantasy, have gone beyond the myth of horror, the child-like excuses for why it’s distinct from all other crimes in not needing evidence, being impossible to prove unless we just believe the fantasy.
Maybe it’s easy for women to feel nothing about innocent men being the collateral damage of their sad tears, whether by being expelled from college, their careers lost or going to prison. Hey, take a bullet for the gals, gentlemen. So what if you did nothing wrong. Your life is insignificant compared to the need to make sure no perpetrator of hurt to women goes unpunished. Suck it up, boys.
And then there are the lies that leave dead bodies behind. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens. There are others beyond this case, but how many dead bodies are you willing to sacrifice for the cause of no woman? How many do you need?
The culture of confusing victim with heroine creates an incentive to cry wolf, and at minimum removes any stigma for doing so. The litany of excuses for why evidence and regularity need not apply gets repeated often enough that no matter how false, how ridiculous the lie, it has its believers and it shames anyone who questions.
And it sometimes ends with dead bodies. Which is worse than whatever hurt feelings bring a tear to your eye. If you want something in which to believe, try this: Arias-Aranda is dead.
*If this assertion causes you even a moment’s hesitation, then you need to step back and revisist the justification for your existence. You’ve lost all sense of reason and perspective.
H/T B. McLeod
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Just because Amelia was lying doesn’t mean she’s not a survivor. She’s bound to have survived something. A cold or flu, perhaps. Or a paper cut. Maybe some disgusting male creature whistled at her on the street.
It’s unseemly for you to denigrate the horrors she’s suffered.
But the really important point is that “Amy Renee Leiker at the Wichita Eagle decided to omit her name from this article.” That’s so that other women won’t be dissuaded from lying about having been raped by having the public know who they are.
After all, if we can’t encourage people to lie by concealing their identities, how can we encourage them? Perhaps a cash reward for the least convincing false allegations that result in the most severe trauma to the factually innocent person.
Why are you so mean to “survivors”?
“Perhaps a cash reward for the least convincing false allegations that result in the most severe trauma to the factually innocent person.”
The only way this gets better is if we turn it into reality TV. It could air on MTV.
“. . . in my opinion doesn’t at all mitigate” the circumstances or justify “people taking the law into their own hands,” he said,”
I wonder if any of these guys ever listen to themselves.
Of course its not, in his opinion, going to ever be a good idea (at least until someone close to him does it, then he’ll likely be able to find the mitigating circumstances that make their behavior understandable at least) to take the law into your own hands – his very livelyhood, his social position and all the perks that come with being a judge, depends on people not doing that.
Its notable when a judge does find mitigating circumstances for vigilantes, its not even worth opening your mouth when you don’t.
When arguing mitigation, you can appeal to the facts, the law or the judge’s sensibilities. Some appeals are more effective than others.
Earlier this year there was a case in NYC where a cabbie came home because his wife called him (not the police) and reported a rape attempt. The cabbie found the accused trying to leave in an elevator, and beat him to death with an iron bar.
No charges.
So, in NYC at least (and even for alleged “attempted” rapes) the vigilante thing flies. But of course, NYC is a far more urbane and “progressive” jurisdiction.
Out here where the west begins and we name our city centers after notorious outlaws, a false allegation of rape in a similar situation might result in a five year sentence for manslaughter.
That was the case ten years ago when a husband initiated a coitus interuptus between his wife and her lover and she cried rape as she exited the vehicle.
Husband was no billed.
Speaking hypothetically, what if your opening assertion caused someone to hesitate momentarily solely because of the “*”? Asking for a friend.
You tell me. What if?