Sometimes feminists use the term “rape culture” to try to distill down the way our society seems set up to give rapists as easy a time as possible, while making things as shitty as possible on victims, especially if one feels compelled to publicly accuse someone of rape.
We got to see that dynamic play out in last week’s council meeting when they praised a man accused of sexual misconduct and called his alleged victims liars, which, God, if there’s a more shameful moment in our city this year, I hope I’m unconscious and can’t witness it.
I was reminded of it again when Natalie Neysa Alund and Jason Gonzales at The Tennessean got state Rep. Sheila Butt to go on the record with her feelings about the recovery of 15-year-old kidnapping victim Elizabeth Thomas and the arrest of reported kidnapper Tad Cummins.
“When something like this happens, a community gets together and feels like this is one of our children,” said Republican Rep. Sheila Butt, who represents Columbia. “This just feels like our prayers have been answered, and the lost sheep is home.”She said she is confident local officials will find a way to learn from this entire ordeal.
“I have known Tad Cummins over the years, and I think I could honestly tell you that I’m not surprised that she’s safe. I will let the courts deal with the ramifications of what happened here,” Butt said.
OK, first of all, Thomas wasn’t lost. She didn’t wander away or take a wrong turn. She was stolen. But look at all of Butt’s wishy-washy language — ”lost,” “what happened here.” Like this is just some kind of accident that befell Thomas because she wasn’t being careful, instead of something Cummins did to her.
And then, this “I’m not surprised she’s safe.” A kidnapper who may have sexual designs for you takes you to the edge of the continent, and that’s “safe”? Why? Because he didn’t murder her? And my God, how low is the bar for “good man” that you can allegedly kidnap a girl, and as long as you don’t kill her, your state representative will still say nice things about you?
I’ve heard a lot of the gossip, as I’m sure you all have. And the “justifications” and the “mitigating circumstances.”
But let’s just, for a second, suppose Cummins saw his neighbor’s dog and he felt that dog was being mistreated and neglected. Maybe the dog was so happy to have Cummins’ attention that it perked up whenever Cummins came by, snuck away sometimes to see if Cummins had a treat for it. Maybe Cummins is right that the dog isn’t in the greatest circumstances. Would it be OK for Cummins to steal that dog and take it to California to allegedly fuck it?
And that’s not even taking into account that Cummins, as a teacher, is a mandatory reporter. If he genuinely felt like something wrong was happening in Thomas’ life, he had a legal obligation to alert the authorities, not to take this opportunity to grab himself a plaything.
Tennessee, why can’t we hold the abusers of children in the same contempt we hold animal abusers? It makes me sad and mad that we will not give this girl the same compassion we’d give a dog.
