Usually I
have to scrounge to find the issue on which to build up, enjoy thoroughly, and
vent explosively the moral outrage that—growing up Norwegian-American in the
Midwest—I seem to need so much. Today it just hopped out at me.
I bring
you—ta-DAH!—the case of one Brent Girouex, a 31-year old ex-pastor of the Victory Fellowship Church, in Council
Bluffs, Iowa. Take a look:
“OK,” I can
hear you saying, “what has he done?”
Oddly, it
isn’t what he’s done that so annoys me. Although that was bad enough—Girouex
turned himself in on February 16, 2011, and confessed
to having had sex with four teenage boys. Later, eight additional boys would
come forward with similar stories.
And what
prompted the sex? Simple lechery?
It was more
twisted than that. Girouex would tell his victim that they would both pray
while Girouex entered him, and that through ejaculation, “the gay would be
driven away.”
Nor was
this an isolated event—Girouex confessed to having had sex 25-50 times—why do I
think the 50 is closer to the mark?—with one of his victims, who was, by the
way, 14 at the time of the first encounter / attack.
Here’s a
description from one source:
Apparently,
Girouex thought he could rape away the gay by “praying while he had sexual
contact” with his victims in an effort to keep them “sexually pure” for God.
He then allegedly
told police that “when they would ejaculate, they would be getting rid of the
evil thoughts in their mind.”
For all of
this heinous behavior, Girouex was charged with 61 counts of sexual
exploitation of a minor by a counselor and 28 counts of third-degree rape. And
since he had confessed, he was convicted, and given a 17-year sentence.
Enter the
second—and possibly more vicious—villain, Judge Greg Steensland.
Because Steensland presided over the trial, saw the prisoner at the bar, looked
at and heard the testimony of the victims, and then “suspended the prison
sentence and replaced it with 5 years of probation (the maximum allowed under
the law) as well as a requirement for Girouex to participate in sex offender
rehabilitation treatment.”
89 counts
of rape and sexual exploitation and he gets 5 years of probation? This was, mind
you, in March of 2012. What else happened in 2012?
Well, the
nation went off on November 6, 2012, to return Barack Obama to the presidency,
as well as to take care of state and local matters. And so Greg Steensland was
up for reelection. And was he roundly defeated? Nope, he was reelected, by
66.34% of the vote.
So 2 out of
3 voters in the fourth district of Iowa think it’s OK to have a judge sitting
on the bench give out a 5-year suspended sentence for 89 counts of rape? Who
was the guy running against him—Genghis Khan? Hannibal Lecter? How
could this guy get elected?
And here I
will put my regional chauvinism fully bared for public view. Look, guys—we all
know the tired joke about the Tennessee virgin. (Right, you’ve been orbiting
earth in a space shuttle for the last twenty years, OK…. Question: what’s the
definition of a Tennessee virgin? Answer: any girl who can run faster than her
uncles….) I might expect this from Tuscaloosa, Alabama…. But Iowa?
Well, some
people must have snorted around, but it wasn’t enough. The judge got reelected,
and is now still on the bench. But here’s Judgepedia
again:
This case
gained a second round of national attention in September 2013, following outrage
over Montana judge G. Todd Baugh's
sentence of a high school teacher who raped a student. Judge Baugh also
suspended the defendant's prison sentence in that case--requiring him to serve
30 days in prison. Many have expressed disappointment with both the Montana and
Iowa rulings, arguing that the judges were too easy on the criminals.
No remarks
from Judge Steensland were found.
No remarks
were found?
Geee…I
wonder why?
