(WNN) GLOBAL: Although convicted of 13 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries, serial killer and rapist Richard Ramirez receives hundreds of letters every year from adoring women at San Quentin State Prison. Some arrive with lipsticked kisses and others with photographs. The state of California allows this “fan club” to exist due to the inmate’s bill of rights, a provision in the California Penal Code. Ramirez also receives free healthcare and gets his meals hand delivered to him daily. Could one consider Ramirez to really be paying for his heinous crimes of rape and murder despite being incarcerated on death row?
Women rape victims ultimately pay for the crimes committed by their perpetrators. The violence of rape produces lifelong emotional and psychological scars. Across the world there is little justice for the crime of rape due to shame, humiliation, religion and law.
On May 11, 2012 the Nebraska Supreme Court said a woman can be sent to jail for refusing to testify against the man she accused of sexual assault. The case of a Kansas woman found in contempt after refusing to testify against a 63-year-old Nebraska man charged with sexually assaulting her when she was 7 years old sparked the ruling. In attempt to avoid public humiliation and shame commonly endured by rape victims, the woman refused to take the stand and was ordered by a judge to testify or face 90 days in jail in April 2011. The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the judge’s decision, saying a state law that allows witnesses to decline to testify when they would be publicly disgraced does not apply in criminal cases. Yet the shame and humiliation of public testimony will forever haunt this victim as it does all victims who cringe on the witness stand through the horrific details of bodily defilement.
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