As closure comes to the Graham family, friends, and the UVA community, my anger grows more and more. How could this have happened?
I understand that there are twisted individuals. I watch Criminal Minds. I also realize that there are serial killers, rapists, and all sorts of sick ****s out there. What I don’t understand is why Jesse Matthew was passed from school to school.
I don’t buy the privacy excuse. If someone has misbehaved badly enough to be expelled from a school, then that school has a moral obligation and duty to attach a reason for expulsion to all future transcripts. If they don’t, they are cowards. If there are laws preventing an attachment describing the reason for removal, then those said laws need to be fixed, repealed or whatever it takes.
Jesse Matthew was sent packing from both Liberty University and Christopher Newport for sexual assault or misconduct at best. I have no idea why he wasn’t prosecuted for rape. Were the girls involved pressured into dropping charges? Were the cops being lazy? Were both these incidents brushed under the proverbial rug? Did both schools want to protect their reputations as crime safe academic communities?
We have at least 2 dead girls and 1 rape victim. I expect that some of the other girls who are missing are also victims of Jesse Matthew. (spare me the innocent until proven guilty bullcrap) One man might be sitting in the Charlottesville-Albemarle jail, wrongly convicted of murder of a Nelson County teen. Why in the hell wasn’t this guy red flagged by colleges and law enforcement at the time of these incidents.
I call on the State of Virginia to launch a full investigation of this matter. Where is the loophole that allowed this monster to live freely amongst his victims, ogling and plotting and ready to seize any girl who he could overpower? Who dropped the ball? Who allowed Jesse Matthew to remain at large so that he had the opportunity to assault, rape and murder not one but two girls. Fix the laws so this kind of crime can never happen again.
Perhaps the State investigators need to review both Liberty and Christopher Newport’s Clery Act Report that is due October 1 of each year. The Clery Report is very specific about what kinds of crimes need to be reported. Were Liberty and Christopher Newport trying to hide the fact that rapes occurred on their campuses? No schools want to come across as the an unsafe place for students. However, UVA was very unsafe for Hannah Graham and for Morgan Harrington. I can’t help but think that either Virginia laws or Christopher Newport University and Liberty University helped set the stage for these young women’s demise. It is just dead wrong that this creep was allowed among us and prey upon our daughters.
Today, just for a moment, we are all the parents of Hannah Graham. There but for the grace of God go I.
If you have a drunk victim, their testimony isn’t very strong…you have a he-said-she-said case where the memory of one or both are likely faulty. If you ruin a person’s life with a rape innuendo you are liable for libel. False allegation of rape are just as damaging to men as actual rape is to women.
Sure lots of sexual assault is fueled by drugs but murder is really rare. Let’s not build a effort to stop drunken assaults around an expectation that every coed getting hit on should fear for her life.
Maybe if more coeds eyed getting hit on as a potential life or death situation, perhaps more would be alive today and fewer rapes would take place.
Have you really looked at authentic crime statistics on campus lately?
I also don’t want people falsely accused. However, if there is evidence enough, not once, but twice, to expel a student, then something is up. The expulsion speaks volumes and is something we cannot ignore.
I think you’re slandering Liberty U. here. If a woman declines to prosecute, the charges get dropped. If you really want to blame someone, blame the ostensibly raped women who dropped charges.
Why am I slandering Liberty U and not Christopher Newport, just out of curiosity?
I want to know why schools can just send kids packing who are a danger to society without reporting the expulsion to anyone. Why didn’t Liberty red flag this kid when Christopher Newport asked for transcripts?
While we are at it, what did his parents think? Did they ask why he was sent home? Come on. Someone knew something. it is feaking difficult to expel a student.
Rick, I also think someone needs to be asking if the girl at Liberty was pressured by someone not to press charges. Schools have been known to be very sloppy about Clery report accuracy.
I think everyone needs to be asking why this happened.
am I the only nut job who is concerned over this? Apparently.
I think the problem is that the punishment for sexual assault is too harsh. (There is a continuum between some unwanted groping and violent vaginal penetration and I’m talking about more on the groping end.) If the crime was a low level misdemeanor with a mail-in fine more people would report it because they would not feel that they are ruining some guys life and there would be less guilt about whether the girl was culpable for flirting a little. Most men would simply pay the fine and learn a lesson and not require a court case. If there was a court case it would be like traffic court. The value in this approach is you build a record from multiple people of those jerks who don’t ever learn how to treat women respectfully. It would also build a case history for girls who are serial teases. Judges could see the increasingly violent progression and could escalate the punishment before the bad behavior gets dangerously out of line. Or, in worse case, police have a list of suspects in a rape case just by sorting the rap sheets for serial gropers.
Ed, I seriously don’t know what to say. You think the punishment for sexual assault is too harsh? You are kidding me, right?
I am not talking about groping for heavens sake. I am talking about rape. I don’t think people are generally punished for groping women. Groping usually happens at parties when people have had too much to drink. I am talking about forced sex. In my opinion, the punishment doesn’t even come close to being enough.
Groping of children is punished and rightfully so.
I think you really need to think about what you have said. I am shocked.
Groping people at parties is a crime of sexual assault but because it would fall in the same criminal category as rape no one wants to press felony charges. If there was a misdemeanor category for processing lessor sexual crimes like drunken groping that helps stop people from thinking that behavior is acceptable and then getting suddenly to date rape with no clue. So I’m not advocating lesser punishment for forced sex, just lessor punishments for sexually tinged assaults that currently are ignored because the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. That boorish behavior is a precursor to rape and those that engage in it need to learn that it is unacceptable before it become violent. Unfortunately to explore this topic would require graphic descriptions if various kinds of sexual interactions and ranking them based on their harm to the victim. I don’t want to do that and the law doesn’t do that either so we are left with a big grey area called sexual assault that ranges from fedishes such as stealing women’s shoes or underwear with small impact on victims to violent forced vaginal penetration with choking which is extremely dangerous.
I think this all varies state to state and by age of victim.
I find it interesting that no one has said anything about the fact that Hannah Graham was out there drunk. I am not attempting to blame the victim but what I am saying is that apparently her so-called “friends” aided her in getting drunk and then let her get away from them. Somewhere there are “friends” who must be regretting what they allowed to happen.
All the talk about Jesse Matthew and why schools did or didn’t do something doesn’t make any difference. Even if he was a registered sex offender, nothing short of being in prison would have stopped him from doing what he apparently has done.
I am also concerned that no one thought a thing about Hannah Graham being out on the street and apparently in a bar with Matthew. He is scruffy looking and surely someone would have wondered why this young woman was out with him. But no one did anything—nothing—nada.
IMHO, Ed Myers’ argument is like discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I remarked on it a while back, in a post if I am not mistaken.
Tragic events like this are often not prevented. In many respects, this was almost a random event. However, if x, y, z changed, maybe at least one of these people would be alive.
I don’t agree that nothing could be done to keep Matthew from raping and killing. Unfortunately colleges and universities often discourage students from reporting crimes against their person. Most of the time, alcohol is involved and students don’t want to admit they were drunk, or allowed themselves to be picked up, or got into compromising sexual situations that then turned deadly. Additionally, laws could be rewritten that paid a little more careful attention to victims rights rather than the rights of the perp.
I absolutely talked about things that women can do to lessen the likelihood of things like this from happening. The minute anyone has too much too drink, they are no longer in control That’s just a recipe for disaster, right there. I also talked about walking in groups, dressing appropriately, giving friends an itinerary, staying out of dark alleys, carrying mace, pepper spray, guns, getting a huge dog with big flashing teeth, not walking with headphones or earbuds, being aware of your surroundings…the list goes on.
Not getting drunk is probably the most important of all those ideas. You become vulnerable if you aren’t in control.
I did not speak to the scruffiness. Let’s face it…young women sometimes don’t use the best judgement in picking out dates. Best to just keep quiet if you see something that doesn’t look right.
I had to come back to this. Had either school somehow red flagged or been able to red flag a sex offender, then probably he would have flown under someone’s radar. There are about 3 more missing girls in the vicinity. Right now a girl from Nelson County is missing and someone has been convicted. the question, did he really do it. yea he’s a toad, a meth head, but is he really a killer? The evidence is circumstantial.
I feel very strongly that either the two schools or state law (or maybe even federal law) failed all these missing women.
I don’t understand why you think that a school/university/college “red flagging” Matthew would have done anything. He wasn’t attending UVA and unless he was convicted of a sex crime, he would not have had to register as a sex offender. And even being registered as a sex offender would not have prevented this unless he was wearing a monitoring device that was routinely check and he was restricted to certain areas; i.e., away from the area surrounding UVA. Matthew is a predator and predators tend to follow their urges.
I would agree that the two schools failed these missing/dead women because they apparently did not report what was happening. But if the women didn’t report Matthew, then nothing would have been reported to law enforcement folks. NPR recently did a report on a new trend at colleges and universities–they are hiring outside investigators to investigate rape/sexual assault cases. But they can’t do their job if the incident is not reported.
I don’t think we know what happened–the ball was dropped. Were the girls pressured into not filing a report? I don’t know. I find it very suspicious that he was dismissed from two schools for sexual misconduct. Expulsion is a serious issue. You can’t just expel someone willy nilly. So what was the basis for this expulsion?
Having said that, we have a student sent packing from two schools. Why wasn’t rape reported, investigated, and the perp tried? I think those are serious questions. Had Matthew been red flagged, perhaps he would have been arrested earlier. Perhaps he would have been on the “keep an eye on” list. Perhaps he would have been arrested and been put in jail. Who knows. Doing nothing obviously wasn’t the answer.