If it?s true that all seven of the football players arrested for hazing in the Sayreville, New Jersey, War Memorial High School locker room are students of color, that is one more reason not to prosecute them as sexual felons. I don?t mean not to prosecute them in adult court. I mean not to prosecute them at all. If they?re guilty, they should be disciplined by the school, kicked off the Bombers team, and held accountable to their victims by making amends in words and deeds. But the punishment the state will mete out far outweighs the transgression. For kids who are 15 to 17 years old, it will be life crushing.Yes, more life-crushing even than being punched, kicked, groped, or subject to anunwanted finger inching into your anus.
The state has charged the boys, variously, with aggravated sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual contact, conspiracy to commit aggravated sexual contact, criminal restraint, and hazing, involving what the New York Times called ?the sexual penetration of one of the juvenile victims.? The juvenile victim in question describes it as the pressing of a digit or digits against the shallow dent between his clothed buttocks?unpleasant, but hardly the traumatic experience the law, and the press, assume it to be. The other sexual aggressions appear to amount to grabbing of butts and genitals.
The sex offender regime is cruel and unusual punishment, excessive even for people who have committed heinous crimes. For these teenagers, whose ?sex crimes? were to grab some ass and maybe stick a finger up that ass, it is a massively disproportionate penalty ? a life sentence, before their adult lives have begun.