The pedophile and the pencil abortion – which is our fault
Horrible. From the Pocono Record, June 8:
A 30-year-old Polk Township man is accused of raping a teen and burying the girl’s fetus after she performed a home abortion on herself, police said.
Michael James Lisk told police that he had had sex with the 13-year-old girl “too many times to count,” according to court records. He’s been charged with rape of a child and concealing the death of a child, among other counts.
The girl, who attempted an abortion Wednesday, became increasingly ill and began having contractions over the following 3 days. When the pain worsened early Saturday morning, she phoned Lisk.
Lisk told her to “push hard” when she got a strong contraction. She did, and eventually gave birth to a baby in the toilet of her home. She told police the baby was stillborn….
After the birth she called Lisk again. Lisk told her to put the baby in a bag and he would come to her house and help her, according to a criminal complaint. She threw the baby near a tree in her yard, according to the complaint. Lisk retrieved the baby and took it, still wrapped in a plastic bag, to a wooded area. He buried it not far from his home in Polk Township.
Still sick on Sunday, the girl went with her mother to Lehigh Valley Hospital. Staff in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit contacted Lehighton State Police to report they were treating a 13-year-old patient who appeared to have recently been pregnant. During treatment, she told hospital staff that she had caused the abortion with a lead pencil….
The girl told police Lisk was a friend who lived nearby.
After the police interview, the mother and daughter both called Lisk to tell him the police were on the way to speak with him. Lisk went to the makeshift grave, dug up the baby’s body, wrapped it in two plastic bags and left it for state police, according to a complaint….
A search warrant uncovered evidence that the relationship had been sexual since the girl was 12.
He described his relationship with the girl as “like a marriage where you have sex all the time.” In a recorded interview, Lisk told police he believed he was the father of the baby.
Lisk was arrested and arraigned before Magisterial District Judge Michael Muth and placed in Monroe County Correctional Facility in lieu of $50,000 bail. Lisk is charged with rape of a child, statutory sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, corruption of a minor, concealing the death of a child and abuse of a corpse.
An autopsy of the baby is scheduled for today. It may reveal the age and gender of the baby, and whether it was born alive….
Note the age difference of this real life rape/abortion incident is almost identical to that Lila Rose portrayed in video stings against Planned Parenthoods across the country. The child in the aforementioned story was 13 and her rapist 30; Lila (pictured right in one of the stings) said she was 13 and her “boyfriend” 31.
Jill at Feministe began her blog post about this tragedy agreeing, “This story is horrific,” adding:
I don’t believe that sex between a 30-year-old and a 13-year-old can ever be consensual; we also know that many extreme age-disparate relationships involve rape.
“Many”? As if sometimes sex between an adolescent and adult man is just fine? But I digress. Here’s where Jill blames pro-lifers for the pencil abortion:
And yes, this girl obviously needed access to safe abortion care; if she had such access, she wouldn’t have had to self-induce abortion with a lead pencil. Abortion access would have lessened this tragedy by a significant degree. It’s shameful that, under the guise of caring about children and babies, anti-choice groups seek to limit abortion access for women and girls.
Oh, Jill, I cannot believe you’re so dense. PA has a parental consent law, where one parent of a girl under age 18 seeking abortion must give permission. There is a judicial bypass. Either way, had the girl sought parental consent or attempted a bypass, her perpetrator’s crime would have been discovered.
What if Lisk had raped this girl in a state without a parental involvement law? Then Lisk could have whisked his victim off for “safe abortion care” with no one any the wiser. He would have killed the evidence and been enabled to continue “hav[ing] sex all the time” with her. Abortion is a sexual perpetrator’s best friend.
Jill carried on with esoteric gobbledygook:
And her community and her culture – the people who are supposed to tell her that she’s important, that she’s loved, that she deserves pleasure, that she deserves autonomy – failed her. We fail girls all the time. We put girls in impossible, heart-wrenching positions. We give girls little autonomy and few options, and then we’re surprised when they act like animals caught in traps.
Was Jill saying that had our puritanical society only validated to the girl that sex is great and she is mature enough to experience it as well as abortion if need be, the scenario would have gone differently? In fact, isn’t that likely Lisk told the girl all that? At any rate, isn’t abortion almost always about women finding themselves in “heart-wrenching positions” where they “act like animals caught in traps” by aborting?
Jill’s close:
Predators like Michael James Lisk, her “boyfriend,” are entirely responsible for the crimes they commit. But this girl needed a safety net, and she did not have one.
In fact, there were a couple safety nets available to the girl. Pregnancy of a minor is proof she is being sexually abused. Had anyone found out, this girl would have been rescued.
The pro-abort scenario would only have ensured no one found out.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
That girl didn’t need a “safety net.” What she needed was parents who were parenting her and HAD BEEN raising her not to sleep with some pervert who told her to drop her pants and he’s show her what real love was like.
“And her community and her culture – the people who are supposed to tell her that she’s important, that she’s loved, that she deserves pleasure, that she deserves autonomy – failed her. We fail girls all the time. We put girls in impossible, heart-wrenching positions. We give girls little autonomy and few options, and then we’re surprised when they act like animals caught in traps.”
Focussing in on “deserves pleasure” and “deserves autonomy”.
If Jill (at Feministe) is suggesting that this 13 year old deserves consequence-free autonomy and pleasure, then it really doesn’t matter what the age of her sex partner is. He/She could be 13, 33, or 83. In the finest tradition of narcissism, “Feministe Jill” is holding out autonomy and pleasure as the highest goods (along with abortion, which is meant to preserve the first two goods).
What can be done with such raging narcissists as “Feministe Jill”?
She clearly does not see sex as a good that is restricted to marriage. She does not value the human life of the child in the womb, or the human life of the 13 year old child. She clearly does not see that we bond powerfully with our sex partners, and that such bonding is a biologically based response that helps ensure marital fidelity.
She fails to understand that we possess the ability to mentally override that bonding process, and often train ourselves to do so, as the pain associated with the relationship’s ending can be too much to bear. Such overriding is the beginning of much pathology.
But “Feministe Jill” can’t see this because her narcissism has her acting like an “animal caught in a trap,” to use her own words. Our Jill (Stanek) gets it right when she says that abortion without parental notification laws is a pedophile’s best friend.
“Feministe Jill” has done us all a great service today. She illustrates how narcissism is the prerequisite state of rebellion that opens the floodgates of Hell.
Sounds as though they are blaming this girl’s mother…..”but this girl needed a safety net, and she did not have one.”
I am amazed at how “feminists” continually are willing to protect pedophiles who rape little children.
How would a safe, legal abortion have protected this girl from her rapist? The only protection abortion offers is FOR the rapist.
And I thought that safe, legal abortion was supposed to stop girls from resorting to such measures?
Praying that this young girl recovers physically and emotionally from this trauma. So, so sad.
Girls shouldn’t be dating out of their age group and they need to be told this. You have to wonder about a boy who dates a girl 5-10 years younger than him. Hopefully this story will encourage parents to talk to their girls about this. I wonder if this issue is discussed in sex ed at schools…
“Abortion access would have lessened this tragedy by a significant degree”
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Excuse me? Did I read that right….Sheesh!!
Posted by: Courtnay at June 8, 2010 9:23 AM
You’re making assumptions here you have no support for. We don’t know what her parents did, didn’t do, knew, or didn’t know. We also don’t know whether or not this guy manipulated her and how much.
What we do know is that had the laws regarding abortion been followed, this girl’s abuser may very well have been caught sooner. She also, very probably, would not have suffered any medical problems. We also know that if the pro-aborts have their way, these kinds of situations will be ten times easier to hide. As Lila Rose is so brilliantly and dedicatedly pointing out, they’re being hidden now, regardless of the laws. Jill-at-Feministe is pushing for an abortion situation where this sort of abuse will be easy to hide and easy to ignore.
Jill Filipovic – when are you going to stop empowering/enabling perverts?
Whatever happened to you that made you so hard hearted that you can’t see that what you support only covers up such atrocities?
Of course you think this horrible – it undermines your destructive cause.
One last question – do you get fan mail from the creeps?
After the police interview, the mother and daughter both called Lisk to tell him the police were on the way to speak with him.
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What??? Is this saying the mother was giving him a ‘heads up’ so he could possibly run from the police?
I don’t get that sentence.
I’m sure there’s ways kids (even at 13) get around their parents. The thing is, we don’t know what this kid was taught or anything the parents were doing or saying. For all we know they could be like that Feministe person who acted like “autonomy” and “pleasure” were the end all be all of personhood. (Give me a break, since when does anyone really have “bodily autonomy”? My body has a mind of its own–take allergies for instance. They never asked me if I wanted them or not, you’d think that since I’m supposedly “bodily autonomous” that I’d be able to choose whether or not I was allergic to onions or turkey, but no, my body never asked me!)
At 13, there’s no such thing as “autonomy” either. You’re a minor. You’re under your parent/guardian’s care. In fact, you’re too young to be completely “autonomous”. A kid at that age should be learning how to love and respect herself and others rather than being taught by some older man all about sex. (Not a good way to receive sex ed).
I fail to see how this is our (pro-lifers) fault. These things happen in spite of (and I’d venture to say, in some cases, because of) available abortion clinics (I hestitate to use the word ‘service’ when it comes to abortion, because to me, ‘service’ is supposed to be helpful and I haven’t found anything particularly helpful about abortion).
The other sad thing is, this 13 year old girl probably has a warped view of sex. How could she not with an older guy telling cops they had “sex all the time”?
We have to pray for this situation, for the people involved and similar situations and we have to educate people.
I recommend looking up people like Jason Evert (www.pureloveclub.com ), Christopher West (www.christopherwest.com ), Marybeth Bonacci (http://www.reallove.net/index2.asp?CID=1 ), and Pam Stenzel (http://pamstenzel.com/ ).
“concealing the death of a child and abuse of a corpse.”
If he had an abortionist’s license at least the poor chap couldn’t be charged with this.
Fortunately, despite depraved stories like this, anti-abortion currents are swelling in the States. Thankfully, people are getting fed up. And this story will likely turn more to the pro-life side.
“The pro-abort scenario would only have ensured no one found out.”
yes, of course. All Jill at Femanazi cares about is making sure that baby can be killed, and nothing else.
Yes, the bit about telling thirteen year old girls that they “deserve pleasure” is what worried me in particular. I don’t think that these people are simply misguided. There is something deeply wrong with them.
Pro-lifers, this is a reason we should never make the claim that there will never be ANY women that resort to dangerous illegal abortions in the event that abortion becomes illegal. While it’s true the vast majority of illegal abortions pre-Roe were done in doctors offices, I think it’s fair to also assume there will still be a small number of dangerous abortions like this.
Instead, we should ask the question, “why should the law be faulted for making it more dangerous to kill innocent human beings?”
“why should the law be faulted for making it more dangerous to kill innocent human beings?”
Brilliant. Very succinct, very straight to the point, and it clearly exposes the pro-choice sloppy thinking here.
“We fail girls all the time. We put girls in impossible, heart-wrenching positions.” Duh. The message that we “deserve pleasure” (which I assume means sex) is what puts the most pressure on girls. And teaching a girl that she deserves autonomy when it comes to having sex does not teach her how to protect her heart, mind, body, soul, and future. And that is the worst sort of failure. As someone who was profoundly harmed by this attitude, I feel infuriated beyond expression whenever I hear it espoused. It breaks (or “wrenches”) my heart to think of all the girls (and women) still being harmed by this distortion of the truth. (We deserve joy and love, not pleasure, and we deserve to be taught how to make moral and healthy choices, which is true autonomy.)
I’m feeling a bit old; how the rhetoric has changed! Abortion used to be the magic solution for desperate teen girls who were in abusive homes that would otherwise have gone to the back alley. That was the rhetoric on my college campus. Now, it’s all about underage children ‘deserving pleasure’ and ‘autonomy’ and we big bad prolifers are ruining all their fun with our parental consent laws???? Good Lord, what the heck happened to the world I live in?
I really appreciate many of your posts here; it comforts me that I’m not the only one.
Posted by: Alice at June 8, 2010 12:23 PM
Alice, I really agree with what you’ve said. I know that I have experienced a lot of the negative consequences of certain influences in our culture in my own life as well.
Girls, and women, deserve much more… much better than just empty, “free” sex. We are so much more than the pleasure our bodies can give someone else, and even the pleasure we can experience. We deserve to have a man that will treat us with dignity, respect, and have real intimacy with us (within marriage) – a sharing with us, not just a taking from us. Someone who won’t dump us for a stretchmark or the ten extra pounds we’ve gained over the years, who is willing to give us “forever” instead of “maybe I’ll be here tomorrow and maybe I won’t”. Someone who is interested in who we are emotionally, mentally, and spiritually and wants to nurture us.
We as women shouldn’t settle for any less.
W-O-W.
Jill would rather see Lisk continue to abuse a 13-year-old girl. Sad.
This whole situation is tragic, and my heart goes out to this young girl. I pray that the arrest of her abuser and the memory of this horrible experience will help her to break the cycle of abuse. I pray that her mother be a strong model of true feminism for the girl, and that she be an active part of her daughter’s life. I pray for the soul of the departed child.
I pray that this child learns that she can find love in her friendships, in other healthy relationships, and in her relationship with Christ. I pray that she stops searching for fulfillment in abusive situations.
I ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to be a presence in the life of this young girl, and to pray for her to the Lord Most High.
I pray for the conversion of the heart of Michael James Lisk. Though he was made for greatness, he has chosen for ill. Lord, please work in his life and in his heart.
I make this prayer to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.
So pregnancy serves as proof of illicit sex. This girl starts showing and suddenly it’s apparent to the world that she’s been a slut, or abused, or a toxic combination of both. The growing fetus becomes EVIDENCE of wrongdoing.
I’m sure that won’t be psychologically damaging to the girl in question. I also think it’s disgusting how all of you point out the girl’s minor status, but would still have expected her to endure a pregnancy and give birth to a child. It’s inhumane. It shouldn’t be Planned Parenthood’s responsibility to police the sex that occurred. What they must do is ensure that a girl has come to her clinic of her own volition, and that she wants to have an abortion. That’s what counseling sessions are for, which occur in advance of the procedure. Counseling between the patient and a nurse, with no third parties–ie “boyfriends”–involved. And if a girl has been abused, it is hoped that a girl would speak up, because there are resources available to guide her to appropriate authorities and further counseling services.
Clearly, though, this 13 year old did not feel comfortable speaking with anybody close to her about her abuse. She didn’t talk to a school nurse, a law enforcement officer, her mother. Hmm. Methinks that punitive policies regarding the sexual activity of minors only engender a culture of fear, and girls in tough situations are less likely to seek the help they need.
army_wife,
AGREED! Why should we ever settle for empty promises and temporary “pleasure” (what we’re told should give us pleasure, anyway), when we can have so so much more!!
“And if a girl has been abused, it is hoped that a girl would speak up, because there are resources available to guide her to appropriate authorities and further counseling services. ”
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And you’re stating PP can help in these situations? Better start watching those Lila Rose stings cuz you’re in for a very rude awakening…
[i]It shouldn’t be Planned Parenthood’s responsibility to police the sex that occurred.[/i]
Common Sense,
Seriously? What if the girl HAD gone to PP? Did you not watch the Lila Rose videos where they said NOT to say the guy’s age?
PP doesn’t care. They just care about the money they’ll make off the abortion.
I’ve seen Crisis Pregnancy Workers with more compassion in their pinkie fiinger than PP in their whole website.
To say this in the clearest way possible:
30 year old having sex with 13 year old. WRONG move.
Abortion of resulting pregnancy WRONG MOVE
Two wrong moves do NOT make a right move.
What [b]could’ve[/b] (but wasn’t) been done:
30 year old reported before all this took place.
Parents take child to Crisis Pregnancy for counseling and help.
Baby put up for adoption.
13 year old girl encouraged in abstainence and chastity, and encouraged in these things in a positive and loving way. (I recommend Jason Evert: http://www.pureloveclub.com ).
I don’t know how strict the parents were, but if they weren’t watching the girl, they need to watch her more carefully, but then again, I don’t know how strict they were.
Keli Hu, I do believe you are young and not a parent yet so I will just say I disagree with you and agree with Courtnay.
WHERE WERE HER PARENTS? At 13, how was this young girl so unsupervised that she had sex all the time with a 30 year old? Was she running around the neighborhood, what? 13 year olds don’t drive so how was she getting to the pedophile’s house? Why didn’t her parents know at all times who she was with and where she was? Her parents failed. big time.
My mom always knew where I was and with whom. I was never alone with a boy. I had boyfriends but didn’t even get my first kiss till 17 because my mother never left me alone with them! So the fact that a THIRTEEN year old was unsupervised enough to get pregnant by a 30 year old proves to me her parents were not aware enough and were not involved enough. period.
Our response should be a bit more nuanced than that. For every woman who dies in an illegal abortion, roughly six hundred abortions are performed – and this isn’t counting deaths resulting from the birth control pill, IVF, or stem cell research.
We should say that it really doesn’t make sense for us to view ourselves as being the victims here. That just isn’t an accurate way of viewing the situation.
Common sense wrote, “So pregnancy serves as proof of illicit sex.This girl starts showing and suddenly it’s apparent to the world that she’s been a slut, or abused, or a toxic combination of both.”
Actually, I didn’t say that. I simply said, “Pregnancy of a minor is proof she is being sexually abused.”
And actually, it wasn’t me who first said that. It was Dr. Joycelyn Elders, Bill Clinton’s pro-abortion surgeon general. In a 1998 commentary Elders co-authored in the Journal of the American Medical Association on adolescent pregnancy and sexual abuse, she wrote:
Sexual abuse is a common antecedent of adolescent pregnancy, with up to 66% of pregnant teens reporting histories of abuse…. Pregnancy may also be a sign of ongoing sexual abuse…. Boyer and Fine found that of 535 young women who were pregnant, 44% had been raped, of whom 11% became pregnant as a result of the rape.
“it’s disgusting how all of you point out the girl’s minor status, but would still have expected her to endure a pregnancy and give birth to a child. It’s inhumane.” You’re kidding, right? So you think what she did with a pencil and what she did to her child was humane?! And even if Planned Parenthood had done it, that would have been the humane solution for this traumatized girl? I seriously am baffled by this kind of thinking.
“If a girl has been abused, it is hoped that a girl would speak up, because there are resources available to guide her to appropriate authorities and further counseling services.” I was sexually abused by my father for ten years as a child. I never told anyone about it until I was 18 and no longer living in the situation. Clearly you don’t know anything about what it’s like to be a girl sexually abused by someone you love who is much older than you! The pressure to say nothing about it is–well, I shouldn’t even have to bother to explain.
So, so, so much harm is done to girls and women so that those in our society who have no conscience can do what they want. Those who are obviously harmed by sexual immorality and abortion pay the terrible price for the percentage of people who walk away unscathed (or who think they are unscathed). And then we are judged from both sides. (Well, we are less and less judged by those who seek to protect life. With more and more of them we are beginning to find truth and compassion.)
Jill, I’m reminded of the weekend question “Do pro-aborts make you paranoid?” I read the title of this post and immediately thought “Some underhanded pro-abortion twit out there is going to say ‘Look, they’ve admitted that the pencil abortion was their fault!'” If I were you, I would have thrown a “supposedly” in there.
But you’re the professional blogger, not me. :)
army_wife, I am with you on this: “We as women shouldn’t settle for any less.” If only I had been taught this when I was growing up. This is what needs to be taught in our churches and schools etc.
“Keli Hu, I do believe you are young and not a parent yet so I will just say I disagree with you and agree with Courtnay.
“WHERE WERE HER PARENTS? At 13, how was this young girl so unsupervised that she had sex all the time with a 30 year old? Was she running around the neighborhood, what? 13 year olds don’t drive so how was she getting to the pedophile’s house? Why didn’t her parents know at all times who she was with and where she was? Her parents failed. big time.”
Posted by: Sydney M. at June 8, 2010 2:06 PM
I’m 26. I have no children. I’m very glad you felt safe and cared for with your parents. None of which is relevant to the point I was making, which is, as you pointed out, we don’t know where her parents were. In fact, all the article tells us is that her mother went with her to the hospital. It’s possible this girl was sneaking around behind their backs, a lot. It’s possible they knew something was up, but were afraid pushing the issue might make things worse. It’s possible they’re neglectful. It’s possible they travel frequently and leave their child in the care of others. It’s possible they felt they had reason to trust this man. It’s possible they knew all about what was going on and didn’t care. It’s possible they were aiding her abuser in some way. All of these possibilities are entirely within the realm of plausibility given the information in the article, and none of them can be safely made because we haven’t been told what was going on.
Courtnay’s post verged on slut-shaming a rape victim. “Parents who were parenting her and HAD BEEN raising her not to sleep with some pervert who told her to drop her pants and he’s show her what real love was like.” Except that we don’t know what her parents did or didn’t tell her about sex. We don’t know what Lisk did or didn’t use to manipulate her, or coerce her. We don’t know just how abusive her situation was and how many people participated. Obviously some mistakes were made by someone, and her parents bear some of that responsibility, but we don’t have the information to make a call on how much. And certainly not information to assume her parents are telling her that it’s okay to “sleep with perverts.”
Her parents may have failed her in major ways or maybe only in small ones. They could be monsters. They could be idiots. We don’t know and can’t know. Nor should we make uninformed guesses that verge on calling a thirteen-year-old a slut for being raped.
Keli, I am not using the word slut. I am both a mom of a 12 year old and a girl who had sex way too young. Pretty much all the moms are going to back me up here: 13 year olds don’t have sex because they want to have sex. They have sex because they’re empty inside and they need a kind of validation they aren’t getting at home. The mom FAILED HER because she is RESPONSIBLE for her. That’s why they call it PARENTING instead of HANGING OUT. Your daughter is absent having sex “too numerous to count”–shame on you as a mom. I don’t assign shame to the daughter. She will suffer from this forever.
Please tell me you will safeguard your children before you decide to have them.
It’s possible that legalized abortion caused further objectification and abuse of women, not less.
Jill at Feministe began her blog post about this tragedy agreeing, “This story is horrific,” adding:
“I don’t believe that sex between a 30-year-old and a 13-year-old can ever be consensual; we also know that many extreme age-disparate relationships involve rape.”
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More fem-mystique logic.
If 13 year old girl is never mature enough to consent to having sex, then how is the girl ever mature enough to consent to intrusive elective surgery?
Posted by: Courtnay at June 8, 2010 3:17 PM
Just because you don’t use the word “slut,” doesn’t mean it’s not lurking underneath the things you say. I am very pleased to hear that you don’t feel the victim was responsible. Your original post certainly didn’t make that clear. You initially assumed her parents raised her to believe it was okay to sleep with perverts. You’re still assuming she wasn’t coerced by Lisk, or possibly by her parents into this situation. Ergo, if they had raised her differently, or she had acted differently, she wouldn’t have been raped.
Except that rape is about coercion and force. It’s not what you can do differently to prevent it, it’s that someone else forces you. Even if a homeowner doesn’t lock their doors, it’s still the thief’s fault for robbing them. Regardless of what this girl was or wasn’t taught about sex or did or didn’t think about it, it’s still not her fault.
One in four women in the United States will be sexually assaulted during her lifetime. To put that in less comfortable terms, at least one woman you are close to either has been, or will be. Two of my close friends have been raped. In both cases, they knew their attacker. In one case, I did too, and was friends with him at the time. I saw him the next day. Do you know what he was like, the day after he had raped one of my best friends in the world? He was normal. Just like he was any other day. “Predator” is not a word that was picked for these people at random.
There is no sure-fire method to ensure that anyone won’t be raped. The only steps you can take–including “safeguarding your children”–are about risk-reduction. But you can never reduce that risk to zero. You can never be 100% protected yourself, and you can not 100% protect anyone else, no matter what relation they are to you. Barring her parents actively assisting her attacker, I blame one person for her abuse: Michael James Lisk.
I don’t deny her parents are responsible for her, but you are assuming a complicity on their parts which is possible, but not knowable. It is not her fault she was raped, and her actions one way or the other may not have stopped it. Which means that what her parents did or didn’t teach her about sex or “hanging out” or anything else are immaterial, unless they were brainwashing her into having sex with older men. As I said earlier, clearly this wasn’t a perfect situation, being as a 13-year-old has been raped. But we can not, and should not assume her parents were neglectful idiots or complete barbarians or conscientious but made mistakes. We don’t have any of that information.
We shouldn’t make her situation out in our heads to be better than it is. Neither should we make it worse. Honestly, it’s more than bad enough without run-away assumptions about her home life or lack-of-same.
Keli Hu,
Doesn’t it stand to reason that there was a definite lack of parental guidance and protection in her life?
In what situation could this possibly be happening and the parents were not neglectful?
@carla: I can agree that if her parents had gotten involved with the situation sooner, it probably would not have gone as far as it did. There are worse assumptions about Lisk and worse and better ones her and her parents, though, which make me very reluctant to say that with 100% certainty.
Keli Hu…sorry. I was confusing you with someone else. I am not much older than you :-) You’re still young but not a kid as I was implying.
No one here is blaming this poor girl. She is definitely a victim of this pedophile’s selfishness and abuse. But how did her parents not notice she was pregnant? She was far enough along that there was a body to bury…if she was in the first trimester wouldn’t they have just flushed the baby down the toilet? How were her parents so uninterested in her that they couldn’t LOOK at her and see SOMETHING was up! Either she was dressing differently to hide the pregnancy or noticed she wasn’t menstruating or saw she was gaining weight and tired etc…
And the very fact that she was unsupervised to be with a 30 year old long enough to get naked and have sex just proves my point. I am not saying her parents are horrible people, but they DID fail her!
“And the very fact that she was unsupervised to be with a 30 year old long enough to get naked and have sex just proves my point. I am not saying her parents are horrible people, but they DID fail her!”
Posted by: Sydney M. at June 8, 2010 4:44 PM
Your last sentence I can agree with. Your next to last, though…
Let’s say, just for the sake of discussion, that Lisk was an individual her parents had reason to trust. Someone they’d known for a long time, for example, or a coach at her school, or someone tutoring her in a subject she struggled with, or the son of some of their close friends. So he would have perfectly ordinary reasons to spend extended periods of time with her. Now let’s further assume, to ensure her cooperation, Lisk told this girl that if she didn’t keep her mouth shut he would hurt her friends or her family, and had means of making her believe he would carry out that threat. And since we’re assuming, let’s also say her parents have jobs that require them to travel often and when they do, they ask their trusted friend, Mr. Lisk, to look after their daughter in their absence. Under these circumstances, until their daughter said something (which she would have good incentive not to do) her parents might not have any reason to suspect something was wrong until the situation became too extreme to hide, as it did in this case.
A totally plausible scenario, yes? Also completely made up. I don’t know that that was the case. Which is my whole point. Any guesses about stuff not in the article are unsupported guesses.
@Sydney,
“And the very fact that she was unsupervised to be with a 30 year old long enough to get naked and have sex just proves my point”
Agreed! I kept trying to think of a single time when it would have been possible for me to have this experience before I moved out of my parents’ house, and I just simply can’t. Because my parents wouldn’t have allowed me to go over to a 30 year old man’s house unchaperoned like that.
What kind of a person thinks that’s a healthy situation for their daughter?
And if her parents didn’t know that she was spending all that time at his house, what did they think she was doing and why were they so unaware of reality?
Her parents were either incredibly unintelligent or they simply weren’t there.
Even if its someone you trust, those parents should not have left a 30 year old man with their daughter alone, even if you scenario proves true Keli Hu.
I wouldn’t let my husband’s friends, some whom I have known for years and years, alone with my teenaged niece. (I have no daughters yet so I have to think of how I would protect my niece). I just wouldn’t. I think the parents didn’t use their parental sixth sense here and now that grandbaby is dead and their daughter is physically and emotionally traumatized. So very sad.
“”Many”? As if sometimes sex between an adolescent and adult man is just fine?”
I don’t know if anyone has corrected Stanek on this, but here. Jill at Feministe clarified what she meant later on, in the comments
“Yes. Sorry, I meant “age-disparate relationships” generally, not referencing THIS specific one. This specific one is rape and cannot be anything else. Some age-disparate relationships can be consensual. Many, however, are not. THIS ONE was not.”
MaryRose,
Exactly!!
The questions remain. Where were the parents and why was there an obvious lack of supervision for this girl??
Praying they all get the help they need.
Sydney,
Although my 13 year old is a boy I absolutely know where he is and what he is doing. I know his friends and his friends parents. I better be aware because it is how I protect my children.
Where is the outrage? A child is repeatedly raped, and there is no other word for it, and all we hear is the “need” for abortion access? Oh yes, let’s beter enable this child rapist to hide his crime. Does Jill have any concern for the emotional and physical harm done to this child? What if this child was infected with AIDS? How many other children had been victimized by this dirtball?
Well gee whiz, if we only had “safe” abortion care. What about the horror this child has endured??
By bemoaning the lack of “safe” abortion Jill only trivializes this heinous crime and this child’s suffering.
Safety net. Good lord. That safety net would have served as the blind with which Lisk could have safely, secretly, paid for the girl to get abortions-and then keep on with the abuse. Had she not self-induced, the abuse would have gone unnoticed, because and abortion would have been much more discreet.
I find it astounding that the Feministe writer is blaming pro-life people for her lack of a safety net. The only people to blame for a lack of safety net are her parents, who obviously didn’t give a damn about their daughter, and the pervert abuser.
Hi Stephanie,
An excellent post. You notice there is not an iota of feminist outrage over this heinous crime, a dirtball child rapist who should be strung upsidedown, not by his feet, and irresponsible parents.
Noooo, PL people are to blame for this! Gee if only she could have been discreetly aborted so that her attacker could continue his abuse and her parent could continue their irresponsible behavior.
So good to see the feminists have their priorities in order.
Courtnay’s post verged on slut-shaming a rape victim.
Posted by: Keli Hu
Keli, thank you for making this point. I was disheartened that no one else seemed to have a problem with implying that this girl went out and got herself raped.
Just quickly- I’ve caught this story reposted for the last day or two in various places, and each time the the headline referred to Lisk as the girl’s “boyfriend”. Thank you Jill for finally calling him what he really is- her rapist.
This story is so sad. This poor girl is gonna need a lot of help and prayer.
this sick man needs to go to jail for 75 years. No Parole. Life in Prison.
And this girl is a victim and needs counseling.
Honestly, I focused also on the fact that the mother called the rapist to give him the head’s up. This says a few things… one, the mother likely knew about the abuse and condoned it. Two, the daughter would probably have been easily able to get her mother to agree to an abortion (a mother willing to let her child be molested is quite likely not to mind her grandchild being aborted). So, access to “safe, legal abortion” didn’t do this girl a bit of good.
Unfortunately this is not uncommon. When I lived in Arizona and worked in labor and delivery we had many 13 and 14 year old new moms who were proud of their relationships with men in their 30s and 40s… with their parents consent. Usually the adult male involved was friends with the mother or father and was given the child to use as he wished.
In fact, back in the 1940s, my MIL was handed over to her father’s friends for their sexual use starting when she was around 5 years old.
My heart goes out to the child who obviously didn’t have the appropriate guidance necessary to protect her innocence.
I am putting together a sound track to accompany this sordid affair.
Sometimes falling in luv and getting all twitterpated will make both men and women stump stupid. John Edwards, Mark Sanford, Slick Willy, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Baker, etc.
I don’t have much sympathty for anyone involved in this mess except for the one truly innocent victim, the girls baby.
The 13 year old girl was older than her years. When you are learning to survive in that level of familial dysfunction it will grow you up fast or you will just die young. Lots of wounds, lots of scars.
If I was the girls father, the 30 year old predator might just disappear suddenly and unexpectedly.
Well it would be sudden and unexpected for him.
There are some men who just need killin’.
lynard skynard ‘I aint the one’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoPGi8uWDb8
Gary Puckett ‘Young Girl’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn0ZJHVH17I
Jackson Browne ‘Ready or Not’
http://s0.ilike.com/play#Jackson+Browne:Ready+Or+Not:101275:s9743.1089.5197.0.1.79%2Cstd_03d25ee96ded25a3c9f958e11202b897
lynard skynard ‘gimme three steps’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygausyezIOc&feature=fvst
Elisabeth,
So sad!
So prochoicegal: if the 13 year old was having consensual sex with the 31 year old man would that be ok with you?
Do you believe a 13 year old girl is capable of understanding the consequences of sex?
for shame.
Methinks you must be a rape-apologist?
“if the 13 year old was having consensual sex with the 31 year old man would that be ok with you?”
Uh, no. In fact, she COULDN’T have consensual sex with a 31 year old man. It is rape.
I simply said that Jill (the prochoice one, not Stanek) said that some “age-disparate relationships” can be consensual. She never said that a 13 year old with a 30 year old is consensual. It’s not, it never can be.
In other words, a 30 year old can have consensual sex with a 50 year old. A 13 year old can not have consensual sex with a 30 year old.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and trust that you just have problems with reading, and that you weren’t just trying to smear me ;)
So why did all the big abortion supporters in Hollywood like Whoopi Goldbery and Joy Behar defend child rapist Roman Polanski?
I love how PCG defends REAL rape apologists.
PCG, if that’s what she meant, why the line about the girl deserving pleasure? What was that supposed to mean exactly?
Sydney, good question. I wonder if PGC considers them pro-rape?
Keli, et al–
You BET I hold her parents complicit in this situation. ABSOLUTELY. Who was going to protect her virginity if they weren’t? Not her. And not him, the rapist.
Jocelyn,
I noticed that too!! “boyfriend”
Try pedophile rapist.
Yep abortion on demand has increased pedophiles praying on kids. Heck, get the underage girl pregnant and ship her for an abortion. Repeat as often as possible because the clinic will help cover the abuse.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and trust that you just have problems with reading, and that you weren’t just trying to smear me ;)
Posted by: ProChoiceGal at June 8, 2010 10:57 PM
no worries. You;ve got that one covered all by yourself – every time you comment.
Pedophiles love abortion. Real empowering to women. Pro-deathers are a bunch of screwballs.
“It shouldn’t be Planned Parenthood’s responsibility to police the sex that occurred.”
Pass the buck, pass the buck. It should be EVERYONE’S responsibility to report that little girls have very probably been raped. (I say “very probably” because I wouldn’t automatically consider it rape if she had sex with someone her own age.)
“What they must do is ensure that a girl has come to her clinic of her own volition, and that she wants to have an abortion.”
When I was thirteen, I wanted to pierce my eyebrow, become an actress in Hollywood, and date a boy I knew from middle school theater – none of which hold any appeal now. Yeah, letting thirteen-year-old girls make life-changing decisions is a great idea. Especially when their decisions end the life of someone else.
Actually, those of us who work in any area of health care are considered “mandatory reporters”. For example, any RN or MD who comes into contact with any child who they suspect may be a victim of any type of abuse must, by law, report that suspicion. It is not the job of the medical provider to determine whether or not abuse has actually occurred, only that there is a potential that abuse may have occurred. It is up to the appropriate social workers or child protection services to determine whether or not abuse has occurred.
Therefore, any medical professional working with Planned Parenthood who does not report a reasonable suspicion of abuse should, legally, be stripped of their license. In addition, there are legal consequences that may apply to everyone working in any healthcare setting, licensed or not.
Therefore, while morally everyone should report suspected abuse, we are beyond that ethical issue when it comes to healthcare providers. Healthcare providers do not have a choice not to report… and PP acting as if they do have that choice is offensive and illegal.
I suppose if this girl had found out she was pregnant later, PBA or infanticide would’ve been the “safety net”. Sickening.
“‘Many’? As if sometimes sex between an adolescent and adult man is just fine? But I digress. Here’s where Jill blames pro-lifers for the pencil abortion:”
She said relationships, not sexual relationships.