An Open Letter to the Vermont State Governor
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008I sent the following to Vermont governor Jim Douglas this evening, in response to comments he made at the funeral of Brooke Bennett. Brooke was a 12 year old girl who disappeared about two weeks ago. Her body was found in a shallow grave not far from her uncle’s home, and her uncle stands charged with her abduction.
Dear Sir,
I am writing in regard to comments you made today at the funeral of Brooke Bennett, which aired on WPTZ, where you said something to the effect that you want to be able to look in the eyes of the victims of cases such as this, with the knowledge and reassurance that we are and have done all that we can to eliminate this kind of conduct from our society.
You should know at the outset that the author of this note is a life long resident of the State of Vermont, one who is not affiliated with either political party and who rarely votes republican. I became a supporter of the Honorable Jim Jeffords in the 1990’s, and though I did not agree with every policy position he took during his career my support never wavered. His change in political affiliation in 2002 was an act of such great courage and integrity that it brought tremendous legitimacy to our political process. Likewise the manner of treatment he received from Vermont republicans on that momentous occasion was appalling, it was a blot upon the name and reputation of every Vermonter who upholds the republican cause.
You might also choose to consider that I will not be voting for Mr. Polina in the upcoming gubernatorial election. Rest assured, I will be voting.
And so to your statement and the purpose of this note, that you want ‘to be able to look in the eyes of the victims of cases such as this, with the knowledge and reassurance that we are and have done all that we can to eliminate this kind of conduct from our society,’ or words to that effect. Such a statement gives me pause, sir. It gives me pause because it did indeed seem sincere. Such a sincerity is of course only reasonable. Any individual possessed of a modicum of compassion must feel tremendous grief when confronted with such senseless loss, to say nothing of the cause and manner in which innocence has, in this instance, been so coldly trampled. And so I must proceed with this underlying premise as a given, that the desire to so act is indeed sincere.
But can this sincere desire translate into concrete action?
Some might suggest, as I have myself in the past, that the problem is simply one of sentencing. The act of abduction and rape speaks of such a callus indifference toward the suffering of others, and suggests such a lack of compassion and empathy for the human condition that it is difficult to envision how someone might conclude any kind of treatment could ever possibly be effective. No sir, I do not believe treatment for such individuals is ever likely to succeed. I believe such a suggestion is a fallacy, a red herring, clothed in the vestments of ‘tolerance’ and ‘understanding’ which shroud a convoluted path of reason and justification for the methodology of behavioral conditioning.
Let us have sentencing. Let us have sentencing that is appropriate. I would indeed suggest hanging, but I note the Supreme Court recently issued a decision on that matter which would seem to forestall the possibility.
If such an approach seems in your view too simplistic; if to revamp our sentencing procedures to ensure that such individuals never return to society where they may prey at will seems too medieval for this enlightened age, then let me suggest a further course of action which may help illuminate how we came to be where we are, which may in its turn suggest a way forward.
I do not believe it is sufficient to examine our ‘treatment methodology’ without also examining the entire breadth of research into human sexuality that has taken place within the last twenty or more years. Such an examination must include not only what has been learned, but how has this knowledge been gained, and to what applications has this knowledge been put.
These questions arise due to an event that I witnessed on Church Street in Burlington, Vermont, in 1997.
Three college aged women were walking toward me. I distinctly heard one of them say a single phrase, three times. Each time she said it, her pronunciation changed slightly.
“Sex experiment.”
“Shex-speriment.”
“Shakespeare-ament.”
In the days that followed I seemed to be surrounded by cameras, various ‘flags’ colored red, vague and anonymous verbal suggestions, visual stimuli sexual in nature. I also noted certain areas surrounding Church Street seemed to be papered with billboards urging women to ‘take back the night’ as if these areas were ‘hot spots’ where rape was becoming a common occurrence. Clark Street for example, which as it happens was only one block away from the location where a young woman from Barre, Vermont had her life changed completely and forever as a result of brain injury sustained in the course of a brutal sexual assault.
In the weeks and months that followed I witnessed many things, and I heard many more. But what I heard most clearly was the deafening silence surrounding behavioral conditioning and human engineering.
Were I an individual of some other character, then I would suggest the possibility of behavioral control through human engineering, and such a program would necessitate a deep understanding of human sexuality and sexual expression. Such an understanding would be fundamental to this kind of program, and for very good reason. Such a program would be anathema to a society ”dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Therefore the program itself must in so far as possible, render itself completely deniable. It is always thus in the most elegant of seductions.
I am not of some other character and so I will not make such a suggestion. Nor is there any need. I am neither a genius nor a visionary, and what I will not suggest has already been done. Those who have embarked on this course are a thing more vile, more reprehensible, more reprobate, than the sexual predator himself.
I do not suggest that Brooke Bennett was victimized by such a program, for I do not know. I only know that with any complex piece of machinery, timing is everything. I also know the Supreme Court issued a ruling very shortly before she disappeared. Sexual predators will not hang on the branch of Justice.
Perhaps these eminent scholars of law prefer the fruit of lynching.
Sincerely,
D. Winter