This story is horrific:
Having sex with a drunken 14-year-old he had plied with alcohol was not a criminal offense by former Calgary man, a judge ruled yesterday.
Justice Peter McIntyre said there was insufficient evidence the girl didn’t consent to having sex with Trevor Byron Niebergall.
But McIntyre did find Niebergall guilty of sexual assault for placing his genitals on the girl’s face after she passed out — an act the offender captured on his cellphone camera and showed to co-workers.
McIntyre said the fact the teenage complainant didn’t remember her sexual encounter with Niebergall at a December 2005 New Year’s Eve party did not mean she hadn’t consented.
There are so many rape myths working against this poor girl the whole thing is a disaster. This man committed the very definition of rape however will go unprosecuted because the judge found it more important to shame the victim than prosecute her assaulter. This girl was victim of an intentional crime: Niebergall got her drunk, had sex with her, took pictures, and then sexually assaulted her further. And yet the word rape is not used once in this article. As soon as I find out how to contact this asshole judge I’ll be informing him of a few things:
1. A 14 year-old is a child. While she is at the age of consent, she is not likely to be able to defend herself from this kind of attack.
2. No one can give consent when they’re drunk. Not young girls, slutty girls, good Catholic girls, or men. No one. It’s in this document called the Criminal Code of Canada you might want to check out.
3. Having sex with someone when they cannot consent is rape. It’s not a fucking misunderstanding.
What makes this whole case even worse is that the judge seems to think because the victim was drinking she deserved what happened to her:
The complainant was not forced to consume alcohol — she drank … beer willingly and then switched to alcohol. It is not at all clear why she drank so heavily.
What, no comment about how short her skirt was? She drank heavily because she’s a teenager at a party. Should all young girls be put in lockdown on New Years Eve lest they have too much fun and invite rapists to take advantage of them? What happened here is no one’s fault but the perpetrator and to imply otherwise is misogynist and setting a dangerous precedent.
July 18, 2008 at 2:23 am
Ugh…that just makes me sick…to think that people still blame the victim for these things…I don’t know about Canada, but in the USA it is illegal to drink anything until you are at least 21…here he would have been in trouble for statutory rape at the least and contributing to the delinquency of a minor for giving her liquor if not rape itself…
Of course, maybe the Judge had done something similar and is trying to actually ease his own conscious?
:-/
July 18, 2008 at 1:34 pm
“No one can give consent when they’re drunk. No one. It’s in this document called the Criminal Code of Canada you might want to check out.”
Where does it say that?
July 22, 2008 at 3:59 am
Hi RP. The definition of consent is buried down in section 153:
3) No consent is obtained, for the purposes of this section, if
(a) the agreement is expressed by the words or conduct of a person other than the complainant;
(b) the complainant is incapable of consenting to the activity;
(c) the accused counsels or incites the complainant to engage in the activity by abusing a position of trust, power or authority;
(d) the complainant expresses, by words or conduct, a lack of agreement to engage in the activity; or
(e) the complainant, having consented to engage in sexual activity, expresses, by words or conduct, a lack of agreement to continue to engage in the activity.
__________________
(b) “incapable” is usually interpreted as being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or having a mental or physical disability.
July 23, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Jane Doe: Yes, that whole thing was disgusting. I actually couldn’t even read the whole article in the paper it infuriated me so much. I can’t count the number of times Calgary judges point their dirty rotten fingers at young girls and call them stupid, promiscuous, and negligent. I can just hear the guy and his cronies chuckling over a slap on the wrists with a tea bagging charge.
July 30, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Score one more for the “slut shamers” in this country. Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting. Especially when you consider that a judge is the highest paid position someone can get in Canada (besides being a corporate whore).
SHAME!
July 30, 2009 at 10:02 pm
“(b) “incapable” is usually interpreted as being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or having a mental or physical disability.”
Well they were both drunk…who raped whom?