Parsons’ Column Reeks of Classism

Re “How Steep a Price for 3 Teens’ Foul Acts?” Jan. 31:

What decade or century is Dana Parsons living in? According to police, three 17-year-olds drug a 16-year-old girl, rape her on a pool table and penetrate her with both ends of a cue stick while she is unconscious -- and they shouldn’t go to trial, even, much less do any prison time? This based on the “She was asking for it” theory because the girl supposedly had sex with one of the boys a week earlier, wasn’t wearing any underwear and had told someone that she wanted to be a porn star when she grew up? If they thought she consented to what they did, they would not have had to drug her.

I detect an unpleasant odor of classism. The boys were in a Corona del Mar home belonging to the father of one of them. The girl drove from her job in Riverside, equaling a poorer, darker-skinned person? If the case involved a cheerleader daughter of a prominent businessman from Newport Beach who had found herself in the same situation with three indigent boys in Riverside, can you honestly say you would have published this “Boys will be boys” garbage?

The victim deserves her day in court, and I hope she will hold her head up high and tell the prosecutor to stick to her guns and go ahead and try the case. If they are acquitted, they are acquitted. But to advocate just letting them go without allowing the process to work itself out is heinous. If you feel the potential penalties they face are too great, advocate that they be reduced, but for everyone, not just some.

Mary Michel Green

San Clemente