Rape Baiting and Sparkly Pink: Justice for Little Girls

Last Monday, I walked into the Gadsden Mall. Past the Sears and the Books-A-Million, I came across little girl heaven: A store with clothes that glittered and sparkled in pink and pastel greens, shimmery purses, and sequined pillows.

I looked up and saw the name of the store in lower-case hot-pink letters: justice.

Justice for sale to little girls. In the mall where Roy Moore, the deputy district attorney who was supposed to be fighting for justice for little girls and little boys had long ago been banned. Where the dirty and nightmarish memories — of a grown man walking alone through the mall on weekend nights trying to pick them up, repeatedly harassing them and stalking them while they worked, and ogling their bodies — were not washed away from the minds of little girls after more than 30 years. Those little girls who Roy Moore went after knew and still remember, as do so many in Gadsden, the creepiness and fear and terror that seep in when those in power assault instead of protect you.

Justice is a store for tweens, mainly for girls no older than 12. It has a number of sister stores across the state; the nearest to Gadsden is in Madison County. Not so far from the Justice store in Madison County, is Sparkman Middle School.

In 2010, a 14-year-old girl at Sparkman was being sexually harassed by a male classmate. Like those girls in the Gadsden mall thirty years prior, she pleaded for help. The student aide and the vice principal of the school said they could do nothing to help her unless they caught the boy in the act. So, these school administrators set up a sting operation, using the 14-year-old girl as bait. They told her to invite the boy into the bathroom, and they would come in to catch him. But they forgot. And waited too long.

The 14-year-old girl was anally raped.

The principal had a policy that “students would not be disciplined for sexual harassment unless they were ‘caught in the act’ through witnesses, an admission or physical evidence.” The school had shredded the boy’s past disciplinary records, which included reports of kissing and touching other girls in inappropriate places. The school had even assigned the boy to janitorial duty, where he could roam the halls and bathrooms alone, repeatedly harassing and stalking girls in the school.

As she was leaving the bathroom where she had just been raped, the school aide and the vice principal told the 14-year-old girl that she was also “in trouble” for having engaged in sexual activity. Even though the school had completely ignored the boy’s past history of sexual harassment, let him roam free, set her up to be assaulted by force, and then left her violated and bleeding in a school bathroom.

In 2010, a young girl didn’t wait. She didn’t hesitate to ask for help. But it only made it worse. Instead of being believed and protected, she was used as bait. And when she was raped, she was blamed. No matter that the boy had a known history of sexual harassment. No matter that other students had complained and asked for help too. No one was held accountable. The school didn’t change their policy. She moved out of Alabama. That may have been the end of the story, part of the legacy and poison that Roy Moore left up north.

Thankfully, lawyers took up her case and the United States Attorney’s office for northern Alabama, which Doug Jones had once led, got involved. And while far too late for far too many girls, the federal appeals court found that the school had engaged in “patently odious” acts that will “hopefully never be repeated.”

That’s just it. Electing Roy Moore doesn’t just tell those little girls from the Gadsden Mall — who are now grown women — that they waited too long to come forward. This election isn’t about what happened in the past. It is about whether little girls now will feel like it is okay to ask for help. It is about whether little girls now will be believed, and if they are believed, whether they will be blamed, and even if they are blamed, if they have any place to look for justice. When they are just a bit too old to pay for it in a store.

The Justice store urges young girls to live justice and give justice. On Tuesday, Alabama needs to be the place where little girls can find justice too.