Emily's Post: Post-primary thoughts and the sexting Calumet County DA

Totally effed up

On a far less funny note:

Here's a hypothetical situation and question for you all: Say there's a young woman who goes to the state to prosecute an ex-boyfriend who physical abused her. Tried to strangle her to death, even. During the process, the district attorney assigned to her case begins sending the young woman dozens of texts, each trying to coax her into a sexual relationship with him.

Would this be appropriate in any professional setting, let alone one where the instigator is 1) older, 2) married, 3) in the power position of representing this woman's case in court? No, of course not.

Wouldn't it then follow that said instigator should face serious disciplinary action, if not a criminal conviction of some sort? You'd think so, anyway.

Only that hypothetical story is exactly what happened to 26-year-old Stephanie Van Groll. The difference, of course, is that the district attorney-in this case Calumet County DA Kenneth Kratz-was not given official punishment. Aside from it being "suggested" by the Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation that he recuse himself from handling Van Groll's case and step down from being a member of the Crime Victims Rights Board, the only serious punishment Kratz received was the public embarrassment of having his creepy, vainglorious sexts published for all the world to read. Why? Because, as the DCI explained, they "didn't think he did anything criminally wrong."

Bull.

This guy took advantage both of his position and an already vulnerable client and he did so knowing full-well that it was wrong. Take a look at one of his messages to Van Groll: "Are you the kind of girl that likes secret contact with an older married elected DA… the riskier the better?" It's not a leap of any kind to assume Kratz knew exactly what he was doing.

And yet the DA still has his job, his $105,000 annual salary, and still intends to run for reelection in 2012. Upstanding citizen that he is. Van Groll, on the other hand, has to live with the fact that Kratz got away with the whole thing in the broad light of day.

All of this is, depressingly, yet another example of the way in which our society all-too-often turns its back on victims of abuse especially sexual, and especially that aimed at women (though certainly not exclusively abuse of men and boys tends to be woefully underrepresented in our national dialogue). Whether we admit it aloud or not, the "boys will be boys" attitude is still firmly entrenched in our collective consciousness.

It is way past the time when situations like this should be even remotely acceptable, or swept under the rug.