Menu
Your View
It used to be that rape was a very heinous offense against women, but no longer in Missouri. Today the law provides little deterrence to the sexual predator because, based on the great influence of the Kinsey Reports (1948, 1953), rape penalties were lowered from felonies to misdemeanors and, today in many states only the evidence of physical violence or death now constitutes the crime of rape.
In 1978, the Missouri Legislature took the state's highly protective and punitive rape law and trivialized it by enacting laws, procedures and plea-bargaining to a lesser offense, all tantamount to a "get out of jail free card" for sexual predators. As the 2002 Missouri General Assembly gets under way, two state representatives have proposed legislation to eliminate the three-year statute of limitations on rape and sodomy. (Based on last year's ruling by the Missouri Court of Appeals that a 1979 law revision imposed a three-year statute of limitations on the prosecution of rape cases.)
In August 2000, Concerned Women for America with a team of researchers prepared a Report of Illegitimacy and Violence in Missouri as well as five other states which revealed seriously high rates of illegitimacy, rape and sexual violence as levels skyrocketing decade by decade from very low rates in 1950. The question the Report answered was, what within the nation's legal institutions changed to account for the significant changes in the conduct of life in America regarding illegitimacy rape and sexual violence?
The research revealed that the sexual disease, dysfunction and violence against women and children is not primarily a result of changes made by an evolving culture, as many believe. Rather it is the result of a well-planned, well-executed effort to overturn 52 specific laws that protected women and children. Something didn't just happen in the 1960s, sex offense laws were quietly and undemocratically changed based on fraudulent science permitting the culture to follow. By design, women have lost the protection of the law and have little or no recourse in the law against sexual predators.
During the new session, the General Assembly needs to restore the crime of rape to a Class A Felony. However, to really do the job, Missouri state legislators need to make protections for women and children an priority by restoring the entire body of sex offense law, all changed in 1979 based on Kinsey's "junk science." That is what Missouri women really want.
Joey Davis, state director
Concerned Women for America of Missouri
119 W. Main St.
Branson, Mo. 65616