I read PZ Myers’s recent item The Real Cancel Culture about the attempt to ban and burn books in Spotsylvania, Virginia. Especially about a book with a positive message for children who have been survived emotional and sexual abuse.
My immediate response was to ask, “I’ll bet a few baptist pastors in that town have abused children”.
Nope. It was far worse.
I searched for news articles and expected to find one or two recent articles about sexual abuse in that county. Instead it was a wall of stories, serial sexual abuse of children and other crimes. What the hell is wrong with people there that they are more concerned about a book in a school library? For a county of only 136,000 Spotsylvania has a serious problem that they seem unwilling to deal with, and would rather keep kids ignorant and vulnerable than protect and empower them with knowledge.
All these cases happened in Spotsylvania, and all involve different perpetrators.
2020: Former Spotsylvania church music director pleads guilty to molesting child
2019: Virginia man gets multiple life sentences for recording repeated child rape and Virginia man raped child in RV ‘sex dungeon’ (same perpetrator)
2018: Man convicted of rape in Spotsylvania
2017: Former softball coach faces 12 additional sex assault charges in Spotsylvania
2015: Sexual Assault Arrest In Spotsylvania
2015: Spotsylvania youth volunteer charged with sexual assault of minors
2012: Four Charged in Spotsy Rape Investigation
2012: Kyle Spencer Thom arrested for allegedly raping 12-year-old girl
2010: Teen Volunteer Alleges Firehouse Sexual Harassment
2009: 3 teens charged with sexual assault of Spotsylvania girl, 15
2009: Spotsylvania man arrested for rape and petit larceny
2007: Virginia Teen Charged With Raping, Killing Sister, Beating Toddler Niece With Sledgehammer
2003: Court document (PDF) involving a cop raping a teenage girl
1999: Richard Evonitz was a serial rapist and serial killer who lived in that county
1999: Man Charged in Slaying Of Va. Woman in 1990 (the crime included sexual assault)
The same crap that is going on everywhere else in the USA. (I’ll speculations about Canada to you, Rhiannon) The only thing that is changed is that they’re getting caught somewhat more often now.
BTW, as far as I can tell, the perpetrators are all men. Toxic masculinity, maybe?
Of the articles I cited, one (the softball coach) was a woman.
I’ve mentioned before where I used to live. Between the Highway of Tears (over 100 murdered women and three serial killers), residential school and an archbishop twice convicted of raping women, it was just as horrible. Only with a smaller population than Spotsylvania.
This is some good investigation, Rhiannon. I wish there was a way to get it posted out to a wider audience — it looks like the kind of thing that gets forwarded around a lot once it passes a certain threshhold.
This was minimal effort, it barely qualifies as investigation. I typed in google, no quotation marks:
[ spotsylvania virginia sexual abuse pastor ]
And a literal mountain of stuff came out, just the first three pages of results. There was probably more.
There are awful people everywhere I live one town over from where Harold Shipman, a GP, murdered over two hundred of his mostly elderly patients. But people in the UK like to think of serial killers as an American phenomenom. 🙁