Recently, Bangkok dared to point out that the USA may be a little harsher than other countries in their prosecution and punishment for people who violate the age of consent laws.
Naturally, just for bringing up the subject, people started accusing him of supporting pedophiles. Actually, he was not supporting pedophilia. He pointed out obvious things. Which is one culture’s criminal pedophilia, is another culture’s legal right.
FR advises readers to abide by the age of consent laws in their home jurisdiction. Do not adopt the adage, “When in Rome” – which has an age of consent of 14 – “do as the Romans do.”
When traveling – abide by whichever is higher: the age of consent of your home or the locality where you are traveling.
Some Muslim countries, such as Iran, Qatar, Yemen, and Afghanistan, have no age of consent – as long as you are married.
Premarital sex is against the law. Some Muslims found a loophole in this comparatively restrictive law.
A temporary Muslim marriage permit is available when two impassioned people of opposite genders can pay a cleric to marry them temporarily and enjoy what is promised as Allah-condoned sex.
Temporary marriages can be for a few weeks or hours.
People call Keith Raniere a pedophile mainly because he had sexual relations with Camila, a Mexican girl, when she was 15. The conduct occurred in New York State, where the age of consent is 17.
Mexican prison gangs were out to hunt and harm him in prison because he raped a 15-year-old. In Mexico, the age of consent is 12.
Now let us hear from Peter Longworth on this topic and other topics that interest him, and will, no doubt, interest readers.
By Peter Longworth
Bangkok’s Good and Bad Points on Age of Consent
Bangkok’s article Raniere’s Rape of 15 Year Old Not a Crime in Most European Countries – But Raniere Gets 120 Years raises important but contentious issues.
Good Points
* Age specifications for consent can be arbitrary
Raniere would not be a pedophile in these [and other] countries, where the age of consent is 15 or lower:
France, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Greece, Iceland, Sweden, Portugal, Austria, Croatia, Czech, Costa Rica, Honduras, Uruguay, Thailand, China, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Japan, Philippines, and Mexico.
Reform
There is little doubt that the US prison system at both state and federal levels needs urgent reform.
Convictions and imprisonment of people who are close in age to the victim, where the relationship is not considered exploitative, may not serve either the interests of those involved or society at large.
The law can sometimes be a blunt instrument.
Not so good points
Raniere’s sentence was not solely based on Cami’s exploitation by a much older man with nefarious motives. Such aggravating factors would likely have placed him at the higher end of the sentencing spectrum, even in European courts.
Ghislaine Maxwell
I’m not convinced Ghislaine Maxwell would have fared better in European courts.
She was trafficking young girls on an industrial scale to a much older exploitative man, some as young as 14, over a prolonged period.
The corruption of so many innocents never goes down well with the media or public.
Ghislaine Maxwell invited teenage girls from low-income families to have a gander at the lifestyle she enjoyed. For little effort, on behalf of a beneficent gentlemen of her acquaintance, they might also be poolside.
Raniere’s Interminable Sentence
The length of Keith Raniere’s sentence is perhaps reflective of the considerable danger he poses to the public, and the very large number of lives he effectively ruined through indoctrination and exploitation.
That said, I would not oppose his release on humanitarian grounds when he’s close to death at an advanced age.
Clare Bronfman – What Did She Know?
Did Clare fall for Raniere’s shtick, or was she just as evil as him?
Was she a dumb-ass, or a fiendishly accomplished manipulator? Was she always looking for a Raniere type to do her bidding, or was she corralled by him into his own reckless ventures?
It’s really hard to come to definitive answers.
Even insiders will no doubt have their differing opinions.
You can also think as a continuum, with the truth somewhere in between.
However, there’s always going to be some kind of interaction between two people that impacts the direction of both of them.
Whatever the case, there is no doubt that, like the Dead-enders, her devotion to, and belief in Raniere bordered on the pathological.
MK10ART’s Clare Bronfman
What we can say with certainty is that the whole NXIVM operation required both Raniere and Bronfman. She bankrolled him and he called the shots.
He lost $66M dollars of hers and her sister’s money in commodities trading. That can’t have gone unnoticed. And yet the money continued to flow in.
Did NXIVM / ESP ever make profits?
Tax records seem to suggest otherwise. It’s anyone’s guess how much Clare knew about DOS, but surely she must have known something.
Perhaps it’s hyperbolic to claim they ruined the world: we all bear some responsibility for that. Their collective action did ruin many people’s worlds, though.
Like any major investor in a new company, she no doubt claimed to her friends that everything was going swimmingly until they ran into a bit of a branding issue.
By MK10 ART
DOS tried to make their mark and uniquely brand their company.
Keith and Toni and Sartre
Frank wrote, “Most of all, I imagine two men in cramped quarters with nothing to do day after day who can’t escape each other. There is nowhere to go.”
As Jean-Paul Sartre famously put it: L’enfer c’est les autres.
Toni Fly and Keith Raniere together in the SHU
