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18 INLANDER APRIL 13, 2017
When he was caught on tape saying his stardom allowed him to grab women’s vaginas with impunity, Donald Trump brushed off his comments as “locker room” talk. GAGE SKIDMORE PHOTO
All the President’s Words A local judge cites an unlikely source — Donald Trump — when ruling on the assault of a teenage girl BY MITCH RYALS
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wo weeks before President Donald Trump designated April as National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, a Spokane judge invoked Trump’s lewd statements about grabbing women’s genitals without their consent in deciding the seriousness of an assault on a 15-year-old girl. Local sexual assault victim advocates and a member of the Spokane chapter of the National Organization for Women echo the judge’s comments about the influence of pop culture on adolescent boys and girls. They call for more education in public school curricula on sexual boundaries and possibly a change in state law. The case, which was first reported last week on Inlander.com, stems from an incident caught on a security camera at North Central High School. Footage shows a 16-year-old boy touch the girl’s butt and grab her genitals three times. The teenage boy was convicted of misdemeanor assault. However, citing a lack of evidence — as well as pop-culture references such as hip-hop artists grabbing their crotches during a Saturday Night Live performance and Trump’s secretly recorded Access Hollywood comments — Superior Court Judge James Triplet absolved the teenage boy of any sexual motivation attached to the crime. “Our president openly brags that he can grab women by the ‘pussy’ — his words — whenever
he wants to, because that’s what people who are powerful and rich get to do,” Triplet said from the bench after finding the boy guilty of assault. For advocates, the case raises questions about protection for sexual assault victims under the law, the extent to which popular culture is responsible for blurring the lines of appropriate behavior, and whether or not grabbing a girl’s genitals is an inherently sexual act. “The bottom line is that there are so many things in our society and culture that are done that cross the line regarding appropriate behavior,” Triplet said in court. “Yet our society allows that risqué and sexually explicit behavior to be modeled to our children, who are developing physically, emotionally, and with respect to their maturity. They often watch these public figures to determine what’s hip, what’s OK or what’s acceptable.”
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he case dates back to June 2016, when the teenage boy and the victim are hanging out one Friday after school. She is sitting on a bench, and he is “dancing and spinning” in front of her, “trying to make [her] laugh,” the boy testifies during trial. The two are not dating, though they know each other. The boy playfully taps the side of the girl’s head, and she does the same back to him. The boy pokes her stomach and hips, then grabs her