Father Fights Child Support Demands On Grounds That He Was Raped

[yolland]

St. Petersburg (FL) Times, July 31

Here's what's certain about the Hudson High School romance of Kris Bucher and Jessica Fuller: They dated, on and off, for three years. On Jan. 6, 2006, when he was still 17 and she was 18, they had sex in the back seat of a car and made a baby she named Joshua. A paternity test confirmed Kris was the father. Kris was not present at Joshua's birth. He did not contribute anything—not time, not money—to Joshua's care. Jessica never asked Kris for help.

In March 2009, Kris got a letter from the state of Michigan. Jessica had moved there and gone on welfare and Michigan wanted Kris to start paying child support. Kris hired a lawyer. He said he shouldn't have to pay child support because he never wanted the baby. Jessica, he said, raped him.

Around the country there are plenty of cases of underage boys who got a woman pregnant and then tried to avoid paying child support. The 15-year-old in California who was seduced by the 34-year-old mom next door. The 13-year-old boy in Kansas who had sex with his 17-year-old babysitter. The 15-year-old boy in Florida who impregnated a 20-year-old. Under a strict interpretation of the law, these boys, by virtue of their age, were raped. But family courts have seen these incidents for what they were[?]: consensual sexual encounters. And as a result, they have ordered the boys to pay child support. The baby is the innocent one, judges say. One court put it this way: If the sex was voluntary, then the parenthood is also.

Kris says his case is different. He's not fighting the child support because he was underage. He's fighting, he says, because he said "no" to the sex.

Jessica remembers the exact date she first met him in the halls of Hudson High School. It was Aug. 25, 2003, her freshman year. "You don't know it yet, but you are my future boyfriend," she said to him a day later.

The following morning, he was waiting for her at her bus and by lunch time, they were inseparable. Kris had never had a girlfriend before. He wore glasses and was kind of geeky. She was outgoing and had auburn hair and hazel eyes. His world shrank. She was it. Their relationship was tumultuous. They fought, broke up and always reconnected. In between, she dated other boys. They joined the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps at their high school. They talked about one day getting married, having kids. They first had sex in early May 2005 in the back seat of his 1997 Mazda 626. He was 17, she was 17. She got pregnant later that year, but miscarried two months later.

On Jan. 6, 2006, Jessica and Kris fought and she broke up with him again. He was in love, he said, and he begged her not to leave him. So she invited him to her church youth group meeting that night. Their friends drove, but the church was closed, so they headed to Hudson Beach in Pasco County. The other couple went for a walk. Kris and Jessica sat in the back seat. He said he was looking out the window at the smooth water when she got on top of him and said: "You know you want me." The passenger seat in front of him was tilted back at a 45-degree angle. She used one arm to pin him down, he said, the other to unzip his pants. At the time, he said, he was 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds and she was heavier.

"At any time do you make a statement to her about you will not have sexual intercourse with her?" asked his lawyer, Kerry O'Connor, at the hearing.

"I told her, 'No, I do not want this.' And that's when she said, 'It's going to happen.' "

"And did you specifically use the word 'no'? "

"Absolutely...several times." He said he tried to push Jessica off. He said he tried to pull the door handle to open the car door. He said she slammed her hand over the lock. He said it was over pretty fast. He got out of the car, sat on the tailgate with his head in his hands. Their friends returned and he said nothing. They dropped him at his house.

Did you go to the police immediately? his lawyer asked. "No, I did not," he responded. Kris said he called the Sheriff's Office a few weeks later and spoke to a deputy. The deputy seemed to doubt him but said he would follow up. He never did and neither did Kris. "At this point, I was a senior in high school. I didn't want to lose respect amongst friends. I was in a respected position in JROTC. I didn't want to lose that. I didn't want any kind of unwanted attention drawn to me."

In February 2006, Kris said, he and Jessica sat down on the soft brown couch in the living room of his parents' home in Brooksville. They told his parents that Jessica was pregnant. How did this happen? his mother asked. The doctor had told them to be careful. They had agreed to refrain from sex.

Kris, his mother and his father all say that at that moment, Jessica admitted that she forced Kris to have sex against his will. "I made him," Connie Bucher recalls her saying. Kris' dad, Steve Bucher, was initially skeptical, but he didn't say anything. "How does a girl rape a guy? I just couldn't see that," he said in a recent interview.

Experts say it is physically possible for a man to be raped by a woman, or, put another way, to get an erection without wanting to have sex. "Teenagers, in particular, often have an uncontrollable genital response," says Debby Herbenick, a research scientist in sexual health at Indiana University..."Many men, for example, recall getting erections when they felt scared, angry, or even nervous—like having to go up to the chalkboard to write out a math problem," she said. "And certainly seeing someone naked could lead them to get an erection."

There are statutes addressing child support if a man rapes a woman, said O'Connor, Kris' lawyer. But not if a woman rapes a man. Was it fair for the court to order the victim of a crime to compensate the perpetrator? O'Connor asked. "I know society does not believe, I think overwhelmingly, that a man can be the subject of an involuntary sexual battery," she said. "And that is unfortunate because my client is."

In a phone interview from her home in Michigan, Jessica, now 23, pregnant and engaged to another man, acknowledges a lot of things. That she got on top of Kris in the back seat of the car and initiated sex that night. That Kris stopped them in the middle and raised questions about whether they should continue. "I didn't get off him and he didn't push me off." They remained together, Jessica said, for about a month afterward, until Kris discovered that Jessica had had sex with another guy that same night. They didn't see each other much after that.

...Jessica said she didn't [initially] go after child support because she was hoping that one day Kris would want something to do with Joshua, who is now 4..."If for some reason they ever found me guilty of raping him, my whole career would be completely destroyed, I'd be put in jail and the children would go in foster care," she said. "To destroy my entire family for the simple thing that he didn't want to pay child support, that's a very selfish thing to do."

Two months ago, Kris, now 23, was dealt a setback. His request to dismiss the child support case was denied. In rejecting the claim, a Hernando County hearing officer pointed to cases of the 13-year-old boy in Kansas, the 15-year-old in California, a 15-year-old in Florida—all of whom were underage when they had consensual sex with women who got pregnant. "Like the other states, Florida has an interest in requiring parents to support their children," the hearing officer wrote.

Left open was the question of consent. "The crux of the tension here," said Ruth Jones, a professor of law at McGeorge Law School in Sacramento, Calif., "is if...he is a victim of forcible rape, is that sufficient to alleviate him from the responsibility of child support?"

There is a case that deals with this. It's not exactly like Kris' case, but similar. It involves a 34-year-old man from Alabama who passed out at a party. A woman had sex with him while he was unconscious and she got pregnant. The court ordered him to pay child support.

Kris earns $21,000 a year working with his dad's water conditioning company. This past week, he married another woman who has two kids. The amount of child support he owes has never been calculated. But he said he has spent about $5,000 to fight it. He had to decide recently if he wanted to appeal the case to the 5th District Court of Appeal. He decided to keep going, he said, because he feels like he's being punished for something Jessica did.

He says he knows it sounds harsh, but he doesn't want anything to do with Joshua. Ever. "He was the result of something traumatic in my life, and I don't think I could bring myself to be a parent," Kris said. "It's not fair to him. It's not his fault."

If it weren't archived, I'd been considering bumping this old thread to post this article in, because the nature of the alleged non-consensuality here reminded me of that (what national attention this case has attracted thus far has, unsurprisingly, focused on the relative novelty of a man claiming to have been raped by a woman). But beyond that, one could also question the soundness of the precedent established by the aforementioned cases where boys/men were compelled to pay child support for children conceived with a female rapist/molester.

(The article, I know, is written in an annoyingly sentimental style, but it's by far the most detailed one I've seen on this case.)

 

[trojanchick99]

She sounds awful and should have probably been put in jail. If it were up to me he wouldn't have to pay child support. It's sad that he felt he couldn't go to the authorities, but not surprising.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

She sounds awful and should have probably been put in jail.

After reading the article I agree. His description definitely sounds like rape.

 

[yolland]

I don't think there's any chance of that; the statute of limitations for "involuntary sexual battery" in Florida would be 4 years, according to what I looked up. So the court would only be considering whether the alleged circumstances of conception (and it's not clear to me how fully their two stories agree on that, or how much any differences might matter) would let him off the hook for child support. Since existing precedents include such verdicts as a 15-year-old boy's family being compelled to pay child support to his 35-year-old convicted statutory rapist (which morally speaking seems rather outrageous to me, given the flagrant criminality involved), this guy's prospects wouldn't seem very good. Which I guess underlines how heavy an emphasis the law places on putting the child's needs first.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Which I guess underlines how heavy an emphasis the law places on putting the child's needs first.

I just don't get how someone who says this.. "He says he knows it sounds harsh, but he doesn't want anything to do with Joshua. Ever. "He was the result of something traumatic in my life, and I don't think I could bring myself to be a parent," Kris said. "It's not fair to him. It's not his fault."

can be compelled by any court to financially support a child. Inherent bias and I would guess possibly a reluctance to believe that he could have been raped, or that any man can be raped by a woman. I mean come on, a man who was unconscious and a woman had sex with him has to pay child support-in that Alabama case?

Let's be honest, look at that other thread and some of the responses. Even when it's an older woman having sex with a minor boy, a child-it's not even considered to be molestation or rape by some people. It's "hot", she's "hot", the boy must want it, what a fantasy. So you take two people the same age or nearly the same age and the guy just automatically must want the sex at any and all opportunities? A guy would never not want sex, right? And he's making all that up to avoid paying child support?

Sort of crickets and no male opinions about this one

 

[Cityman84]

The misconception that women cannot be sexual deviants is deeply ingrained in the prevailing mentality in all the English speaking countries, to the extent that until very recently it was literally impossible for any deviant woman to be convicted for sexually abusing anyone, whatever the age and gender of the victim and it was also impossible for the victims to receive help or support. There was a rather shocking example of a little girl who was sexually abused by a deviant woman and she, the victim was put in a mental institution for forty years for complaining whereas the perpetrator got off scott free.

Getting back to the case of this thread, popular perceptions of woman on man rape manage the difficult feat of being even worse than popular perceptions of man on man rape. Dr Helen Smith posted an article about a man who survived being raped by a woman and it received a lot of ignorant and nasty comments:

Pajamas Media � Ask Dr. Helen: Can a Man Be Raped by a Woman?

The majority of men refuse to believe that being raped by a woman is possible INCLUDING some men who have been victims.

The vast majority of women refuse point blank to acknowledge that female on male rape is possible INCLUDING women who have been perpetrators.

Even if Kris could prove the events in his allegations took place, it wouldn't do him any good.

 

[Pearl]

I remember Details magazine once ran a story about college girls raping guys, and how those guys found it hard to understand that they were raped. They were confused over whether they had got laid or was it something else they couldn't put their finger on. It was a sad read.

 

[Jive Turkey]

The obvious difference between a female being raped and a male being raped is arousal. It's a requirement for the latter, but not necessarily the former. So I completely understand a man who is confused over whether he was raped or not. Can rape still be pleasurable I guess is the question

 

[Cityman84]

Actually a man can be raped by another man without being aroused! And he could also be raped by a woman shoving anything other than a penis into his rectum without his being aroused first.

 

[Jive Turkey]

Actually a man can be raped by another man without being aroused! And he could also be raped by a woman shoving anything other than a penis into his rectum without his being aroused first.

I know that, but the original article and responses here have implied vaginal penetration. I don't think our friend up there ended up with a kid by having a dildo stuck up his ass

 

[Dfit00]

Teenage pregnancy and its consequences wouldn't be a major issue if the involved teens were rich or if their families were rich.

 

[maycocksean]

The obvious difference between a female being raped and a male being raped is arousal. It's a requirement for the latter, but not necessarily the former. So I completely understand a man who is confused over whether he was raped or not. Can rape still be pleasurable I guess is the question

I think most of us men have had unintentional arousal. It's a response to stimulation, so it stands to reason that it's at least possible that a man could be aroused against his will.

 

[deep]

I don't think the 17 year old was raped by his same age regular girlfriend. Just because she was pushy and he is a bit of a whimp does not make him a rape victim.
I don't believe women that are raped achieve orgasm.

I have verbally said no to sex a few times, but the sex occurred to completion.
I guess I am a multiple rape survivor?

I have also said no to sex and gotten up and walked away.
When i said no then, it was a 100% no. And sex was not possible without my cooperation.

Even the kid's father, knows this claim is crap. And I can understand how women may be looking at this from a woman's perspective and coming to a different conclusion. I can see how a woman could be attracted to a man, but did want not to consent to sex. And that man could sense the attraction and try and force her. This is not the same thing.

 

[deep]

This guy claims he was defenseless to prevent himself from being raped?


I am not buying it.

 

[Jive Turkey]

I think most of us men have had unintentional arousal. It's a response to stimulation, so it stands to reason that it's at least possible that a man could be aroused against his will.

True, but I think aroused against your will is one thing, sufficiently aroused in the face of assault seems as though it would be very different. It would be a safe bet that fear and emotional distress would trump any feelings of arousal.

 

[Jive Turkey]

.

I have verbally said no to sex a few times, but the sex occurred to completion.

I'm sure I could say the same.

 

[deep]

I'll see you at the rape survivors anonymous meeting.

Step 1 - "We admitted we were powerless over our erect peni- that our erect peni have become unmanageable."

 

[yolland]

skeptical about this bump, but anyway

I don't believe women that are raped achieve orgasm.

It would be a safe bet that fear and emotional distress would trump any feelings of arousal.

Levin & Van Berlo, 2004 (Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine):

Ensink and Van Berlo [1999] interviewed female victims about the traumatic sequelae of their sexual assault. In this study, one of the questions asked was about physical response and/or lubrication during the assault...Out of 58 victims, 12 (21%) answered ‘‘yes’’ to this question although they experienced (mentally) the assault as dreadful. The mean age of these 12 victims was 32 (range 19–44 years). Ten were penetrated vaginally during the assault and 9 were assaulted by someone they knew. Six victims felt attracted to the perpetrator before the rape. Eight of the rapists tried to sexually arouse the woman.

Sarrel and Masters [1982] collected a case series where adult males molested by women who used forced assaults, physical restraint or believable threats of physical violence, responded sexually with an erection and were forced to undertake coital activity. More recently Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson [1994] gave a questionnaire to 204 college men who were predominantly heterosexual asking about pressured or forced sexual touch or intercourse since age 16. Some 34% had experienced coercive sexual contact, 24% from women and 4% from men. This was achieved in 88% of the reported incidents either by persuasion, bribery, intoxication, threat of love withdrawal or by force (12%). Interviews with 10 of the respondents revealed that the fear of telling others about the event was a problem. A laboratory study [Barlow, Sakheim and Beck, 1983] showed that anxiety-inducing threats of an electric shock actually enhanced erectile responses to erotic stimuli. It is clear that both young and adult males can have maintained erections not only to non-consensual sexual stimulation but even to such stimulation when they are exposed to fearsome scenarios.

[Personal communications obtained by e-mail] from three clinicians and a senior nurse therapist all involved in treating/counselling victims of sexual assault described unsolicited sexual stimuli creating sexual arousal and even orgasm. Clinician A sent the following comments: ‘‘I (have) met quite a lot of victims (males) who had the full sexual response during sexual abuse...I (have) met several female victims of incest and rape who had lubrication and orgasm.’’ Clinician B replied: ‘‘I have heard from some of my female patients that they have lubricated during rape, but not achieve orgasm. It does not mean that they could not have an orgasm.’’ Clinician C replied: ‘‘....many of us occasionally see women who experience orgasm during abusive sex...and are told by the abused that a comment from the abuser was ‘‘you must have enjoyed it--so what's the problem?’’ The senior nurse-therapist said when interviewed by one of the authors (R.J.L.): ‘‘Approximately 1 in 20 women who come to the clinic (an established NHS, CHS Sexual and Marital Relationships clinic in a large provincial English city) for treatment because of sexual abuse report that they have had an orgasm from previous unsolicited sexual arousal. It is not detailed in the (professional) literature because the victims usually do not want to tell/talk about it because they feel guilty, as people will think that if it happened they must have enjoyed it. The victims often say, 'My body let me down.'" The incidence of orgasm from unsolicited sexual arousal of approximately 5% quoted in the above interview is remarkably similar to the 4% reported by Ringrose [1977] but both sources believe that these figures are probably underestimates due to embarrassment.

‘‘Can an orgasm be induced in a subject despite their not wanting one?’’ Looking at all the available evidence (see this review) the answer appears to be ‘‘yes’’ but it will be partly dependent on the responsitivity of the individual to inhibit sexual stimuli. This varies over a wide relatively normal distribution...[T]here are excitatory and inhibitory systems in operation and the balance of these determines what occurs in any specific situation. Stimuli assessed as sexual and non-threatening activate the excitatory, those that are appraised as a threat activate the inhibitory reducing the chance of sexual arousal. Individuals, however, will vary in their ability for excitation and inhibition. The propensity for these traits can be measured by questionnaire. Thus a person with a low propensity for inhibition may become sexually aroused even by threatening sexual stimuli. Someone, however, with a high propensity for inhibition may be unable to become aroused even in relatively unthreatening situations which may lead to sexual dysfunction. A further and important aspect of the concept is that arousal induced by one type of stimulus can become recruited to activate the arousal response to another stimulus, a process described as "excitation transfer." A threatening situation could enhance the response to a coexisting sexual stimulus in individuals with a low ability to inhibit sexual responses. Kime [1993] reviewed the response to aberrant sexual behaviour that caused stress and concluded that sexual arousal and orgasm can occur.

^ The reason I post that is because I'm quite certain that many, perhaps most, women would also deny that a woman could have an orgasm during a rape, and some would deny that a woman could maintain physical arousal (lubrication, pelvic swelling etc.) during one as well--because it doesn't fit their own personal experience with unwelcome sexual encounters, or if they lack such experiences, because they're 'just sure' it wouldn't happen to them. So I'm always a bit skeptical about the ability of particular individuals, no matter how thoughtful, to adequately speak for their entire sex concerning the possible range of experiences of specific sexual situations.

This guy claims he was defenseless to prevent himself from being raped?

I am not buying it.

Legally speaking, alleged female rape victims aren't required to prove maximum attempts at physical resistance, so I'm not sure why a man should be.

I have verbally said no to sex a few times, but the sex occurred to completion.
I guess I am a multiple rape survivor?

Many women have also been in situations where "the sex occurred to completion" (with or without an orgasm) despite their having "verbally said no," yet do not personally consider that specific situation to have been rape. No one ever said that subjective consent is a simple and straightforward emotion.

 

[Liesje]

This thread is reminiscent of a really bad Law & Order: SVU episode...

 

[bono_212]

The one were the actress who would later play Alex was a rapist and goes to jail? One of the best "will anyone notice if we recast this person?" Moments ever.

 

[Liesje]

That's it!

 

[bono_212]

That episode is so bad, and super surreal if you saw it after she'd already become DA like I did. It took me a long time to figure out that she wasn't playing Alex in the episode.

Even better though, is Alfred Molina playing a cop on L&O LA when he was a serial killer in not one, but two episodes of L&O (a crossover between SVU and TBJ's premiere)

Uh...anyways...back to the topic at hand.

 

[Cityman84]

This thread shows that there are certainly men who are unwilling to acknowledge that female sexual predators even exist or that it is possible for a man to be victimised. In the UK it was actually impossible for a man to be convicted of raping another man until 1995! The problems the guy of this thread has are doubly intense. There is not only the myth that men cannot be victims, but also the myth that women cannot be perpetrators. Add to that the fact that even in cases of male on female rape, cases where the perpetrator was an ex of the victim are less likely to be recognised as rape. He never stood a chance.

 

[MadelynIris]

Surprised no one saw or posted this recent cnn story:
3 women in Zimbabwe charged in series of sex attacks on men - CNN.com

Harare, Zimbabwe (CNN) -- Police in Zimbabwe on Friday charged three women found in possession of 33 condoms containing semen with 17 counts of aggravated indecent assault in a case that may be a break in a string of sex attacks over the past two years by women targeting male hitchhikers.
Prosecutor Michael Reza told a court in Harare that the counts were for each of the 17 men who had positively identified the women as having sexually assaulted them in 2010 or 2011.
The women, all of them in their mid-20s, were arrested Sunday in Gweru, about 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Harare, when their car was involved in an accident. Police found the condoms in the women's car. Police appealed to any other victims to inform police.
The three were taken Wednesday by police to Harare.
"Since Monday, 17 men came and positively identified the women as having raped them," said a police official in Harare who refused to be identified. "Most of the men said the women would offer a drink either laced with something to tranquilize them or were forced at gunpoint."
Watch Ruparanganda, a professor of sociology at the University of Zimbabwe said : "Some sections of the society use these sperm for ritual purposes. The thinking is that it can be used for regeneration of life since they are source of life (biologically). Some people think that they can have their bad luck gone by using semen. I am sure that explains all this we have been witnessing (men being forced)."
The prosecution identified the suspects as Rosemary Chakwizira, 24, Sophie Nhokwara, 26, and her sister, Netsai Nhokwara, 24.