Make no mistake, what Eric Tillman did to his family’s 16-year-old babysitter is disgusting and wrong. It is also illegal and he admitted to it all.
But we are hearing from various sources that Tillman’s absolute discharge sends the wrong message to victims of sexual assault.
Does it?
Isn’t every situation different? Other victims of abuse probably can’t really relate to the Tillman situation because their circumstances — although they might be similar — are not exactly the same.
The only person who can truly say the sentence sends a wrong message to victims is the victim herself. And by all accounts, she is satisfied.
While a sexual assault is a physical assault, it’s much more of a mental assault. It can — and usually does — have devastating mental effects on the victim. Some last the rest of the victim’s life.
If you can put sexual assaults on a grading scale — and that’s difficult to do because the degree of severity for one person is much different for another — Tillman’s offence would be on the lower end. He grabbed the bent-over babysitter from behind and pulled her into himself.
But he chose the babysitter: not his wife, not an adult co-worker, not a family friend. He chose a 16-year-old girl. His defence was that he was “loopy” on medication at the time. And while that is an explanation, it still doesn’t explain why he chose to do this disgusting thing with the babysitter who was much younger than he.
Victim advocacy groups should stand up and denounce the sentence. That is part of their mandates.
But the public needs to put it all in context.
Should he be in jail for what he did? Ask the victim. She should have had some say in it all. But she chose not to do a victim impact statement and told the courts she accepted his apology.
The others hurt by this moment of gross stupidity — Tillman’s wife and other family members and the girl’s family — were also addressed in his apology outside of court.
The public at large was also included and while it was the decent thing to do (apologize to all), this was an incident between Tillman and, first and foremost, his victim and both their immediate families.
The public is most certainly entitled to an opinion on the matter, but that opinion should not factor into sentencing. The guilty plea, reading in of the facts and the depth of the disgust from this act should be tempered with Tillman’s profound apology and the fact he takes full responsibility for his actions.
We do not need to create more victims.
