Probably there has always been a cultish market for objects associated with high-profile criminals and their crimes. You can imagine ancient Romans hawking the knife that stabbed Julius Caesar or the hammer that drove the nails into the palms of Jesus Christ. Nowadays it’s the doodads that once belonged to Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy. Or perhaps Nazi memorabilia is the ultimate murder souvenir. Charles Manson didn’t kill six million people.

Ebay was already pressured a few years ago into prohibiting auctions of “murderabilia,” but where there is demand there will inevitably be supply. Prisoners, with their limited options for making money, have been only too happy to collaborate with the middlemen selling their trinkets. Probably it flatters their vanity as well. Meanwhile auction houses such as murderauction.com and prisonboundserialkillers.com have filled the void left by ebay. The items by Arohn Kee are being sold on daisyseven.com. Do a search on the site and you’ll find his “rape cards.”

The moral problems involved in murderabilia are obvious. But what about the aesthetic problems? Some years ago PervScan was at first stimulated and then disappointed to find samples of Ted Bundy’s poetry in Elizabeth Kendall’s memoir, The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy. It just wasn’t that interesting, and indeed that’s the problem with most serial killer poetry, mass murderer art, rapist fiction, etc. It isn’t very good. (Exception should be made, however, for Charles Manson in His Own Words, a brilliant and energizing book.)

In general the killer-as-creator genre forfeits aesthetics for authenticity. All that distinguishes it is the fact that the author committed a crime. And really, what sort of achievement is that? Few are the crimes about which you can say that they are brilliantly conceived. Nevertheless, murderabilia is all the rage, and it makes you wonder if there won’t come a day when so many murderers and sex criminals write stories and paint pictures that those in the fiction business won’t have any credibility unless they actually kill or rape too.

When something difficult happens in life, a do-gooder will inevitably offer up the old stand-by: “Well, it could have been worse…” But that’s not a consolation you can offer to “Kathleen,” the adolescent victim of this hit-and-rape. If she had just been raped, the do-gooder could say, “Well, you could have been run over too.” Or if she had just been run over, the do-gooder could say, “Well, you could have been raped too. Things can always be worse.” But if you combine the two, it’s tough to figure out how much worse things could be. What can the do-gooder say? “Well, it could have been worse. You might have been conscious while you were raped…” The thought isn’t especially consoling. Which do you think is worse: to be run over and then raped? Or to be raped and then run over?

Here is a picture of the dad-of-five. He does have a satanic look about him. He claims that “something overcame me,” but it’s not quite clear whether this act of possession caused him to (a) run over the young girl; (b) assault the body of the girl he’d run over; (c) both of the above. Another news report offers further details of the incident:

Kathleen was thrown five metres through the air and suffered a broken jawbone and serious brain injuries when she landed in a field.

Police commissar Werner Wojahn said: “The perpetrator dragged the bleeding girl into his car and drove to an empty parking lot.”

It was there that he raped her.

After he had sexually assaulted her, Björn P. let his young victim go and she stumbled home barefoot and badly injured while police were out searching for her.

Wojahn added: “When we found the broken bike and the shoes in the field, we thought there had been a hit and run.”

Kathleen has no recollection of what happened, but a witness put police on the right track. They traced the Renault and found the teenager’s bra in the boot.

A broken jawbone — if the devil really made him do it, he must have at least attempted oral sex with her. If you’re going to do something this evil, you might as well go all the way.

Here is a picture of the Mother of All Believers. There is also video of her at the Herald Sun.

In a way, there should be nothing shocking about this story. Read any manual on mind control. It will explain how different forms of abuse make a subject more pliable. Humiliation, privation, torture — these are all part of the brainwasher’s toolkit. Sexual abuse works too. Ever see the picture of Lynndie England and her human pyramid of naked prisoners? If the United States can engage in these moronic forms of sexual abuse, it should come as no surprise that less democratic countries up the ante. Rape women to soften them up for suicide bombing? If you accept the premise that suicide bombers are needed for a “higher” purpose, then there’s a twisted logic to it. And doubtless there was no shortage of male volunteers to lend momentum to the enterprise.

If these rape victims were willing to throw their lives away, why didn’t they target the ones really committing the abuse? That’s the surprising thing. Why didn’t they strap on the bomb belt and go after the rapists or the Mother of All Believers? That they didn’t makes you wonder about the brainwashing that has occurred throughout their lives — and makes you wonder whether the Mother of All Believers didn’t oblige her assistant rapists to don American uniforms when going out to recruit, with the hammer blows of their penises, future bombers.

(Thanks to the person or persons who sent this — twice — using an anonymous remailer.)

Usually pregnant women bring out the chivalry in the people around them. Men open doors, women offer their seats on buses and trains, grandparents smile happily and make chitchat about whether the expectant mother hopes for a boy or a girl. (Does any parent ever hope for a hermaphrodite?) This chivalry seemingly represents the noblest of human qualities, a solicitude toward children, babies, mothers, and the perpetuation of the species. When you hold the door for a pregnant woman, it’s like saying, “Yes, I want the human race to carry on. I believe in life…”

For this reason, it’s especially unsettling when a pregnant woman is attacked. It’s one thing to get off to “prego porn” or to find pregnant women arousing. It’s another thing to assault a pregnant woman, thereby jeopardizing not only her but her baby’s welfare. Perhaps there is no purer expression of nihilism. It’s like saying, “No, I don’t believe in life. Fuck you and your unborn child. I don’t want the human race to carry on…” Doubtless this is why the Manson murders — and particularly that of the very pregnant Sharon Tate — still resonate so strongly with people. It wasn’t just a life that was taken. It was a deeply disturbing proclamation about the valuelessness of life itself.

(Thanks for the link to Chad from Sunderland, who wrote that “giving it a ‘war tactic’ status may make it more of an excusable thing in times of war. They should change its status back to RAPE, pure and simple. Anyone guilty of it, whether during a war or not, should recieve the highest possible punishment for that crime.”)

To declare rape a “war tactic” is rather like declaring murder a war tactic. Of course it’s a war tactic. Where there is war, there is sexual violence. You can read about it in the most ancient works of history. Although a modern scholar asserts that “it is by no means clear that the Greeks had a conception of rape at all similar to ours,” Herodotus describes how Persian soldiers murdered some Phocian women “with the multitude of those that raped them.” (Herodotus 8.33) It half makes you wonder if the first wars were fought less for territory or gold than for tail. Helen was the object of dispute in the Trojan war. What stronger motivation could there be for killing than fucking? Or to look at it another way, how better inspire men to kill for an abstraction — the state — than to offer them the most concrete reward of all?

Evidently the point of declaring rape a “war tactic” is to say that it’s something more than a “boys will be boys” thing. It’s a deliberate means of subjugating and humiliating an enemy. That makes sense — but wouldn’t it make even more sense to declare it not a war tactic but a war crime? After all, soldiers and leaders can be arrested for war crimes. But who’s ever been hauled into a world court for a war tactic? Nobody. It’s difficult to see how this resolution will have the slighest effect except possibly to make the military more appealing to the very men who dream of rape.

(Thanks to Furpo for the link.)

From a purely philosophical standpoint, it’s too bad that a guy was involved in the story. It changes the whole thing. He got his rape pleasure first. “Roles were then reversed” — well, not really. The victim didn’t force the male rapist to give her head. What happened was the rapist, in a jovial post-climax mood, probably thought it would be a hoot to force the victim to give head to his female friend. That’s not a pure woman-on-woman rape. It’s more like a side effect, perhaps even a girl-on-girl scene arranged for the man’s benefit. One hundred dollars says that that’s what the woman rapist will claim in court: she was a victim too, it was all the dude’s fault, boo hoo hoo.

A pure woman-on-woman rape is more arresting to contemplate — for the simple reason that it’s more rare. It does happen from time to time, but it’s like a woman with a full beard. It’s an aberration. You have to wonder, though, if women wouldn’t be better served with stronger rape impulses. For years, even centuries, societies have tried to combat sex crime by suppressing the urges of men. Clearly that doesn’t work too well. Why not try a real role reversal? If women committed more rapes and thereby taught men — and other women — that being violated is not so pleasant, maybe men wouldn’t be so quick to rape anymore.

Here is an image of the poster. (It’s safe for work, since in England it’s being displayed in public anyway.) It shows a seedy hotel with a door that says “model employment.” And we all know what those “models” do — serve “punters.” That’s British slang for john.

You have to admit that, on the part of law enforcement, this is a clever way to try to suppress demand for prostitutes. Their argument forms a perfect syllogism: rape is non-consensual sex; slaves don’t give consent; therefore to fuck a slave is to commit rape. The syllogism doesn’t really jive with practice, however. It’s not as though these women declare to their clients that they were forced into the business. Prostitutes typically misrepresent themselves anyway — they make up names, they dodge questions about their backgrounds, and so on. So if a prostitute smiles, takes money, and performs a service, how is the client supposed to know that she’s an indentured servant? Is he supposed to ask for proof of citizenship before purchasing from her a sexual service that is already illegal (but not quite as illegal as rape)?

It’s rather ridiculous. If the goal of this campaign is really to help the poor women forced into the flesh trade, it’s doomed to fail. Few punters get caught. Now a few of those few will face more severe punishments. It’s not going to have the least on impact the sex economy as a whole. If authorities really want to root out human slavery, they should legalize prostitution. This would enable them to hold brothels to the same standards regarding conscripted labor to which other businesses must adhere. It’s not just the behavior of johns that enables brothels to enslave women. It’s the prudery of everybody else.

(Thanks for the link to Chad, who commented: “Some crazy shit happens in this world!”)

Did you mother ever tell you that you should put on clean underwear every morning just in case something like this happens? “What if,” she might have said, “you end up at the emergency room with holes in your socks and brown streaks in your shorts?” As it turns out, this wasn’t simply a rhetorical trick on mom’s part. Look at the crazy shit that happens in the world. One minute you can find yourself getting raped by some dudes. That seems pretty awful. The next minute you can find the hospital turning you down because, in your post-rape depression, you’ve simply gotten too skanky for them to consider helping you. That sure adds insult to injury.

It’s not difficult to understand why any rape victim, male or female, might decide to go grunge. No more baths, shaving, deodorant, clean underwear — it all could serve as a deterrent to future rapists. And yet, if it also serves as a deterrent to doctors, it may only make for further problems. Clearly there is a glaring need to address this conundrum. You can educate doctors that the “grubbiness” of their patients may really be just another symptom of their post-traumatic stress. Or maybe there should be an institutional solution. There is already all manner of psychological therapy available for post-rape trauma. Maybe there is also a need for post-rape physical therapy focusing on hygiene and cosmetics — sort of a Queer Eye for the Raped Guy. A brief course with a post-rape cosmetician would enable rape victims to sashay into medical clinics without inflicting undue repulsion on the medical personnel who work there.

Here is a picture of Ms. Koehler. Green eyes, wireframe glasses, pasty skin, bangs, probably dyed blond hair — she looks a little sad, but otherwise there is nothing exceptional about her appearance. She could be the woman standing in front of you in line at any supermarket in America. Behind that unassuming exterior, however, there lurks a very troubled person. The Rocky Mountain News detailed that this probably wasn’t the first time Ms. Koehler created a smear campaign against herself and followed it up with a rape claim.

This woman is clearly not a pervert. A pervert is someone who may, for example, exhibit himself — he may flash his genitalia or engage in a public sex act. Ms. Koehler is also exhibiting something, but it’s not a body part. It’s a mental thing — a neurosis, compulsion, perhaps even trauma. She has a clear modus operandi: publicly accuse herself of loose morals and then claim she’s been raped. It’s as though she says of herself, in the third person, “She fucks anybody and everybody — but wait, the one person she wouldn’t fuck just forced himself on her.” She begins with a public declaration of indiscrimate consent and ends with an equally public assertion of non-consent. She’s a slut. She’s a victim. She oscillates wildly between the two.

If you’re an armchair psychologist, it is difficult not to interpret the behavior as a way of disavowing responsibility for her sexuality. It’s as though she wants the notion that she’s a sexual being to be succeeded by the notion that her sexuality has been forced on her. It screams of past abuse, molestation, incest. It leaves you with the impression that she’s fighting some darkness inside not with enlightenment — introspection, analysis, acceptance — but with some new form of darkness made up of these smear campaigns.

(Thanks to Peter for the link. At Local6 there is also a video with the obligatory footage of yellow chili peppers.)

If you are a connoisseur of depravity, these sorts of stories can be very frustrating. There is little additional information to be had. The video mentions mundane details (the perp was a “model employee”) but nothing juicy. There are no other news articles about the incident. Maybe the absence of information makes sense on one level — in these troubled times, why should a pepper rape be worthy of reportage? Really, who needs to know about this aside from the people involved?

All the same, once you get that image in your head — woman abuses teen with yellow chili pepper — you’re stuck with that and little else. It’s not even clear what relationship the two had. The woman can’t have been the girl’s mother. Was she an evil step-mother? A foster parent? And what prompted this specific action? It’s one thing to flip out and beat a teenager with whatever appliance happens to be handy — in this case, an iron. It’s another thing to go to the refrigerator, get a nice hot pepper, follow the kid into the bathroom, pin her against the wall of a shower, and ram it up the poor thing’s cunt. (No one says that’s what happened but what else could it be?)

The specificity of the act suggests that, in the perp’s mind, the teen deserved it. Maybe she’d been sleeping around. Maybe she did something crazy like sleep with the perp’s boyfriend. You could imagine a woman doing this for revenge faster than you could imagine a parent doing it for a punitive reason.

The next morning a school nurse was able to see evidence of the assault. Was this simply a ruptured hymen? Or were the peppers so hot that they left some sort of burn? Yellow peppers are generally rated about medium on the heat index. The girl can at least be grateful she wasn’t assaulted with a habanero, which is the hottest pepper known to mankind. You hear stories about people needing to go to the hospital for rubbing an eye with a fingertip that has residue from a habanero on it. You sure wouldn’t want a habanero anywhere near your crotch.