Insights
If your rapist is your child’s father,
you now have protection
Imagine that at age 14, when you are
either in 8th grade or just starting
your freshman year of high school,
a man rapes and impregnates you. You
have the baby, and want to give the infant
up for adoption so you can heal and
get on with what is left of your shattered
adolescent life. But your rapist, who has
admitted to having sexually assaulted
you, will not sign the adoption papers
because he now wants to exercise his
parental rights over the child.
You don’t have to imagine
this scenario, because
it happened right here on
our island. It is one of two
instances that spurred Sen.
Mary Torres to author
a bill that allows a rape
victim who bears the child
of her rapist to terminate
the perpetrator’s parental
rights. The second case,
mentioned in her Bill 162-
35, was when a 38-year-old
man was charged in the Superior
Court of Guam with
raping and impregnating an
11-year-old child.
“Once you rape, you forfeit that
right,” is how Torres explained her legislation
to me on June 16, one day after
Bill 162-35 passed unanimously in the
35th Guam Legislature, with all 14 of
her colleagues joining on as co-authors.
In her release upon introducing the bill
one year and five days before it passed,
Torres said, “No woman should live in
fear of her child being taken away by
her attacker and no victim should be
forced to endure the trauma of seeing
her assailant on a regular basis. Right
now, there’s no law stopping that nightmare
from happening.”
Torres’ Bill 162 is now public law,
thanks to Gov. Lourdes Leon Guerrero
having affixed her signature to it. The
legislation closes a legal loophole that,
incredibly, allowed a rapist to fight for
custody or visitation rights of the child
conceived by the rape so long as he was
not deemed an unfit parent.
6
But this law also does something else
beneficial. It now makes Guam eligible
for much-needed additional funds
through our Stop Violence Against
Women (STOP) and Sexual Assault
Services Program (SASP) formula grant
awards from the Office of Violence
Against Women (OVW).
Under the Rape Survivor Child Custody
Act (RSCCA), which Congress
passed and President Barack Obama
signed as U.S. Public Law 144-22 in
2015, a state or territory
is eligible for up to an
additional 10 percent of
the three-year average of
these combined grants if
that state or territory has in
place a law that allows the
mother of a child conceived
through rape to seek
court-ordered termination
of the parental rights of the
rapist with regard to that
child. That translates to
approximately $70,000 per
year, for up to four years,
that Guam is eligible to apply
for the RSCCA funding
(which means Guam is eligible for an
extra $280,000 over a four-year period).
That money can pay for much-needed
counseling, advocacy, and other services
to help survivors of sexual assault,
domestic violence, dating violence, and
stalking heal and move on with their
lives.
The RSCCA says courts are authorized
to grant termination of parental
rights of a rapist upon clear and convincing
evidence of rape. What is “clear
and convincing evidence,” you may ask?
According to the Cornell Law School
website, “clear and convincing” means
that “the evidence is highly and substantially
more likely to be true than untrue;
the fact finder must be convinced that
the contention is highly probable.” Cornell
says it is a more rigorous standard
to meet than the preponderance of the
evidence standard, but less rigorous than
“beyond a reasonable doubt.” Thankfully,
clear and convincing evidence
does not involve a criminal conviction,
because as a rule, those are difficult to
obtain in sexual assault cases. Recent
statistics provided by the Office of the
Attorney General of Guam note a 34
percent, or one-third conviction rate
of sexual assault cases processed and
charged. Torres noted this conviction
difficulty in her bill.
Importantly, though, both the local
law and the RSCCA state that the court
may still order the natural parent of the
child to pay child support, even if the
parental rights are terminated. So, if you
rape, you can lose your parental rights,
but you are still financially responsible
for the child your violent act created.
Actions have consequences, as they say.
Without this statute, we could have
instances where a rape victim is forced
to co-parent with their rapist or, as
Torres mentioned in her bill, be coerced
into not reporting the rape or pursuing
prosecution upon the threat of the rapist
pursuing custody of the child - “Don’t
testify and I won’t seek visitation,” her
legislation posits.
This is one of those laws that we as a
society wish we didn’t have to have on
the books. Unfortunately, it is a necessity.
Almost weekly, we hear or read about
a man, usually an older man, sexually
assaulting a pre-teen or teenage girl. As
I have mentioned before, until we can
teach our men that sexually assaulting
someone is not acceptable in our society,
and shame those who commit such heinous
acts to the extent that no one dares
commit this crime again, we will need
such legislation.
Senators of the 35th Guam Legislature,
Si Yu’os Ma’ase for stepping up to
help the victims.
Jayne Flores is the director of
the Bureau of Women’s Affairs and
the administrator of the Governor’s
Community Outreach - Federal Programs
Office, which handles Guam’s
OVW STOP and SASP formula grants
to combat sexual assault, domestic
violence, dating violence, and stalking.
Send feedback to jayneflores59@gmail.
com.
rom the
comment box
Tourism reopening
pushed back
Yes, expanded testing is finding
the hidden positives. We are
starting to see the real situation on
Guam now.
—Stan Yasuhiro
My thoughts exactly. It appears
that the samples are allowed to
sit for a day (possibly more?) before
being processed. So I’m not sure the
results reflect accurate numbers. I’m
grateful that (for now) the increased
numbers are not accompanied by
increased hospitalizations.
—MaryLou Garcia-Pereda
This is what you call a distraction.
The governor is bidding for time
to communicate and manipulate the
opinion regarding the dismal management
of her administration. Also, she
is providing cover for the worst legislative
session in the history of Guam.
The idea is to stop any significant
campaigning for the opposition.
—Pierre M. Tarrene
Please do not blame the tourists,
especially Taiwanese. According
to Pubic Health’s numbers, Guam
has “zero” imported case from
Taiwan. Taiwan, with more than 23
million citizens, reported less than
500 positive cases and seven deaths
from Covid-19, and has not reported
any domestic cases since April 13. In
addition, Taiwan has donated a lot of
medical-grade masks to the government
of Guam. Relatively, Guam is a
so-called “hot spot” to Taiwanese.
—Edward Lu
Why would you combine military
statistics with the population of
Guam? The community is not having
a high rise in cases but the military is.
So why add them to the community?
It’s the military statistics that puts the
island back on lockdown.
—Phillip Ngeluk