OR GOP Rep Krieger: Its not a man's fault if she begs for it

The Oregon House Judiciary Committee was treated to a bizarre bit of testimony by Wayne Krieger (R-Gold Beach) on House Bill 2333, which would revise the sex offender reporting requirements for certain crimes. The bill would allow a person convicted of a relevant crime to not continue to register as a sex offender who committed the crime in juvenile court under these circumstances:

*Less than 5 years age difference between the persons
*The act(s) is consensual
*The victim must be 14 years of age or older
*No priors of sexual offenses prior to the offense in question

Personally, I don't have a problem with this bill. But Krieger's testimony in support of the bill borders on the basic mysogynistic excuse for rape: she had it coming. I've transcribed it below--but you can listen to it for yourself here (You'll need RealPlayer to hear it. Start at the 8:13 mark):

Today young women the way they dress and often times the women are the more aggressive of the sexes. And that's not something that we saw during my years. The girls were quite shy, believe it or not. But today that's not always so.

We had an incident in Gold Beach where this young 14 year old girl actually put three guys in the state prison and she was looking for more of this activity. And you don't charge her with anything even though she's the instigator of it. Now where she can continue to give consent when she can't legally do it and if someone takes her up on it they go to jail. And its costing us because she's kind of promiscuous. We're living in a different world. And I think that's one of the reasons you can justify that if it is with consent, not forcible--and you don't have a greater years age difference than that, it'd be alright.

Translation: If young girls would just keep their legs closed--those poor older men and boys wouldn't give her what she's begging for. Its not their fault these males succumbed to fruit of the she-tease and they shouldn't have to take responsibility for it.

If you keep listening to the audio--you'll hear the surprise and shock in the voice of the committee chair, Ginny Burdick and from committee member Vicki Walker.

Jeez.