Convicted Rapist Christopher Belter won't spend a day behind bars. You shouldn't be surprised.
From a lack of legal justice for victims to the overall treatment of rape, rapists and victims, our society lets down survivors of sexual assault. Our society is deeply entrenched in rape culture.
Convicted rapist Christopher Belter pleaded guilty to rape and sexual abuse for assaulting four teenage girls. For raping and sexually assaulting multiple girls, Belter won’t spend even a day in jail.
The disgusting lack of justice for Belter’s victims is sadly no surprise. Belter’s case exemplifies our society’s culture around rape, rapists and victims. It fits perfectly into a history of elusive justice for victims, and a coddling of abusers by the justice system.
The presiding judge, Niagara County Judge Matthew J. Murphy III, said that a prison sentence would be “inappropriate.” Murphy said there was “great pain,” attributing to whom would be subject to this pain, and that there was “great harm.” Despite all of this great pain and harm, Murphy said he decided jail time “would be inappropriate.” Eight years of prison was on the table for Belter. But the judge declined to sentence Belter, now 20, even a crumb of time behind bars, and opted instead to hand him just eight years of probation.
And with this decision, Belter was blocked from any real accountability, and his victims were denied any semblance of justice. This lack of accountability inherently tells men they can get away with sexual violence, and tells survivors that reporting their crime only has a slight chance of justice.
Our society likes to believe that justice is served to rapists, but in reality, the vast majority sexual assailants are still getting away with assault, and justice is a rarity. One in every six women is the victim of attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. Note that this statistic pertains to rape, and not the broader violence of sexual assault, which would be an even higher percentage of women.
Many victims never even get the chance to persecute their assailants, and of the few cases that do see a day in court, rarely is the rapist found guilty. Only 2.5 percent of assailants will spend time behind bars. Belter joins the 97.5 percent of perpetrators that walk away free, leaving survivors’ hope of justice shattered behind them.
Beyond the lack of legal justice for victims, our society lets victims down over and over again in not only its treatment of rape, but its treatment of rapists and victims. We like to believe that our culture is cruel to rapists, and properly denounces the violence of rape and the rapist himself. But the fact is that this is rarely the case. Society fights back against labeling rapists as such. They look for reasons why the man raped. They look for methods of exoneration by deploying rape myths, such as “she was drinking” “she was dressed slutty” “she has a sexual past” in order to excuse him for raping her, and look to the victim to justify the violence committed against her.
The justice system is built to exonerate men for violence against women, unless in the rare instance that the man can be vilified into almost a carbonized version of the bad guy. He must fit into the ultimate stereotyped representation of a sadistic rapist: a crazed man lurking in dark corners waiting to attack fair maidens.
Belter did not fit into these stereotyped versions of a rapist. He was upper class, he was a white kid, he came from a “good home,” he went to a good school, he has ambitions! Think of his position in society! Instead of looking directly at someone and their actions, an armor begins to build up around them, shielding them from proper justice and accountability. It’s not his fault, they’ll say, he was just a kid. Those girls were just kids too. Only one of them raped the others. He was drinking, they’ll say. So were the girls. Only one of them raped the others. You see the pattern here? The exact reasoning why Belter cannot be responsible for his actions is why the girls are blamed for what he did to them.
Sexual violence is extremely prevalent in our society, and continues to be normalized and trivialized. Take for example Judge Murphy’s sentencing, citing that “great pain” had been felt without specifically saying who it was felt by and furthermore who caused that pain. Belter caused pain unto his victims. But Murphy’s language looks to create empathy for Belter, for you to think ‘Oh that poor boy, he has felt pain too!’ In no way is Belter a victim.
The U.S. justice system coddles abusers. It was built by men, for men. Particularly, wealthy, white men. Belter is just one of many who actually benefits from the legal system. Another in recent memory that was Brock Turner.
In 2016, Brock Turner was convicted of raping a woman after a Stanford party. His sentence? A mere six months in county jail and three years’ probation. Six months in jail for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Nowhere near the maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Turner’s judge had said: “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him. I think he will not be a danger to others.” In no way was Turner a victim -- just like Belter is not a victim. But some still argued that because he was a Stanford student — and a star swimmer no less! — he should be valued for his role in society, not punished for his rape.
These young men acted with impunity. They felt entitled to the women they assaulted. And the judicial system did was it was designed to: exonerate men like them. Belter's sentencing shouldn't be a surprise, just like Turner’s wasn’t a surprise. Turner and Belter getting away with slaps on the wrist is a product of, and feeds into, societal rape culture.
Belter’s case will do irrevocable damage. Imagine the strength it took for these four teenage girls to come forward, to ultimately be told their pain and suffering does not matter, at least not enough, not when a man’s reputation and life are at stake.
What will fellow women and girls take away from this case? That even if a man pleads guilty, even if he literally admits to raping you, he may walk away completely unscathed. And you must live with the trauma forever.
Don’t ever tell me the justice system actually delivers justice to rape victims. The majority of the time, it prevents men from ever seeing a day in court, and if they do, largely prevents them from accountability and justice, leaving a pile of victims discarded behind it.