Last night, Rep Earl Ehrhart, the one-man, pro-rape bill-pushing legislator from Powder Springs, pulled a slime ball move to revive HB 51 which forces GA campus sexual assault victims to enter the criminal justice system to seek remedy. In what is a reminder that our legislators work for themselves and not for the public that voted them in, he took his tabled, deplorable bill, and snuck it into a completely different bill, SB 71, as a workaround from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s action.
The photo accompanying this AJC article about the maneuver captures Earl perfectly – smug and nasty, a modern day Boss Hog from the Dukes of Hazard. What can be done? CALL YOUR SENATORS AND IMPLORE THEM TO REJECT THIS AFFRONT TO VICTIMS. This bill would literally force your daughter, son, niece, grandson to go to the police after a sexual assault – something we don’t force victims to do outside the walls of college campuses. The criminal justice system has favored perpetrators in almost every case brought to it. Ehrhart knows that. What does that say about him? It says everything.
Ehrhart is LYING when he says young men are being denied due process – a concept guaranteed by the Constitution in criminal cases. The processes in place at present fail both parties but have never, ever skewed toward or encouraged victims to come forward and get relief from their perpetrators. Only now that anyone is being held accountable (read: mostly white men) is there an uproar, shocking no one. He is not seeking to create a fair and just system that conducts a thorough investigation and treats victims compassionately. He believes women are vindictive and claim rape as payback or regret for a drunken mistake, with no statistics or evidence that is the case. He is despicable. Please CALL YOUR SENATORS. I beg you.
A Fight Back Woman 