Victims' Groups and Child Advocates:
Death Penalty for Child Rapists will Harm Rather than Protect Child Victims

Imposing the death penalty for child rape will harm children and make them less safe. Child rape is a serious crime and those who commit it deserve to be punished severely, however, the consequences of making child rape death-eligible will have the opposite of the law’s intended effect by increasing the amount of child sexual abuse, increasing the trauma these children suffer, and placing child victims at greater risk of death.

Victims' groups and child advocates are concerned that:

Imposing the death penalty for child rape will reduce the chances that child victims and non-offending family members will report the abuse.

• Child sexual abuse is one of the most underreported crimes. The proposed legislation states that the death penalty would be imposed on an offender who is not a relative of the victim, but many child rapists are non-relatives who know or are close to the victim's family. If the specter of the death penalty is added, these relationships lead victims – and family members who suspect the abuse – to remain silent rather than report the crime.

• If the problem of underreporting increases, victims will continue to be abused and will not get the medical treatment and mental health counseling they need.

• When the crime is not reported, the perpetrator is allowed to go free and victimize more children.

Imposing the death penalty for child rape would subject victims to an increased number of trials and appeals, forcing them to relive painful events and seriously disrupting their healing process.

• Court proceedings are extraordinarily difficult for child victims under the best of circumstances. Studies have shown that child victims find testifying in criminal court to be traumatic, not cathartic. Repeated courtroom testimony especially delays healing.

• The introduction of the death penalty into child rape prosecutions will increase and prolong the children's exposure to the criminal justice system. Capital cases tend to have longer and more frequent pre-trial proceedings than non-capital cases.

• The extended appeals process that follows a death sentence will draw out the trauma, further disrupting the child’s healing process, and leave the case “unresolved” for years. The high reversal rate in death penalty cases would subject many victims to one or more re-trials.

• The added publicity that comes with a death penalty case will intensify the trauma for child victims.

A law that gives the death penalty for child rape creates an incentive to kill the victim and eliminate the witness to the crime.

• If the death penalty is reserved for murder, perpetrators have an incentive to stop short of killing their victims.

• If an offender believes that he will be sentenced to death if convicted of either raping a child or murdering that child, he will have every incentive to kill his victim, who is in many instances the sole witness to the crime.

• As a result, the offender will be more likely to remain free to abuse more children.

The death penalty does nothing to increase public safety.

• In Louisiana the penalty for child rape (aggravated rape, Louisiana Revised Statute 14:42) already carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole, probation, or sentence suspension. Execution of the offender does not make the public any safer than keeping the offender in prison for the rest of his life.

An execution deprives the victim, in adulthood, of the option of having a victim/offender dialogue.

• Voluntary dialogue between victim and offender, mediated by well-trained facilitators, has been very healing for some victims of violent crime, including victims of child sexual assault who are now adults.

• Louisiana’s Department of Public Safety and Corrections has had a Victim/Offender Dialogue Program through its Division of Victim Services for many years.

The United States Supreme Court has already decided that it is unconstitutional to impose the death penalty for rape.

• Thirty years ago, in Coker v. Georgia, the Supreme Court held that capital punishment was an excessive penalty for rape because the crime, while heinous, does not take a human life. The victim in that case was a minor of 16.

• Given the gravity of this offense, the state’s resources are better spent on policies that actually protect children from harm and pass constitutional muster.

© 2005, Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault
1250 SW Railroad Av Ste.170, Hammond, LA 70403
Phone: (985) 345-5995, Fax: (985) 345-5592, Toll Free: (888) 995-7273
E-mail: resource@lafasa.org