We have occasionally discussed false rape cases but the prosecution of Brittany Sorey, 30, has a tragic and novel twist. After the mother of six children fabricated a rape claim, a suspect was killed in confrontation with one of Sorey’s friend.
Sorey told the police that she was sexually assaulted in Largo, Florida. She claimed that the assailant was a Hispanic male who “battered her and vaginally penetrated her with a broken broom handle and a box cutter.” She gave the same account to detectives in a later statement. She was six weeks pregnant at the time.
Sorey and her husband, Gerald, 25, were facing eviction at the time. Her husband was arrested during this period for allegedly throwing Sorey to the ground and menacing her with a Glock handgun. The dispute was over infidelity claims. Sorey later withdrew her statement and prosecutors dropped the charge of aggravated assault on a pregnant victim.
The court filing recounts how a male friend of Sorey was staying in the apartment on May 10th when a neighbor started to bang on the door to deal with a “money issue.” When her friend called her, Sorey told him that “the person knocking at the door sounded like the male that sexually battered her.” Sorey’s friend then went outside the apartment to take a picture of the neighbor to give to the police. An altercation erupted and “the friend killed the neighbor in self defense.”
Later Sorey admitted that she made up the entire rape story. The site, Smoking Gun, reports that Sorey describes herself on Facebook as “Wife, mother, step mother, medical student. MS and Lupus warrior.” She reportedly is a student at Ultimate Medical Academy, which trains for entry-level health care jobs.
She is only charged with filing a false police report. However, it will be interesting how much weight the court gives the tragic conclusion to the false story. Had Sorey not repeated the lie to her friend, he would not have likely had the fatal confrontation.
The causal link between Ms Sorey’s false accusation and the accused’s death sems tenuous.
The police report The Smoking Gun reproducef says “the friend killed the neighbor in self defense.”
A finding of justifiable homicide requires the person killing to have been in reasonable fear he or another person was in reasonable fear of death or grievous bodily harm.
The police report does not say Sorey’s friend killed the accused to defend Sorey, so it’s reasonable the police decided the accused placed Sorey’s friend in reasonable fear of death or grievous bodily harm, an act which Sorey’s false accusation may have occasioned, but did not cause.
The accused was not compelled by that false accusation to menace anyone in a way that created reasonable fear of death or grievous bodily harm. He was the master of his fate and the captain of his soul until he made Sorey’s friend reasonably certain to the satisfaction of the officer writing that report the Sorey’s friend killed the accused in self-defense.
Ms Sotey’s false accusation was despicable and, really, inexplicable given the circumstances. Perhaps, though, this incident might fnfluence the Ultimate Medical Academy to encourage Ms. Sorey to pursue another career field.
Five children and a sixth on the way?
Poor kids.
In south Louisiana, predominantly Roman Catholic, hysterectomies were the most common surgery performed on women, many of them younger than the usual woman presenting with a condition for which the surgical removal of the uterus and surrounding structures is indicated. Theologically, they weren’t birth control.
Later, the encyclical Humanae Vitae forbidding any contraception but the “rhythm method” was quietly ignored by most women in South Louisiana, when diaphragms, contraceptive pills,and intrauterine devices took the decision of “protection” out of the sole possession of men.
Six conceptions make one wonder what, if anything, Ms Sorey is thinking.
Has Turley ever discussed real rape cases during which women were killed? Asking for a friend.
FLORIDA RANKS 49TH IN MENTAL HEALTH SPENDING
WHICH MAY ACCOUNT FOR ITS INSANE REPUTATION
Florida’s reputation as the weirdest, wildest, wackiest state is secure. In 2001, the news aggregation site fark.com gave the state its own topic tagline. Twitter’s @_floridaman handle launched in 2013 and is closing in on half a million followers.
Late-night TV comedians have also rallied to the cause, with Trevor Noah’s Daily Show airing a tongue-in-cheek investigation into the causes of the Florida Man notion. Yet, although satirical, the Daily Show suggested that Florida’s broad open records laws were responsible for more media coverage of eye-catching stories than would be possible in other states.
It also touched on darker themes common to many Florida Man stories, notably poverty and social deprivation, substance abuse and domestic and sexual violence, and questioned the legitimacy of poking fun at society’s less privileged.
“You have to remember these are real people with real lives, not folks stumbling around on Saturday Night Live to be funny,” Pittman said.
“Often in Florida tragedy wears the mask of comedy. You’re not just reading the police log, you’re seeing the result of Florida consistently being ranked 49th in spending on mental health.
“The stories involve homeless people, domestic violence … is that funny, a guy assaulting his wife? No, not even when someone’s using an odd weapon, ‘man assaults wife with taco’ or something like that.”
While Florida is not a poor state overall, it is fifth in income inequality, according to a 2018 study, with most of its wealth concentrated in the south. Rural counties, particularly in central Florida and the Panhandle, are traditionally much poorer, and produce a disproportionately high number of Florida Man stories, a sample geographical study by the Guardian found.
“I always think about how diverse our state is and in some areas it takes a lot of money to go a little bit, and in other parts of Florida that’s less true,” said Deana Rohlinger, professor of sociology at Florida State University.
“Poverty in north Florida might look different than in the south. I was interested in that [as a factor] and drugs and alcohol, and mental health, which is an issue all across the US.
“That’s where, as a sociologist, I really think about the diversity of the state, the economy and mythology.”
The natural environment also plays a role. From the Florida Everglades packed with alligators and pythons to bears, panthers and other wild animals encroaching into urban areas, nature has always played a role in Florida Man stories.
Edited from: “Florida Man: What Lies Behind The Sunshine State’s Crazy Stereotype?”
Today’s The Guardian
FLORIDA RANKS 49TH IN MENTAL HEALTH SPENDING
WHICH MAY ACCOUNT FOR ITS INSANE REPUTATION
Your faith in the utility and efficacy of the services of the mental health trade likely isn’t shared by the people working in it.
Whatever, Tabby!
Florida has a reputation for insanity that I’ve been long aware of. The Miami Herald is a fascinating window into Florida’s insanity by way of local crime stories.
Is California in a position to call Florida insane?
Thomas Aquinas wrote the Pope’s justification for war. Aquinas wrote that war is justified when there is no other choice. It’s so easy to blow up this justification. Surrender is always an option to avoid war. Unless the Pope outlaws surrender in certain cases (he has not), then there is always an option other than war, and that option is to surrender.
Further, if war is sometimes OK (no other option, a lie, but let’s pretend Aquinas’ justification makes sense for a moment), then Papists have to answer this: Suppose a Catholic pilots a nuclear-armed jet circling Europe. The pilot gets a legal authorized order to drop a nuclear weapon which instantly introduces The Vatican first hand to permanent nuclear winter, including the Pope, his Cardinals, and everyone within hundreds of miles.
How does the above scenario square with Aquinas’ theory, Papists?
seemingly irrelevant but what you discuss is called “just war theory.” look it up yourself princess
factors which justify war include necessarily discriminating between civilians and non-civilians. thus, most nuclear devices are per se wrongful means, because they are indiscriminate
this is not confined to Catholics. many Anabaptist (Mennonite) scholars have developed just war theory as well
“Rapists need to be butt raped and then hung by their scrotums until dead.”
Well, thank goodness for the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and the general inadmissibility of lie detector tests. I’m sure the models that walmart would sell would be every bit as reliable as those used by actual police agencies.
Tell me, who are going to be designated as the butt-rapists in this dystopian scenario.
Florida tends to have high ratios of shocking crime stories like this. Stories where the reader thinks, “Thank God I don’t know those people”.
Just another pathetic story from the trailer park.
Sorey describes herself on Facebook as “Wife, mother, step mother, medical student. MS and Lupus warrior.”
This sad story reminds one of America’s relentless obsession with appetites: for pride, wrath, gluttony, sloth, greed, envy, lust. How America has fallen since God was banished from our public square. It shows.
“The proper act of free-will is choice: for we say that we have a free-will because we can take one thing while refusing another; and this is to choose. Therefore we must consider the nature of free-will, by considering the nature of choice. Now two things concur in choice: one on the part of the cognitive power, the other on the part of the appetitive power. On the part of the cognitive power, counsel is required, by which we judge one thing to be preferred to another: and on the part of the appetitive power, it is required that the appetite should accept the judgment of counsel. Therefore Aristotle (Ethic. vi, 2) leaves it in doubt whether choice belongs principally to the appetitive or the cognitive power: since he says that choice is either “an appetitive intellect or an intellectual appetite.” But (Ethic. iii, 3) he inclines to its being an intellectual appetite when he describes choice as “a desire proceeding from counsel.” And the reason of this is because the proper object of choice is the means to the end: and this, as such, is in the nature of that good which is called useful: wherefore since good, as such, is the object of the appetite, it follows that choice is principally an act of the appetitive power. And thus free-will is an appetitive power.“
St Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 83
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1083.htm#article3
@Estovir, you say: “How America has fallen since God was banished from our public square.” Remember how false accusations which arose in a fundamentalist community based on religious observance resulted in numerous state-perpetrated murders in Salem, Massachusetts?
And, after which, the responsible parties covered themselves with sackcloth and ashes.
I’m sticking you with the bill for Joseph Stalin.