Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Friday, May 06, 2011

They are crazy AND can't spell

Okla. man: Attackers tattooed "RAPEST" on forehead
Two men and two women are accused of pinning down a man who has learning disabilities, tattooing the word "RAPEST" on his forehead and shocking his genitals with a stun gun before beating him unconscious with a baseball bat, police said Wednesday.

The accused told police they attacked Stetson Johnson, 18, because he tried to have sex with one of them, according to a police spokesman. Detectives found no evidence to support their claims, he said.
They very nearly killed him, and now, because he couldn't afford to have the tattoo removed, he's had one of a bar code put over it to hide the letters, and suffers from anxiety and fear to the point where he and his mother are moving away from the area.

Obviously the beating was worst, and it infuriates me that anyone would do that to another person, but of the tattoing, I don't know which would be worst--the word itself or the fact that it was misspelled. For me, it would be the latter. It would gnaw at me every day.

This is what happens when stupid people take the law into their own hands. Even if there was grounds for him to be punished, it should have gone through the legal system. Since there does not appear to be evidence of an assault against the woman, and there is definitely evidence of the assault against him, I'm willing to believe him. Or perhaps there was a misunderstanding, given his learning disabilities. I don't know. But they shouldn't have done that, and by God, if they did, they should have at least learned to spell the word they were going to etch onto an 18-year-old's head for the rest of his life.

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