“To get to his job at a Eastside bagel shop, Joseph Aqui walks through the early-morning rain, past houses where toys are strewed across lawns, indicating that women may live inside.
These are Aqui’s known triggers, the things that led him to commit more than two dozen rapes and attempted rapes, court records show.”
No, no, no, no, no. The presence of toys on lawns didn’t “lead” Joseph Aqui to rape two dozen women. His choice to rape two dozen women “led” him to rape two dozen women. There’s certainly an argument to be had about whether sex offenders who’ve committed as many crimes as Aqui should be released into society virtually unmonitored, but it’s hard to even begin that discussion when the act of rape is portrayed as passive. It’s a fine line between toys causing rape and another common construction: “alcohol/the late hour/the way she was dressed/the fact that she’s flirted led her to get raped.”
The way those moms just wantonly leave toys strewn about the yard, you just know they’re asking for it.
I would have thought the pseudo-feminist project to police language to the point of meaninglessness was obviously doomed from the beginning. Yet you were so sure everyone would hop on board that train? And it drives you crazy when they don’t? Crazy crazy?
Couldn’t we just buy him some porn? He might not ever leave the house and just tire himself out…
His choice to drink alcohol led him to drink more alcohol in the future.
I generally agree with you ECB. However, the story refers to those things as “triggers” which, in psychological terms, makes complete sense. Think critically plz.
What are you going to do with all your spare time when the dailies go out of business?
Ok, I’m setting the over under on deleted comments for this thread @ 3.
Who wants some of this action?
Substitute guns for toys to get the standard leftist take on gun control. Substitute education for toys to get the standard leftist take on social ills.
It is an interesting philosophical exercise to try to decide where personal responsibility is primary when so much of your political philosophy is based on socializing responsibility.
Is insanity a choice? I don’t think so. I don’t really think that anybody chooses to be a rapist (aka crazy person).
im eating an apple. it’s red and delicious. it doesn’t make me want to rape anyone at all.
well i kinda wanna go home and give it to my girlfriend furiously, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this wonderful apple.
furiously.
i’m going to call her now and fill her in on my plan for this evening, so she isn’t caught off guard.
It sounds like the mere existence of women is a trigger for this whackjob.
“To get to his job at a Eastside bagel shop, Joseph Aqui walks through the early-morning rain, past houses where toys are strewed across lawns, indicating that women may live inside.”…
Whoever wrote this article has read way too many detective novels.
“Scene of the crime/Let’s ask Monk Holmes why the guy thought there was a vulnerable damsel in distress living in this house???”
The court insists on knowing if he did indeed do the crime. Not why. But everyone else wants to know why, don’t they?
@5 Yes, they do refer to the toys as triggers, but the triggers don’t lead him to rape. They lead him to rape those specific women. It isn’t as if he saw a toy and said, “I want to rape.” The toys indicated that there were women to rape. The article is sloppy, but not any more so than the countless articles on anything else.
It’s the bad chemicals in his brain that made him do it.
I agree with 15…sort-of…,I think the story was just identifying the triggers for this sicko…not blaming the women…pointing out that something so innocuous(sp?)to most was an enticer for him.
Like a the scent of a cheeseburger would be to bulimic..or something.
What did the bagels make him think of?
many things trigger already sick people to do things. toys in a yard may be one of them. a murder of crows may be another. why you say that’s not possible is beyond me. it must suck living a life where you parse everything to fit your agenda.
Word up E. It does sound remarkably like the argument negligent pit bull users make when their dog mauls someone. i wonder what would happen if there happened to be such a pit bull owner on his route to work who left dog toys on his lawn?
@8: Okay, I tried following your suggestion and substituted the word “guns” for “toys” in those sentences and the results made no sense whatsoever.
Does anyone else find it ironic that Erica blames “this kind of crazy shit” for making her crazy?
(hint, like the rapist, it’s not this shit that caused you to be crazy)
What drives me crazy is that his job should be at an Eastside bagel shop. No, that’s not true. The grammar oversight is annoying, but what really drives me crazy that Nicole Never-Met-A-Hackneyed-Lead-She-Didn’t-Like Brodeur still has a column.
@20..Huh? I can usually turn any conversation to the topic of doggies, but..huh?
TWO DOZEN RAPES?? I disagree with Erica, because if someone has committed TWO DOZEN rapes (or attempted rapes) they clearly don’t have control over their actions, any more than a serial killer does. So the question is, why the fuck is this guy not in for life after two effing dozen rapes?? there are people in life for selling pot (via three strikes), but not this guy.
I hope the word “trigger” will not fool people much longer. Its only purpose in the context of psychology is to force the mechanization of our concept of the activity of the conscience, juuuust enough to avoid holding bad actors fully responsibly. I hate it almost as much as the taste of Diet Red Bull.
picture this: aqui comes back to the house with the scattered toys on the front lawn, breaks in to rape the mom, only to find two brawny gay dads ready to beat the shit out of him. just supposin’.
@25,
And less than one year for each rape is unacceptable. Even giving a reasonable sentence for each rape (say, four years) would have kept him in prison for the rest of his life.
YES! Exactly! Thank you, ECB.
The toys strewn around my yard indicate that a dog lives there (actually, 3 live there, but only one likes to take a toy outside EVERY BLESSED MORNING–and will often spin in front of the door and refuse to go outside if you take the chosen toy for that morning away from him).
I (a woman) live there too. So does a very muscular, very tattoed man who would be delighted to beat up a rapist. And the dogs, while smallish, are not exactly shrinking violets.
All kinds of assumptions can be made, very often wrong.
I blame the Seattle Times.
the fact that this guy is not in prison for the rest of his life is the kind of shit that drives me crazy. misappropriated terminology? a sloppy, poorly written article? eh. pretty sure most people can read this article without thinking rape is a passive act.
The wrong paper is dying in Seattle.
yes – it drives me crazy that this guy might walk the streets again. a trigger isn’t an excuse, it’s what — however unlikely — triggers a desire in a person. a short skirt can be a trigger, but that doesn’t mean it’s the wearer’s fault, nor that rapist isn’t responsible. in fact, it means they are responsible, and we know what persuaded them. it’s weird that they are toys, but triggers don’t care if they are weird.
as a side note, people recovering from addictions often have to identify their triggers. by avoiding the trigger they have a higher likelihood of abstaining from their addiction. it’s tough, though, as the trigger is sometimes in itself harmless. like a toy.
I don’t really care what his triggers are – he needs to be in a mental or correctional facility.
Yeah, why is this guy out of prison? Two dozen rapes should fast-track qualify you for your own padded room with a little window in the door.
@26
Not all people are functional moral agents (which doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be locked up for life, of course). Some people have broken brains. They aren’t CAPABLE of taking responsibility for their actions.
And regular Red Bull tastes like tomcat piss smells, so I hate to think what the diet stuff must be like.
You know what triggers me? Scummy pieces of shit who get out of prison after getting a slap on the wrist. It makes me Google a map of sex offenders and drive around with a Tazer and a rusty Exacto in my purse.
The article is ambiguous. They describe the toys as a trigger, but the description seems to indicate that they are simply the means by which he can find a target. These are not equivalent.
This Aqui guy is a time bomb. 22 rapes/attempted rapes. Set free (well, almost). Living with a woman-beating / recovering alcoholic landlord. Walks a mile to the bus-stop early every morning, along residential streets with no street-lights and several flowing urban streams (fyi – running water is also one of his triggers, and Whisper Creek bisects his front yard… look it up).
DSHS may go down for this one if/when it goes bad. Along with the judge, an elected official. What was she thinking, allowing Aqui to be placed with this homeowner, who has had 2 weeks of training for his new roomate… this is supposed to be adequate training for monitoring a serial rapist? What the hell is the criteria for an “approved monitoring adult”?? Not sure if this dude fits the bill
Some background on this Aqui freak:
http://www.komonews.com/news/37192099.ht…
http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=76&sid=1…
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/lo…
I’m stunned that Aqui is out of jail, period.
I have serious Constitutional concerns about Washington State’s Involuntary Commitment law, but Aqui is a poster child for it if ever there was one.
thank you, Erica.
i accuse the seattle times of failure to identify triggers correctly. plenty of men walk by toys strewn across lawns every day and don’t rape anyone. why? because toys aren’t a trigger. his hateful thoughts about women, directed at the women he imagines live in places where toys accumulate, are the trigger. that’s right: violent, misogynistic asshats with no impulse control are triggered by – wait for it! – their own women-hating thoughts.
and those thoughts are supported by?
pretty much every douchehound who posted some variation of ‘she didn’t try hard enough not to get raped’ in dan’s latest column. just for a start.
do we have the ability to be surprised by this? that this guy is out in society again, after manifesting his own hatred in truly unspeakable ways on dozens of women. hateful words and hateful thoughts are the blueprints for hateful action, and rape is built out of hate. any one of the douchehounds on that earlier thread is totally capable of moving from hateful thoughts and speech (writing) to hateful action. and i wouldn’t be surprised. disgusted, yes. and we should be. but not surprised, never surprised.
@38
Hunting down, mutilating and murdering people who have been lawfully released from prison would accomplish what, exactly?
aqui was recently removed form this residence, as the homeowner was found to be INSANE and likely a bad influence on aqui.
http://www.komonews.com/news/38178884.ht…