Misty Roberts, 43, faces sentences of up to 10 and seven years in prison after July 2024 sexual assault at pool party

The former mayor of a Louisiana city has been convicted of raping a 16-year-old boy during a party at her house while she was still in office.

Misty Roberts, 43, faces sentences of up to 10 and seven years in prison after a jury in the municipality of DeRidder on Tuesday found her guilty of two felonies: carnal knowledge of a juvenile – or statutory rape – as well as indecent behavior with a minor.

In October, in an unrelated case, her 40-year-old brother, Brandon Lee Roberts, pleaded guilty to raping two people: an underage girl and a young woman. He subsequently received a 42-year prison sentence.

  • cøre@leminal.space
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    13 days ago

    She rapes a 16yr old boy. Her brother rapes an underage girl. They’re both underage, both are pedophelia, yet the boy gets reported differently than the girl.

    Brother and sister are both rapists, that’s fucked up family there. Wonder how many dad and mom have raped.

  • saimen@feddit.org
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    11 days ago

    Interesting how in this case it’s clearly called “raped a boy” and not “had sex with an underage man”.

    • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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      11 days ago

      I mean, it’s much more often called “a romp” or “an affair” when it’s a female predator and a young male victim. Usually the r word is reserved for female victims. Hell, one of the experts who did a bunch of the foundational work in studying SA in an interview about a decade ago balked at the idea that men could be victims of women at all.

      Epstein’s friends get softened language because they’re rich and powerful. Women usually get softened language by default. I wonder what made her so awful for this to be reported as a “rape” and not a “romp”?

      • orioler25@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        It’s interesting that you concluded with “this must be an exceptionally violent case” and not “culture is shifting enough that explicitly calling these cases ‘rape’ is becoming more acceptable.” Like, we’re in the middle of a moment where sexual violence against minors is, y’know, a big topic. Even if the past ten years hasn’t been huge in the proliferation on sexual violence education, the ruling class pedo ring thing is pretty fresh.

        edit for those who don’t read the rest of the thread: This guy is using terms that appear to predominantly or exclusively exist in manosphere spaces (particularly on reddit), and has admitted to never actually reading anything on or engaging in activism to prevent the vicitimization of young men. He’s using this boy’s trauma to spread misgogyny, disgusting.

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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          11 days ago

          It’s interesting that you concluded with “this must be an exceptionally violent case” and not “culture is shifting enough that explicitly calling these cases ‘rape’ is becoming more acceptable.”

          Cynicism. Well founded cynicism. Though if this is the beginning of a trend and not a one-off I’ll be happy to see it.

          • orioler25@lemmy.world
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            11 days ago

            What do you mean, “well founded?” Did you read this article before writing that? Are you telling me you read a lot about sexual violence and rape culture? That’d be pretty nice to see on here, could you point me toward any articles that have done discourse analyses on the representation of sexual violence and young men?

            Or you meant “well founded,” as in, like, its what you see so it makes sense?

            • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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              8 days ago

              I mean in the sense that I have years of experience of one set of things happening, and this is a violation of that trend. It’s either unique in terms of the author or the incident in some way that means she doesn’t get the softened language typically granted to women and billionaires when they do wrong, or this is the start of a trend. If the latter, I welcome it.

              • orioler25@lemmy.world
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                8 days ago

                “To women and billionaires.” Now, that is a telling line to draw. Did you think I pointed out the cultural moment because billionaires are like women and not like…the obvious impact on everyone’s consciousness about sexual violence because our system has obviously enabled a massive pedophile ring?

                Just say it was the second option and be serious, no need to word vomit to clean it up and inadvertantly (hopefully unintended) suggest that women are somehow in a similar position of power to commit sexual violence with impunity as some of the most powerful people in a patriarchal society (go look up the demos for billionaires).

                I have a tough time believing that a person who talks like this commits much of their time to sexual violence prevention education, ngl.

                • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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                  8 days ago

                  “To women and billionaires.” Now, that is a telling line to draw. Did you think I pointed out the cultural moment because billionaires are like women

                  I’m not implying some sort of general moral equivalency between women and billionaires, but rather merely that both categories routinely get their misdeeds minimized in reporting. The reasons for both are different, with billionaires essentially paying for a white glove treatment while for women it’s an effect of the general malagency given them by society. The net effect in how their sexual offenses typically get reported is essentially the same, even if the cause is very different.

                  If she were a man, that it was called “rape” would be par the course rather than a refreshing exception. Hell, I looked up this very case on Google and of the top 5 stories on the case, 2 refer to her as “having sex”, two refer to a “sex crime” (and in the article describe that crime using “having sex” rather than “rape”) and the other was the same Guardian article linked in this Lemmy thread. So, yeah…refreshing exception. May it be the start of a trend.

                  Much like I expect her 10 and 7 year maximum sentences will almost certainly add up to less than 5, probably less than 3, with a significant chance she gets a suspended sentence or some probation instead of prison time - as a society we don’t like putting women in prison and we like putting them in prison as long as similarly positioned men even less. We won’t see that result until April 17, though.

  • edgarde@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    Is almost everyone like this and we just didn’t know? Or is our political class just dominated by people like this?

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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          8 days ago

          Probably more common than anyone thinks, though. Just because of the illicit nature of it, most of them are going to be trying to conceal themselves, and a bunch more are going to sublimate their sexuality however they have to out of fear of punishment. Most of them aren’t going to publicly set up and attend NAMBLA meetings, for example.

  • N-E-N@lemmy.ca
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    12 days ago

    Got confused by the headline cause 16 would be legal where I am and certainly doesn’t strike me instinctively as “rape”.

    That being said, bangin a kid in high school when you’re in your 40s is uncomfy

    • bthest@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Well you’re not alone in having that mindset.

      And unfortunately that is why rape continues to be a massive issue today. It’s one of the biggest social evil plaguing the human race. Rape islands, sex trafficking, the Epstein files, the AI child porn factories, forced birth returning to America etc, all the same.

      • kossa@feddit.org
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        11 days ago

        Well you’re not alone in having that mindset.

        Well, a lot of countries do not have this “18 years is the definitive line” ruleset. Which is made to not criminalize sex between e.g. 19 and 17 years old, which is also kind of ridiculous. OTOH it easily leads to the situation where 40 years and 16 years is also legal (in Germany e.g. when there’s no power dynamic between the parties - so 40 yo teacher and his pupil - nono; “random encounter” legal as long as there’s consent). But then again how would the law be written to make it better, like some crazy formula to check for?!

        • OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works
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          11 days ago

          In America, where most states the age of consent is 18, there are also laws that carve out exceptions if both parties are close in age. So a 19 year old is allowed have sex with a 17 year old, but a 45 year old isn’t.

          • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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            8 days ago

            In America, where most states the age of consent is 18,

            It isn’t. 16 is more common (30 states, if I recall?), with only around a dozen having an age of consent of 18. It seems like more because those states include NY and CA, which are where most of the media in the US comes from. But yeah, most states have close in age exceptions and a couple have marriage as an exception to age of consent. Tugging that thread further, 48 states require you to be 18 to get married without an exception (usually involving court and/or parental consent), one requires you to be 19 and one 21. When you include those exceptions the hard minimum age of marriage in most states is 16 with several higher, with one state where it’s 15 and four with no hard minimum at all (including California and Mississippi, Massachusetts was one of these until 2018).