Stine: Marsy's Law will make a difference for sexual assault victims

Keaira Stine

As a victim of childhood sexual assault, I was deeply grateful to see that the Wisconsin legislature recently approved Marsy’s Law for Wisconsin with broad bipartisan support. My story and the trauma that I still live with today demonstrate the importance of this common-sense proposal that has already received hundreds of prominent endorsements.

When I became a victim of sexual assault, I was only 11 years old. After taking pornographic video of me and forcing me to perform oral sex on him, my father said that if I told anyone, he would kill me — and that no one would believe me anyway. For weeks, I listened.

When I finally had the courage to speak out, my stepmother and I reported the crimes to the local police department, and my father was arrested and taken to jail the same night. He was charged with sexual assault, incest, neglect and possession of pornography.

Unfortunately, as both a child and a victim, I soon found that I had almost no voice in the ensuing legal process. When my stepmother was convinced to change her story, my father moved back into our home and I was sent to foster care while he prepared his defense. Eventually, my father’s case ended without a trial. He took a plea agreement and served four months in jail, rather than the decades that he faced had the case gone to trial.

At sentencing, the judge in my case described the evidence against my father as “overwhelming,” and told me, “I believe you, Keaira, in your statement that you made.”

But it didn’t matter. The legal system had failed me.

Marsy’s Law for Wisconsin would place additional victims’ rights in Wisconsin’s constitution and strengthen existing constitutional rights to ensure that victims’ rights are not automatically trumped in the courtroom by those of their attackers. Almost everyone can name the basic rights of the accused, but as survivors like me have experienced firsthand, our current legal system simply does not place the same worth on the rights of victims.

Contrary to claims that this proposal would infringe upon the rights of the accused or unduly burden our criminal justice system, many of the rights within Marsy’s Law for Wisconsin already exist in our state in some form. As the first state to pass a Crime Victims’ Bill of Rights — and after passing a state constitutional amendment recognizing victims’ rights in 1993 — we already have the infrastructure and dedicated resources to enforce these laws. Marsy’s Law for Wisconsin simply seeks to give victims like me equal legal footing — nothing more, nothing less. In fact, this intention is clearly laid out in the bill, which plainly states that the proposal is: “not intended to and may not be interpreted to supersede a defendant’s federal constitutional rights.”

I didn’t have a choice when I became a victim of sexual assault. But today I choose to stand up for equal rights for crime victims because I know it will help keep our children and communities safe. I want to thank the 110 lawmakers who chose to stand with us in support of Marsy’s Law for Wisconsin.

Keaira Stine is a survivor of childhood abuse and a supporter of Marsy's Law for Wisconsin.