Pennsylvania Woman Reports Rape To Cops, Gets Arrested For Prostitution

America!

On September 26 of this year, a young woman was transported from Franklin County Jail in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to a treatment facility. Upon arriving at that facility, she immediately reported to the staff that she had been raped by the man who drove her there.

According to a police report, the 23-year-old woman, whose name we will not be publishing, told police that 75-year-old Arthur Oister, a longtime employee of White Deer Run Treatment Center, pulled the transportation van off a dirt path that led down near the Susquehanna River and raped her.

Ever so conveniently, however, when the police "investigated" the incident, they "determined" that, actually, the sex had not only been consensual, but that it was prostitution. They "determined" that, actually, the woman had agreed to let Oister perform oral sex on her for $20.

The two were then arrested, the woman for prostitution and Oister for solicitation and "institutional sexual assault," which is ever so conveniently a third degree felony punishable by three and a half to seven years in prison in Pennsylvania, as opposed to rape, which is a first degree felony punishable with 10 to 20 years in prison. Incredible!

The woman has been remanded to Snyder County Prison in Selinsburg, Pennsylvania, while Oister was offered unsecured bail in the amount of $25,000.

So let's just get this story straight, shall we?

A woman is driven from jail to a treatment facility, and on the way there, she decides to see if her driver would perhaps like to go down on her for $20 — and let's be clear, it would have to have been that way if that's the way they're playing it. Even if the driver did offer to pay her $20 for any sexual act, that would still be considered, as Republicans love to say, rape -rape, because her personal safety would have been at issue.

Upon leaving the car, she goes into the treatment facility where she immediately reports to employees that she's been raped.

An odd thing to do, one would imagine, for one who had just engaged in consensual sex work, no? Because she would not have been charged with prostitution otherwise. She puts herself at risk for more jail time than she is already facing just to get a random driver she's never met in her life in trouble with the law?

And how did the cops "determine" this, exactly? Who was going to tell them that this was the case if not Arthur Oister himself? The police report didn't mention any other witnesses. They were in a van that pulled onto a discreet dirt road. We can probably assume the cops were familiar with Oister and the facility, given that White Deer Run has a contract with the state.

Every article available on the incident simply says that "police discovered."

 The Fox 56 article is particularly galling in that it says that the woman said Oister only tried to rape her, with an absurdly superfluous "allegedly" thrown in for good measure.

[The woman] claims Oister allegedly tried to rape her.

It turns out Oister paid [the woman] 20 dollars for oral sex and that the entire thing was pre-planned in advance.

They'd literally prefer a sentence not make sense than leave any room for the notion that she might have been telling the truth. That's commitment.

Their article also conveniently fails to mention that the woman reported the rape as soon as she got to the facility.

There is so much wrong with this that it is hard to know quite where to begin. Though it does bear mentioning, as Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown did, that this is just one of the many, many reasons why sex work must be decriminalized.

While it remains criminalized, sex workers are not only more likely to be victims of crimes, but are unable to report those crimes when they do happen for fear of being arrested themselves. This also means there is a lower risk of getting caught when committing violent crimes against sex workers. This doesn't actually seem like a great plan, given that the certainty of getting caught is a far more powerful deterrent of crime than, say, excessive prison sentences.

We don't know that this woman was a sex worker — it's entirely possible she was not — but this guy was able to get a lesser charge and have her charged herself just by claiming he paid her $20, and that is pretty concerning.

[ Reason ]

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