The Ugly, Painful, Disturbing Must-Read of the Week

I don't want to think, much less read about this either. But it's a human rights abomination happening thousands of times every day all across the country and making rehabilitation of both victims and perpetrators impossible.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

The Washington Post published this two weeks ago, but unless he releases something today, Attorney General Eric Holder has missed the deadline, condemning thousands more to sexual assault in prison:

"RAPE IS VIOLENT, destructive, and a crime -- no less so when the victim is incarcerated." These were the opening words of a report delivered to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last June by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. By law, the attorney general was given one year to consider the report's recommendations and issue standards to reduce the scourge of sexual violence in the nation's prisons. The Justice Department is about to miss its June 23 deadline -- and probably by a shamefully wide margin.

The department will not say, but those following this issue closely estimate that the Justice Department is unlikely to take action until the end of this year. At that time, federal prisons will be obligated to adopt whatever standards Justice approves. State and local facilities will not be forced to embrace the measures for another year after that. In the meantime, more prisoners -- including juveniles -- will have been senselessly brutalized.

This is such a basic impulse of human decency, to keep prisoners from being sexually brutalized -- and the thing is, the report had solid bipartisan support. As far as I can tell, the only people who oppose it are the corrections officials, who don't want anyone looking over their shoulder while they ignore prisoners getting gang raped -- or molested by guards. So I don't have a clue why Holder hasn't acted.

Even the screwed-up people who believe prisoners deserve whatever happens might want to give some thought to the fact that prison rape happens frequently to innocent people who are being held in custody until they're released without charges. Maybe even those sick bastards might give some thought to the possibility of their 17-year-old kid being raped by an HIV-positive convict after their kid's held for DUI.

Because even in this Taser-lovin' America of ours, people might still see the injustice of inflicting a life sentence like HIV on someone who hasn't even been found guilty of a major crime.

And that's not even looking at the fate of gay prisoners, who are treated like sex slaves while guards and prison officials look the other way.

Click here to read the harrowing testimony and see the NSFW video.