Juvie: Even Worse Than We Thought

After my many, many years of carefully reading the newspaper and watching Oz, I imagined that I had a pretty good handle on this whole sex-in-prison thing. Basically, you're either raped repeatedly by people who hate you and of whom you are totally terrified or you enter into a consensual relationship in which you're penetrated by someone about whom you care deeply, and will marry as soon as you get paroled. Or, every once in a while, a psychobitch chick guard might force you to please her sexually. These are pretty much the options, at least as far as Tom Fontana taught me.

Alarmingly, however, it turns out that things in juvie are a lot less like Oz and a lot more like that horrible, stupid Brad Pitt lawyer/revenge flick, Sleepers. Because not only are there 10 times as many sexual assaults in juvenile prisons than there are in the grown-up variety, but the great majority of them are committed by guards and "other prison officials." No way. Ew. Ew ew ew. As if these guys' lives don't suck enough already, some fat, hairy guard is going make them suck him, too? I repeat: ew.

While the report tries to make things sound sweet and romantic by pointing out that even consensual relationships are included because any sex is illegal when it involves people under 18, I'm guessing the cases of kids falling in love with "other prison officials" make up an infinitesimal percentage of the nearly 10,000 cases reported in 2004. Ew.