Idaho lawmakers and others on far right standing up for rapists is becoming a pattern
The far right in Idaho has made protecting children the excuse to pursue a variety of policies it wants for other reasons — banning books, jailing librarians, defunding public schools, interfering with doctors, intervening in high school sports regulations, shutting down sex education and so on.
But as the far right has made protecting children its central theme, prominent members have been building a track record of defending rapists.
The latest example happened at the sentencing of former Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger, for raping a 19-year-old legislative intern.
As James Dawson of Boise State Public Radio reported, both Rep. Vito Barbieri and Rep. Mike Kingsley submitted letters testifying to von Ehlinger’s good moral character — to the good moral character of a man who raped a woman barely out of high school.
“(At) every meeting and campaign event Aaron proved to me his outstanding character, looking out for the people that he was to serve,” Kingsley wrote below the seal of the Idaho House of Representatives.
“(Von Ehlinger) has always presented himself with the utmost thoughtful concern for others and has followed through with this concern in his behavior,” Barbieri wrote beneath the same seal.
Veteran political reporter Bill Spence of the Lewiston Tribune — an excellent journalist — recently cast Kingsley and Barbieri’s decision to vouch for von Ehlinger’s character as an act of forgiveness, as something arguably virtuous if misguided.
I strongly disagree. I think this perspective ignores two fundamental things.
First, forgiveness is the right of the victim and no one else. If I punch Jim in the face, it doesn’t make sense for Robert to forgive me. It’s up to Jim whether I’m forgiven.
Similarly, it is not up to Kingsley or Barbieri to forgive von Ehlinger. The only person who can forgive von Ehlinger is the woman he raped.
Second, forgiveness requires repentance.
Von Ehlinger was given a chance to take responsibility and apologize at his sentencing, and he refused. He remained defiant, claiming he had done nothing wrong.
Indeed, one of the reasons he received a sentence of up to 20 years is that he insisted on portraying himself alternately as a victim and a hero, as the Statesman’s Alex Brizee reported. He sought to make himself the object of sympathy.
In this light, it’s clear what Kingsley and Barbieri were doing. They were not exercising Christian forgiveness. They were seeking to help a convicted rapist avoid the punishment he was due — the punishment prescribed by the very system of laws they are in charge of maintaining as legislators.
And they did it not in their personal capacity, but in their capacity as right-wing lawmakers, signing their names on official legislative stationery. That took an immoral action and turned it into a violation of public trust.
And this is part of a pattern on the far right.
Rep. Priscilla Giddings, the far right’s defeated nominee for lieutenant governor, and Rep. Dorothy Moon, its defeated nominee for secretary of state and now the chair of the Idaho Republican Party, both strongly backed von Ehlinger before the House Ethics Committee.
And it’s not limited to von Ehlinger. On Sept. 17, Moon gave a speech to the Madison County Republican Women alongside Dan Roberts, a former GOP House candidate and well-known far-right political activist in Eastern Idaho.
As the Post Register reported in 2020, Roberts acted as a character witness at the sentencing of James Davis, who sexually abused two minor sisters, violently assaulted them and then threatened their mother from jail in an effort at witness tampering.
“I think it would be a travesty to put him behind bars,” Roberts said of Davis, adding that he would allow him to live in his guest house.
How many times does something like this have to happen before you call it a pattern of practice, before you conclude that it says something about the essential character of this movement that has taken up the banner of protecting children?