Campbell County GOP, Don’t You Think It’s Time to Find a New Treasurer?

The treasurer of the Campbell County GOP is Mark Wells. He’s also on the Campbell County Board of Education, where, in his spare time, he spends years harassing a teacher and trying to get her fired because she didn’t want to date him.

And this guy is still the treasurer of the Campbell County GOP why?

Who would let their daughters volunteer there, knowing the lengths he’d go to if she rejected his advances? What woman would want to work there? And what message is the Campbell County Republican Party trying to send? That they’ll tolerate having a guy who would do this in their midst?

The EEOC found that he harassed her. Are Republicans just waiting to see how much money she gets out of the school system for looking the other way?

I don’t get it.

But you know, it’s funny. I read this post today over at Feministe, about Lisak’s research into campus rapists, who, as we’ve discussed, operate by camouflaging themselves as guys who’ve just made a mistake or are overzealous, who could be any guy, really, so they deserve our sympathy. I know we talked a little about how they’ve found that these are the same guys that go on to commit all kinds of abuse. In other words, there are a set of behaviors these guys learn and exploit in order to be able to do what they want to do–whether it’s rape or sexual harassment or abuse or what–while relying on others to provide them social cover.

Thomas quotes Lisak in regards to some of these characteristics.

In the course of 20 years of interviewing these undetected rapists, in both research and forensic settings, it has been possible for me to distill some of the common characteristics of the modus operandi of these sex offenders. These undetected rapists:

• are extremely adept at identifying “likely” victims, and testing prospective victims’ boundaries;

• plan and premeditate their attacks, using sophisticated strategies to groom their victims for attack, and to isolate them physically;

• use “instrumental” not gratuitous violence; they exhibit strong impulse

control and use only as much violence as is needed to terrify and coerce their victims into submission;

• use psychological weapons – power, control, manipulation, and threats – backed up by physical force, and almost never resort to weapons such as knives or guns;

• use alcohol deliberately to render victims more vulnerable to attack, or completely unconscious.

Now, look at how many of these things fit the newspaper account of Wells’ behavior towards Keiser. He tested her boundaries by repeatedly calling her at home, using the excuse of needing to talk to her about work, at times that were inappropriate. I think this was also a way of isolating her, because when the calls come to your home on weekends, it’s obviously very unlikely that others will be able to witness for themselves the bad behavior. And then, of course, he attempted to use his position of power over her to punish and intimidate her when she didn’t comply with his wishes.

Now, obviously, Wells isn’t a rapist, so his bag of tricks isn’t exactly the same. But I point out the similarities to say this is not some dude who’s just a little over-zealous and clumsy when it comes to women. This is a dude who wanted to force a woman to do something she didn’t want to do and who wanted to be able to punish her when/if she didn’t comply and he used known and studied strategies for doing so.

Guys like this count on you believing that they’re just over-zealous and clumsy. They count on you making excuses for them, believing that this situation is something that could happen to anyone, instead of being a situation he set up and thought (and apparently rightly so) he could control.

Don’t protect him.

This isn’t a “mistake.” This is something he deliberately did wrong, for years.