FreePress
Publié en Janvier 2002
BRIAN DICKERSON: Manson case blurs a law's clear lines02/01/2002
BY BRIAN DICKERSON
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
OK -- so maybe what shock-rocker Marilyn Manson did to a young security guard last summer wasn't the criminal outrage of the year, even in Oakland County.
But was grinding his leather-thonged groin against the unsuspecting guard's head nothing more than a tasteless excess of showmanship, as Manson's lawyer argued last week in a successful bid to reduce a criminal sexual conduct charge against his client to a 90-day misdemeanor?
That's not the view of the security guard whose head Manson locked between his thighs during a performance at the DTE Energy Music Theatre last July.
If he'd ever attended one of Manson's concerts, the guard might have realized that the biggest security threat he faced that evening was lurking on the stage to his back.
But the 26-year-old military veteran is not a Manson fan , so he naively assumed that he was there to protect the entertainer, not to be his stage prop. He wasn't even looking when Manson, a reptilian-looking creature whose precise species I was unable to verify at press time, slithered up and began to mate with the security guard's head.
Ughhhh!
Last week, as a thicket of TV cameras whirred, the humiliated security guard reluctantly re-enacted his unwitting role in Manson's July 30 performance. Even the most jaded courtroom observers squirmed a little when the guard recounted leaving his post to wash Manson's "bodily fluids" from his neck and scalp.
(It's not quite as bad as you think; Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor Ken Frazee confirmed that the bodily fluid in question was sweat. But still.)
Astonishingly, Clarkston District Judge Gerald McNally ruled that the assault the security guard described fell short of criminal sexual conduct because there was no evidence Manson had undertaken it for his own sexual gratification.
Maybe McNally's life experience is different from yours and mine. But can you remember the last time an adult wearing only panty hose and a leather thong rubbed his privates against you for some nonsexual purpose?
The victim's perspective
Perhaps Manson is farsighted, and mistook his victim's head for a bidet. But Michigan's statutory language doesn't leave it to Manson's perspective; it defines sexual contact as any touching that "can reasonably be construed as being for the purpose of sexual arousal or gratification, done for a sexual purpose, or in a sexual manner . . . to inflict humiliation."
Let's give Manson the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he was just going through the motions, so to speak, for the benefit of his equally demented audience. So what? Do you suppose his all-in-a-day's-work attitude diminished the humiliation of his victim, who, unlike Manson, has documented ties to planet Earth?
As I conceded at the outset, this may not be the mother of all sexual assaults. But the law is all about drawing lines, and if it takes a circuit court judge more than five minutes to decide McNally erred in relegating Manson's outrageous assault to the catchall of disorderly conduct, the Legislature needs to draw a clearer one.
In the meantime, the security guard is pursuing a civil suit against Manson -- which means that, with any luck, a jury of ordinary earthlings will soon be able to consider whether Manson's conduct was out-of-bounds.
Now that's my idea of a good show.
Contact BRIAN DICKERSON at 248-586-2607 or dicker@freepress.com.
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