So I just discovered that I have been working next to the waste of oxygen that raped my best friend several years ago. I work in a manufacturing environment and I know that you can’t fire someone just for being a sex offender unless it directly interferes with work duties (in the US). But despite it being a primarily male workforce he does work with several women who have no idea what he is. He literally followed a woman home, broke into her house, and raped her. Him working here puts every female employee at risk. How is that not an unsafe working environment? How is it at even legal to employ him anywhere where he will have contact with women?
While I agree that restorative justice is always better than punitive justice, nowhere in the post does OP mention that any justice was served at all, and statistically, it is almost certain that the rapist never saw a day of prison, and potentially isn’t even on the sex offenders list.
They also never said they wanted them punished, but rather, that the safety of women be ensured, and in the same way known paedophiles shouldn’t be put in positions where they have access to children, it isn’t unreasonable to at least wish that a known rapist wouldn’t be put in a position where they have access to potential victims. This is not punishment, it is consequences for actions.
50% of the population is women. How would that even work?
It’s actually 50.5% female in the US. Not that it really changes your point much.
Remote work.
Sounds like a bad idea considering:
a lot of past convicts that have been rehabilitated shouldn’t be allowed into 87.3% of all jobs
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/remote-work-statistics/
And further considering the innocence project claims that about 4% of those are false convictions.
https://innocenceproject.org/research-resources/
Obviously I do not want to downplay the situation you’re in, but making society better is not done with broad brush strokes. No single person without the respective systemic knowledge will be able to design a solution for this in a matter of months.
If the person wasn’t convicted for rape, at what grounds should the company fire the person on, rumours?
And I don’t think you can compare it to child molesters not being allowed to work with children. Women are ~50% of the workforce, you’ll interact with them in nearly every work scenario. Your only option would be isolate a sizeable percentage of people from most jobs, with all the ramifications such a move would have.
The “justice” system completely failing to address sexual and gendered violence doesn’t mean that violence didn’t happen (what is well documented is that both police and “justice” system regularly either dismiss accusations outright, or worse - put the victim through such abuse, known as a “second rape”, that many don’t even bother complaining in the first place because the additional trauma is enough to push them over the edge).
Also the fact that women are 50% of the population doesn’t change a person choosing to make themsleves a threat to that 50%, nor does it excuse them from facing the consequences of their choices. Why is it that children deserve to be protected but women don’t?
There are, especially nowadays, plenty of jobs where you hardly even interact with other people face to face, so their gender doesn’t matter. There are hundreds if not thousands of ways this person can still be employed and make a living (hell, being an open and proud sexual abuser won’t even keep a man from becoming president)
I also have to wonder if you’re as concerned with rape victims being isolated from work places where they don’t feel safe (something I assure you happens significantly more than a rapist having their job threatened in any real sense, again, because most rapists aren’t even convicted, and are free to continue to live their lives), as you are about rapists being somehow deserving of all of this consideration.
So again - if you’re going to commit a heinous crime, you should be willing to deal with the consequences, even if the patriarchy has convinced you you shouldn’t have to, because in our society in around 98% of cases rapists walk away with their life unchanged. Having your choice of workplaces limited for the safety of the other employees is not a punishment. It is a perfectly reasonable consequence, a loss of a privilege that was never guaranteed, unlike the bodily autonomy of another person, which was violated. Restorative justice isn’t about just keeping people out of prison, it is about keeping a community safe.
A flawed justice system is still immeasurably better than vigilantism.
I agree that legal systems around the globe are not able to effectly convict rapists, but that doesn’t mean companies should be able to fire a person based on rumours. Though for the record, in this instance OP mentioned that the person was convicted for his crimes.