Wisconsin Republican: 'Some Girls Rape Easy'

A Wisconsin state representative is under fire after relaying his father's advice to a local newspaper: "Some girls rape easy." Republican Roger Rivard is now offering context for the December comments in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: His father, he says, was warning him against premarital sex—because "'consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry,'" Rivard tells the paper. "All of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she’s not going to say, 'Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.'"

He continues: "All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she’s underage. And he just said, 'Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls ... they rape so easy.'" Rivard has also issued a statement calling rape "a horrible act of violence"; as the father of four daughters, he says, he knows the "importance of... awareness." A Wisconsin domestic abuse activist isn't pleased with the statement, notes Jezebel: It "portrays women as the perpetrator of the violence being perpetrated against them." The initial comments came in a discussion of a rape accusation by an underage girl against a 17-year-old boy, Salon notes. (More Roger Rivard stories.)