Forum - View topicNEWS: Penguindrum Voice Actor Illich Guardiola Arrested in Texas
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here-and-faraway
Posts: 1528 Location: Sunny California |
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Sorry. No offense intended. When I did an ANN search of the author of the list, the name Gia popped up. My point is that you took an "aloha" this week and this happened. It was meant as a compliment, although I can see that is a left-handed one at best now. |
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Mad_Scientist
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Of course, they got married in Las Vegas, which doesn't have quite so strict requirements. No blood test, no waiting period, and only the consent of a single parent/guardian is needed if you're 16 or 17. Wonder if maybe that has something to do with them getting wed out of state? Nah, probably a complete coincidence! Anyways, another nice post. |
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VORTIA
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Posts: 941 |
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Hopefully it won't be considered a terrible faux pas on my part to respond to Zaphdash's comments at this point, but I feel like we're getting closer to mutual understanding.
You raise a good point by comparing it to a driver's license - when states issue a driver's license, you have to go through a process that proves you should be entrusted with the privilege of operating a motor vehicle. The license is not arbitrary, since it certifies that you've completed specified safety and operational training. A marriage license being issued because your mom or dad said it's okay, though? How does that actually change the emotional maturity of the person involved?
I got married in Nevada, so it was pretty close to that, actually.
I'm not sure I find it disturbing, but I agree that I don't know what a man his age would see in a girl her age, either. Then again, I don't know what a lot of people see in their partners. Certainly this was horribly ill-thought out, just from the perspective of all the social bullshit he's called down on himself and his bride before they even kicked off their relationship. Were the state not willing to recognize his marriage, I'd even agree with you that he should be prosecuted. I just find it hard to accept that a flimsy piece of paper handed out on flimsy pretenses makes all the difference between prison and living a normal life. I also have a hard time getting outraged about it when a relationship with a 16 year old is legal in over half the States in the country. It doesn't strike me as particularly vile, just dumb.
Agreed. My complaint isn't with age of consent laws, or even Texas's selection of 17, since it's a line that will be drawn somewhere, but that there apparently isn't any consistency between statutory rape and marriage laws.
I don't really believe I was trying to make a case for 16 vs. 17 or 18 so much as making the case that it doesn't seem that 16 has caused any more serious problems than 17 or 18. As we've discussed, since there's no way to scientifically determine a value, its all just ballparked. I'm more hung-up on the idea that Texas's actual consent laws are apparently 17, 16 with a government form. That seems like a really goofy stipulation. It's so much bureaucratic nonsense that has nothing to do with the realities of anyone's lives. I'm bothered by the idea that someone can go to prison not because of the physical or emotional realities of their life, but on whether or not they processed an arbitrary government form. As a lawyer, I'm sure you see this sort of edge-case legal situation come down like a ton of bricks on people all the time, but it's not something that sits very well with me. In any case, I'd like to thank you for having this discussion with me. Regardless of our difference of opinion on the subject at hand, I'd like to think it was interesting for you. I have certainly found it educational. |
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MokonaModoki
Posts: 437 Location: Austin, Texas |
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I just saw the news about this today, and my first thought was "Whoa! he finally got caught?" and my second thought was "What sort of nonsense are the ANN forums generating about this?" ANN forums do not fail to deliver.
Some small points lost along the way- 1) The words "Spring Valley detectives suspect that there may be more underage victims" (multiple news sources) are present for a reason. I suspect so too! This was not an uncommon thing to suspect about him prior to his arrest. The first I heard about him engaging in these sorts of activities with his students was 2010. I am NOT asserting such actions as fact, only the suspicion of them. I had a conversation with a young actress at that time who had been in a production with some of his students 5 years before *that*, she related that he had made advances towards her when she was underaged, and more was conveyed to me by her was gossip related by his students about this sort of activity. This would put this thing going on about 10 years now. All rumor and gossip, but the source was sufficient to make me forswear working with him in a capacity where he'd be in an environment with young girls. 2) You know why you get Vegas-married a week after you expect to be charged with something like this? Love? Amusing. The answer is spousal privilege. He might dodge getting tagged as an educator based on where he worked, but he wouldn't be able to dodge her being under 16 when this was started if that was a thing she was compelled to testify. Also, lesser sentencing, he's a family man now after all! He won't get 20 years. He'll get probation unless someone else steps up. 3) Why did the girl's mom go along with the marriage? Welp - "the girl’s mother didn’t complain about the relationship because she was worried it could affect her daughter’s future acting career." And he does have decent influence in the Houston theater scene. What do you think that suggests about the girl's state of mind if her mother was that... coerced. 4) Will this affect anime in anyway? Please don't be stupid. It's unseemly. The only connection here is that he was a voice actor. It was his job as a drama teacher he was abusing. 5) Will this affect his voice-acting career? Voice-acting isn't a career in Houston, it's a side-job. His career is (was) teaching drama, writing and acting in plays. The steady job is over - HFAC has severed ties to him. For voice-acting anyone who wants to cast him will let him work under a different name. Knowing or believing that a voice-actor diddles teens hasn't stopped anyone from working with them before. 6) Is it just me, or is that fact that he had two homes within a half-mile of each other, only one of which he took the girl to, really sort of creepy? (and yes, he does historically have age-appropriate live-in relationships too) As a final side-note regarding victim-shaming\blaming - it's exactly the reason why no one has come forward about him before. Others present at the dinner conversation I had 4 years ago dismissed the story as the actress in question being high-strung, because "no, he's a really cool guy!" Hopefully anyone else who can assert factual evidence won't be reading some of the foolishness in this forum. [edit - distance corrected] Last edited by MokonaModoki on Sun May 11, 2014 7:57 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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VORTIA
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Posts: 941 |
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Glad to hear from someone who actually knows this guy. If what you say is true, he sounds like a total douchebag. Mom sounds classy too.
I guess egg on my face is the price I pay for trying to give people the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully these other girls are willing to come forward and testify. If he's truly the type of person you say he is, then he deserves everything he gets. |
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MokonaModoki
Posts: 437 Location: Austin, Texas |
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I'd be telling lies if I claimed that. I do not know him. I know of him. I know many of his friends, one of his ex-girlfriends, several people he's worked for, a few more people who have worked for him. I've been *encouraged* to know him on several occasions (because reasons*). I do not actually know him. And I'm not as judgy as I sound, really. I just felt like I was reading very different news reports than others were, and so snark came out. I get what you were trying to accomplish, but as a man in his 40's I can't relate to the idea of a "relationship" with a 16-year-old girl, ever (unless she owns HUUUUUUUGE TRACTS OF LAND). (* I'm disguising the reasons, because they identify me, and I have many friends who'd be very annoyed I spoke out so, but only one who'd be pleased) |
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VORTIA
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You've still given me a much clearer picture of who he is than one can get from the type of brief, clinical reporting you'll get from a news site. I'm loathe to tar and feather someone over rumors spread by others, and I'm willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt if they claim their actions are well-intended, but when the rumors and their actions start to overlap in ways that add up far too tellingly, there's not much ground left for doubt. |
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zaphdash
Posts: 620 Location: Brooklyn |
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It doesn't "change" the emotional maturity of the person involved, but theoretically mom and dad are vouching for your emotional maturity, in the same way that passing a drivers test demonstrates your ability to drive. The driving test analogy isn't perfect because driving is much more easily susceptible to a more or less objective test of your driving abilities -- it's difficult to envision a similar test for "marital abilities" -- and because marriage, unlike driving, is a constitutional right within certain limits (eg monogamy, and in most states still heterosexuality, among others), but the requirements you have to meet to get a license, however paltry (they are somewhat more formidable in the case of a minor, though -- just because mom ended up saying yes in this case doesn't mean mom was inevitably going to say yes ex ante), still serve as "barriers to entry" (to borrow a phrase from economics) that are sufficient for the purposes of the point I was making.
Yeah, Nevada's its own weird thing. Although they got married in Nevada in this case, I'd still say the relative ease of getting married in Nevada doesn't undermine the point I was making though -- that they had to go to Nevada in the first place is itself another "barrier to entry."
If it makes you feel any better about the apparent inconsistency, it makes no difference whether the state is "willing" to recognize his marriage anyway -- under the Full Faith and Credit Clause the state is constitutionally obligated to recognize the marriage.
They're just two separate laws attempting to meet potentially conflicting aims, which is not that uncommon. The interests of society don't all always pull in the same direction. Marriage is essentially a contract, and minors can't enter into contracts without parental consent. The parental consent provision of the marriage law reflects this broader principle of contract law. It's also a historic relic from a time when teen marriage was much more common. Nowadays it's rare and primarily occurs due to pregnancy or conservative religious practice. To the extent that teen marriage (between a couple of similar age) is typically bad for the couple (personally, economically, and the marriage itself frequently doesn't last), it's in the state's interest to curtail it (marriage between a minor and an adult raises more problems, which we've already been discussing in this thread). On the other hand, in case of eg pregnancy, public policy also favors keeping families together -- ie permitting the underage marriage. Or in the case of religion, well, the law is full of religious exceptions for laws that would otherwise inadvertently curtail religious practice. So even within the marriage age, there are competing interests that have to be balanced. Throw in the age of consent, which seeks to protect minors, and you have yet another interest that is at odds with others. You treat the situation like it's arbitrary, but it's really just that not everybody wants or needs the same thing and everybody's interests are valid, so we've got a hierarchy of rules here to try to sort it out: If you're 18, you can get married. If you're 17, you can have sex. If you're 16, your parents can permit you to enter into a contract, including a marriage contract, but you cannot do this on your own authority. If you do marry, it makes sense that this should trump the age of consent law (after all, sex is an intrinsic part of marriage). However, you can't marry as a minor on a whim (you at least need parental consent), which means that marriage is not just a shortcut to circumventing the age of consent. In this particular case, you want to see the marriage exception as especially arbitrary since they weren't married at the time of the offense (otherwise it wouldn't have been an offense), but got married later. But in my last post, I explained why ex post developments can't change the nature of earlier acts.
The law is definitely arbitrary and capricious in a lot of instances, which is perhaps the single biggest reason I regret having become a lawyer, but this isn't the type of law that's going to bother me. I guess for whatever it's worth, I don't do criminal or family law (one reason I haven't bothered to join the discussion of the minutia of the Texas statutes that have been quoted in this thread -- the other reason is I don't really care about that discussion anyway) so I'm certainly no expert on these fields, although on the other hand, this guy's case doesn't present any particularly complicated legal issues anyway.
Yeah I mean I spend my Sundays arguing with people on the internet because on some level I find that entertaining so good talk. Also sorry if this post gets disjointed or incoherent, I'm writing it while watching Cosmos so I'm not really paying close attention to what I'm writing and I'm kind of losing my train of thought for a few seconds at a time and then trying to pick it back up. If any of this ends up not coming through clearly I can explain it again, if we're interested in continuing this at all. |
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Happiness for Subaru
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*head in hands* |
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MokonaModoki
Posts: 437 Location: Austin, Texas |
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Yep. That's about it. Thanks for the acknowledgment. TBH I just really couldn't take any more defensive posturing for this douchenozzle, even though I asked for it by coming to look for it. Sometimes they really are that bad.
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BrandonL337
Posts: 88 |
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umm, no, that's not how it works, we tried that already with the articles of confederation and it was a disaster. |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14766 |
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Such open-minded gals! Good is great!
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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One of things that bothers me most in this whole mess, is the fact that they got married AFTER the police began investigating him. If he knew he was under investigation, then there is a strong possibility that marriage was just to obtain spousal privilege for his wife. Now that they are married, she can't be forced to testify against him and they will need more physical proof (such as photos or text messages).
If the marriage was just a sham to prevent her from testifying, then that makes the whole situation more tragic. |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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I read all 20 pages, and found zaphdash and VORTIA's discussion to be wholly fascinating. VORTIA, what's your take on the Texas law that prohibits teacher-student relationships at any age? I know it's not specifically relevant to this case (one thing that got lost in the conversation shuffle is that he was just her drama teacher at an extracurricular program, not a school), but I had never heard of the law before I read this thread and I find it interesting that a teacher-student relationship would be recognized as needing extra protection from abuse of power.
Also, I wanted to point out that there are situations besides for age in which a legal inability to consent to sex comes up. Inmates in prison, for example, are not legally able to consent to sex, so if a sexual relationship with an individual outside the prison is discovered (a correctional officer, for example), it's considered rape. Upstate Pregnant Jail Guard Charged in Inmate Rape[url] |
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DerekTheRed
Posts: 3544 Location: ::Points to hand:: |
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I'm still working through this thread, so apologies if this gets addressed later, but I don't think the teacher student law applies here. It was so vaguely worded that it sounded strange to me that a 30 year old community college professor might be committing a felony for sleeping with a 40 year old pupil, who could potentially even be spouses, so I found the law: http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/SOTWDocs/PE/htm/PE.21.htm Sec 21.12 It only applies to public and private primary and secondary schools, which Houston Family Arts Center is not. There is also a special exemption for spouses. Regardless, this is really gross and it seems likely he broke other laws, so I'm sure he'll go to jail. And good riddance. EDIT: An hour of thread reading later, it seems the text of the law had been posted a few times, but Agent355 only just beat me to pointing out that it did not apply. |
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