VivirLatino

Last Monday we wrote about how the Supreme Court was hearing two cases examining the practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In the video part of that post the way this type of sentencing impacts young people of color was looked at. However, in hindsight, the post presented the issue as primarily a male one, failing to look at how women of color are unjustly treated especially with the added layer of sexual violence playing a role with their introduction into the criminal justice system.

I came across part of the life of Sarah Kruzan via a few of my friends on Facebook. Here we have an example how the sexual violence women of color experience criminalizes them, the “victim” if you will, even though I hate that terminology. Sarah was a child, just a year younger than my older daughter, when she was groomed for prostitution by a predatory man. Now I’m not saying that the adult male that pimped her deserved to be killed, but I am saying that Sarah certainly doesn’t deserve life without parole.