In what world does a 16-year-old girl escape her sexual abuser and pimp, taking his life to preserve her own, but ends up sentenced to over 11 years in prison?
Only in America, or highly likely in America, when the victim is a Black girl and her abuser was a White male twice her age.
The case of sex-trafficking victim Chrystul Kizer got some attention when she initially came to public light. But on Aug. 19, she was sentenced to just over 11 years as prosecutors and a judge declared her to be an offender—not a teen victim.
It’s been a six-year fight. There was no leniency for her despite protections that are supposed to help sexual slavery victims who commit “crimes” to survive.
She has been credited with a year and a half of time served by a White judge in Kenosha, Wisconsin She will be under a decade of court supervision once released.
She pleaded guilty to second-degree reckless homicide with use of a dangerous weapon earlier this year. That charge could have meant up to three decades in prison.
Her suffering and the insanity of the conviction and sentencing are horrific. But the details of her case reveal major, unforgivable police failures.
“Kizer, now 24, initially faced a possible life sentence for shooting 34-year-old Randall Volar III when she was 17. Volar, who was White, had been filming his sexual abuse of Kizer, who is Black, for more than a year,” the Washington Post observed.
“More than 30 states have affirmative defense provisions that allow trafficking victims to be acquitted of certain charges against them if they can prove at trial that a crime was committed because of their abuse,” the Post reported.
Prosecutors said the teen came with plans to steal her White pimp’s BMW and did not kill him to escape unwanted sexual advances.
“A 2019 Washington Post investigation showed that the Kenosha Police Department knew Volar was abusing underage Black girls for nearly three months before his death. After a 15-year-old Black girl fled from his home in nothing but a bra and jacket, police raided Volar’s residence and found hundreds of videos of child sexual abuse; among the stash were videos Volar had made of Kizer and girls who appeared to be as young as 12. But while the investigation continued, police and prosecutors allowed Volar to remain free,” said the Post.
“Kizer’s attorney, described Volar as a ‘predator’ and a ‘pedophile’ who preyed on young Black girls from the Milwaukee area. He was arrested, quickly released and continued his behavior,” Chrystul’s lawyer told the judge.
Chrystul told the court Aug. 19, “older girls she befriended told her it was a way she could make the money she needed for snacks, school supplies and food for her younger siblings,” the Post noted.
Her abuser and pimp, “in exchange for sex acts, Volar took her on dates and groomed her with cash, shopping trips and gifts such as a locket she came to treasure. … Kizer said he also trafficked her to other men; Volar plied her with drugs to make her more comfortable when he drove her to a hotel to meet other men and then take their money.”
Things spiraled June 4, 2018, when the distressed child visited Mr. Volar, who “sent an Uber to bring her to his home in Kenosha, where they stayed up throughout the night. Volar began massaging her leg, but Kizer rebuffed him, saying she didn’t want to do that, she said. Kizer would later tell detectives Volar pinned her to the ground before she was able to get away. She retrieved a gun from her purse and shot him. She lit a fire in his house and fled in his BMW … .”
Prosecutors “framed her behavior as a premeditated murder,” the Post recounted. They also described the Black victim as “greedy,” “impulsive” and “untrustworthy.”
What happened to #MeToo and believing women?
It doesn’t count when it comes to Black girls and women in this society—a society in which the Honorable Elijah Muhammad warned we would never receive full and complete freedom and justice.
“The reality is that there is an abuse-to-incarceration pipeline in the United States that overwhelmingly impacts Black women and girls. We have a criminal-legal system in which Chrystul Kizer and too many other girls like her are punished for surviving abuse, exploitation, and gender-based violence,” said Dr. Sydney McKinney, executive director of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute, in June.
“Courts across the country criminalize Black women and girls for surviving abuse and sexual violence. Survivors need support accessing healing services, not punishment. Yet too many are punished and incarcerated for actions they take to survive.”
After enduring earlier childhood sexual abuse, poverty and deprivation, Chrystul’s life is topped off by prison time—more prison time than White killers of Black people.
None of the cops involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor, in 2020, were even charged. Minneapolis ex-cop Thomas Lane was recently freed from prison—despite pleading guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the 2020 death of George Floyd. Randy Roedema, the ex-cop in Aurora, Colorado, was given 14 months in prison for his role in the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain, a young Black man put in a chokehold and who later died due to the actions of officers and paramedics.
Remember the fatal police shooting of Atatiana Jefferson in 2019 by a Fort Worth Police officer? Aaron Dean, the White officer who fired recklessly into her home, killing her, was sentenced to 11 years and 10 months in prison.
It’s been nearly six years since Botham Jean was shot to death eating ice cream in his Dallas apartment. Then Dallas police officer Amber Guyger walked into his apartment and shot him to death. The White female cop claimed she had gone to the wrong apartment. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
How does a trafficked Black girl get the same amount of time as cops who shot Black people to death in ridiculous, tragic, unconscionable circumstances?
How does she get more prison time than those who contributed to the deaths of unarmed Black people? How is she charged with a crime when White cops seem to be excused daily after slaughtering Black folk?
And when will relief come? We must never forget that we are living in the time of God’s coming and choosing Black people in America for His people. Each step the open enemy takes in tormenting us, abusing us and slaughtering us only hastens his eventual, final doom in a fast-unraveling nation, as the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has warned.
God Himself has come to dry our tears and ease our suffering. He has promised our open enemy will not escape judgment. And verily Allah (God) never breaks His promise.
