A Wisconsin man appeared in court this week after being accused of sickening crimes involving child rape and a forced abortion.
WAOW News reports Matthew Christenson, 33, of Crandon, Wisconsin, pleaded not guilty to the charges Friday in court. He is charged with 14 felonies involving sexual and physical abuse of six victims ages 12 through 17.
Authorities also accused Christenson of impregnating one of the young victims and performing a “crude” abortion on her and her unborn child. News reports do not give any details about how the abortion was performed or how old the unborn baby was.
Here’s more from the report:
The charges, including seven counts of first- or second-degree sexual assault of a child, involve incidents in January 2010, December 2012, August 2015 and April 2016.
Christenson impregnated one of the girls when she was in the sixth grade and later performed an abortion on her, the complaint said.
The girls told investigators Christenson gave them alcohol and marijuana, beat them and threatened them, the complaint said.
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A boy,13, told investigators Christenson locked him a closet for punishment one weekend and fed him only a potato, the complaint said.
According to the criminal complaint, one victim said Christenson threatened them and told them he would find them when he got out of jail.
If convicted on all counts, Christenson could face a maximum of 454 years in prison, according to reports.
These horrifying allegations are a reminder of how frequently sexual abuse victims say they are pressured or forced to abort their unborn babies.
In 2015, one victim told a British court that her abuser forced her to have an abortion after he raped and impregnated her. While the woman admitted that she had no desire to be a mother, she said she would not have aborted her baby – “because I didn’t want to go through all that.”
Research indicates human trafficking victims often are forced or coerced into aborting their unborn babies. A survey by the U.S. Department of State found that 55 percent of sex trafficking victims had at least one abortion, with 30 percent having multiple abortions. More than half said they did not choose to abort their unborn child; their traffickers ordered them to, according to the survey.
Situations involving the horrific crime of rape often are held up as examples of when women need abortions the most. However, research indicates abortions often result in additional suffering for the woman as well as the death of her unborn child, the second and often forgotten victim in such cases.
According to research by the Elliot Institute rape victims who became pregnant and had abortions, whether by force, coercion or their own choice, said the abortion did not help them; it added to their trauma. Some even said the abortion felt as if they were being raped a second time.
One woman, Kathleen, told the researchers: “I, having lived through rape, and also having raised a child ‘conceived in rape,’ feel personally assaulted and insulted every time I hear that abortion should be legal because of rape and incest. I feel that we’re being used by pro-abortionists to further the abortion issue, even though we’ve not been asked to tell our side of the story.”
