Yeerks - Guilty or not?

[Darth Zakryn]

Okay, this is for a hypothetical situation I'm concocting, so please forgive me if I put this in the wrong spot.

That said, let's talk about post-war life on Earth. Let's say this woman, let's call her Susan, was married and during the war, her Yeerk forced her to have intercourse with her husband to avoid suspicion. Once the war ended, Susan is angry, and her Yeerk decides to choose to permanently morph into human. Susan knows which human it is and decides to press charges against the Yeerk for rape.

Here's where my question comes into effect: Does the Yeerk get tried? If they want to be human, they must abide by the laws. And technically, the Yeerk IS guilty, no doubt about that, no matter how much they want their own bodies. Or is the Yeerk protected under the government, absolving any wrongdoing over the course of the war? This is not justice, in my opinion, if they really did this, because it doesn't allow the people involved in the war a chance to heal. The same holds true for Yeerks who committed murder. Can a loved one charge that Yeerk with murder? They DID commit the act, but they were just "following orders," after all.

BTW, why is it no one is answering my threads? Are you all afraid of me? Or are you still mad for the mistakes I made in the past? Once, I'm sorry for all the grief I caused. Trust me, it wasn't intentional. Please forgive me if that is the case.

Anyway, discuss!

P.S.: Sorry if I seem like I'm hung up on the "Yeerk rape" thing. I only just recently realized the implications and realized how many people had to be have been raped in the war, even the males. I consider rape to be the most offensive crime, even worse than torture or death, but that's an issue for another time.

[poparena]

I'll start with the idea of Yeerks committing murder, as there is proper analogue to it in real life: soldiers in a war. In the general sense, soldiers who fight in a war are not typically considered murderes or attempted murderers. When a war is over, a soldier is not considered a criminal unless he commited heinous acts while in service, such as, well, rape.

I think Yeerks being put on trial for rape as a war crime would be fair, if not complicated to work with, since "mind control rape" doesn't have it's own real-life analogue, we've never had to deal with anything like it and thus figuring out a proper sentancing would be a very long and arduous task.

[Noelle]

I think that the charge would be over all included in the fact that the Yeerk was probably going to be tried as a war criminal for enslaving someone.  The Yeerk didn't just cause rape, it enslaved the human...that's a whole huge overarching charge in itself.  If they even bothered to pursue it legally  (Holding a war-crime trial?  Really?  but I digress) they would have had to come up with a whole new set of laws and codes to deal with that kind of thing and to deal with the Yeerks.  Stuff like complete and total mind control is not covered adequately in laws we have in society today.

[Darth Zakryn]

It was just a hypothetical situation.

[poparena]

Laws on mind control would be most interesting in application to the Yeerks, as it would be a law against what is basically a biological function of the species. It'd be to them what a law against manipulating things with our hands would be to us.

[Noelle]

I think that's part of why the whole war-crime trial thing really became a pet peeve of mine in the last book.  We can't apply our laws to them...how can you charge a completely different, warring race with war crimes?  How could you apply our laws to them at all?  I would think the best thing to do was just to treat them like enemy combatants...not like humans that can actually be measured up to our moral standards. 

To think our morals are so universal that they can actually be applied to the Yeerks is just...so...Andalit e?

Haha, I should just be quiet and start writing. 

[Darth Zakryn]

It doesn't change the fact that they ARE still guilty of they crimes the committed. If they truly want to be human, they must accept responsibility. This is assuming, of course, that they want to morph human.

[Terenia]

Right, and I think that's part of the problem. The Yeerks weren't exactly given much of a choice about whether they became nothlits or not, and the crimes that they committed were committed when they weren't human, which adds a degree of difficulty to the situation.

The problem, I think, is in distinguishing between what is inherent in their biology (enslaving another species) and what is morally and ethically wrong despite that (rape). And even then, just because it is wrong in our culture, does that mean that it's wrong in another? Human cultures have, historically, practiced human sacrifices and other acts that many people today would consider 'heinous crimes', but by those norms it was considered, well, normal.

Even if a Yeerk morphs human permanently, they do not become human. They still have the mind and upbringing of a Yeerk. That's kind of like saying that if I, an American, move to Turkey I become Turkish. Maybe I could be a citizen there, and while in Turkey I'll have to follow Turkish laws, but I'm still going to be heavily influenced by my American upbringing and the Turkish government can't really hold me accountable for things I did as an American that they deem immoral. Unless, of course, I did it to one of their citizens on their soil....which is where everything gets muddled, because that's exactly what the Yeerks were doing. Except it was a war, and all the rules change in war time.

So, uh. My answer is: I have no clue! XD

[Chad32]

Seeing how the Counsel, the guys that started the wars and force Yeerks to follow them on pain of Kandrona starvation and such, are against having hosts mate with each other, I think they could safely be charged with rape. I am talking about the incident in Visser, though the counsel may have just been bothered that V1 had become compassionate towards her host and really made love instead of just having sex.

I don't think all Yeerks should be punished for taking hosts if they were actually against the war and for peace. Taking a host is just what they do. It's how they exist as a society. They've just been indoctrinated into doing it wrong.

[Chad32]

I'm pretty sure rape isn't the worst crime, but debating what the worst crime possible is a topic for another thread. I wouldn't throw the book at the Yeerk if s/he was told sex needed to happen to maintain cover.

[Darth Zakryn]

Well, then, all I need ask is what would it be like if it happened from YOUR point of view? Any of you?

And yes, the instance of rape as the worst crime is debatable, but it's how I see it, so it's, as always, merely my opinion.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. Discuss.

purp: Huh? I don't get it...?

[Darth Zakryn]

What? What are you talking about? I don't want to start with you.

[Darth Zakryn]

Ok.

[strawberry banana]

if u wanted to go into specifics, then before u get into whether or not tht was wrong, first u need to decide if anything is wrong with anything. if u don't answer tht, then the argument will just go in circles. it depends on what u believe is wrong. but there are some reasons why it would be unlikely tht such an instance would go to court:most juries, would believe tht its wrong, and most likely convict them, not a whole lot of people would want to be a defense attorney for a yeerk (unless they were payed a lot for it), and the us prob wouldn't let them become "citizens" if they committed crimes previously(even the us has standards)

tht set aside, every person would have to answer certain questions before giving a verdict(in no particular order):

• would they be tried the same as we would try one of our soldiers/officers who commited crimes while in service
  • soldiers/officers are allowed to do certain things while in service. like use drugs/alcohol while under cover, and are not convicted of murdering someone while in service
  • certain things are not permitted, and officers can be convicted of things like rape
• would any crimes be acceptable if they were commited under threat of death by any means
  • most often, crimes commited while under threat of death are not given as high of degree of murder, but are still considered murder, just on a lesser degree with less consequences

• do our rules count against someone/thing who is a different sentient being entirely from us?

not to mention tht this was in a war time, where emotions often run high and people are not thinking clearly and don't respond the same way they would in a time of peace. like demonstrated in the series, during a war things are done tht aren't cosure and are based on the situations and circumstances.

so it would be an awesome case to watch unfold

[Darth Zakryn]

Maybe someone should write a fanfic about it.

EDIT: This would indeed be a very hard case, though. If we go by Augustine Quill's fanfic One Least Likely, then Yeerk-controlled attractive females are routinely being used as mere sex toys to recruit hormonal adolescent boys thinking more with their *cough* selective organs than with their heads! This doesn't seem totally farfetched, to be honest, as the Yeerks have been shown to have little regard for the feelings of their host and are trying to speed up the invasion by any means necessary. This begs the question as to whether the girl in question, Traci Lee, was a voluntary Controller, or whether she wasn't, and if this was a common procedure or something simply a few did. Of course, in that story, David did rape his former girlfriend who was under Yeerk control despite all the signs that she was, in fact, under Yeerk control, and I get the feeling the author is really turned on by that, so the question of whether this is canonically accurate is ambiguous at best. To tell you the truth, that fic is actually what I was thinking of when I made this thread.