Professor who assaulted pro-life teen pleads guilty

Earlier this year, Mireille Miller-Young, Ph.D, was working as an associate professor of feminist studies at University of California Santa Barbara, specializing in “race, gender and sexuality in visual culture and sex industries in the United States” — basically, she studies black women in pornography and prostitution. She claims to want to expose the inequalities and biases that black women face in the adult industry… and of course, she’s rabidly pro-abortion.

So when sisters Joan and Thrin Short arrived on campus to hand out pro-life brochures to UCSB students, Miller-Young was about as tolerant as abortion advocates usually are towards pro-lifers. The Short sisters had handed out about 1,000 brochures in the school’s “free speech zone” when Miller-Young approached them, yelling and mocking them, and began leading a chant demanding that students “tear down” the pro-life sign that Thrin Short, a high school student, was carrying. When students failed to do as Miller-Young asked, she took action herself, tearing the sign out of Short’s hands and storming off. Short followed, asking for the sign back, when Miller-Young assaulted her.

You may remember the disturbing video:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLemX9QtUa4&w=420&h=315]

Abortion advocates, far from being outraged that one of their own would assault a high school student doing nothing more than exercising her right to free speech, defended Miller-Young. She was triggered by the sight of unborn babies and by the pro-lifers; she couldn’t help but react the way she did because the Short sisters were displaying such vile, horrible material. The school itself blamed the assault on the victim, Thrin Short.

The Santa Barbara district attorney did not agree, and filed charges against Miller-Young. And now, Mireille Miller-Young has pled guilty to all charges.

A feminist studies professor at a California state university accused of forcibly grabbing an anti-abortion activist’s poster and assaulting the 16-year-old girl has pleaded no contest to three misdemeanor charges.

University of California at Santa Barbara Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young was charged with one count each of grand theft, vandalism and battery in connection to the March 4 incident involving 16-year-old Thrin Short, her older sister, Joan, and other pro-life activists who were holding signs in a free speech zone on the campus when the professor went berserk.

Miller-Young, who remains employed by the university, and her attorney, Catherine Swysen, did not respond to requests for comment. The charges reportedly carry the possibility of jail time, but sources close to the matter say Miller-Young is likely to be ordered to pay a fine, perform community and undergo counseling when she’s sentenced on Aug. 14.

While it’s nice to see that Miller-Young will be held accountable for her actions, the more worrying question is this: why is she still employed by UC Santa Barbara? This professor is an adult who is supposed to act as a role model for the impressionable students she teaches, is supposed to set a good example for the minds she is helping to shape, and what does she do?

She attacks a teenage girl, a high school student, because she had the audacity to say something that Miller-Young did not agree with. She even did so in the campus “free speech zone”!

By continuing to employ Miller-Young, the university is basically saying that they condone her behavior, that it’s acceptable for their professors to exercise absolutely no control over themselves. Their response to this abhorrent behavior is to blame the victim and continue employing the attacker. Just what will it take for the university to fire her? Or is assaulting a teenager acceptable as long as the teenager is pro-life?

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