Massachusetts Representative Ryan Fattman stated while discussing anti-immigration legislation that
women in the country illegally should feel threatened to go to the police if they have been assaulted or raped. When asked to clarify his statement,
he then compared them to drunk drivers -- if they weren't in the country illegally, it wouldn't have happened.
Tell Massachusetts Republicans that women deserve basic equal rights, regardless of their status in the country. Here legally or not, no woman deserves to be raped and no woman should be afraid to report a sexual assault because she might be deported if she does. Anything less than that is to declare open season for attacking women who may appear to be immigrants.
Last week, your own party's representative, Ryan Fattman, declared that women in the country illegally
should feel threatened to go to the police if they have been assaulted or raped. When asked to clarify his statement, he then compared them to drunk drivers -- if they weren't in the country illegally, it wouldn't have happened.
We the undersigned believe that women deserve basic equal rights, regardless of their status in the country. Here legally or not, no woman deserves to be raped and no woman should be afraid to report a sexual assault because she might be deported if she does. Anything less than that is to declare open season for attacking women who may appear to be immigrants.
We ask that you state for the record that you do not believe all immigrant women should feel afraid to report a sexual assault, that you support all women's rights to not be accosted physically despite their immigration status, and that you do not believe that being in the country illegally makes them just as responsible for being raped as driving a car while drunk makes a drunk driver responsible for the resulting accident.
Thank you.
