1. Steve Wilkos As The Arrogant, Dumb Cop
If you follow me regularly, you'll already know that I have never been a major fan of Steve Wilkos. What really irked me about him was how he mishandled an interview with Matthew Koso and Crystal Guyer Koso back in 2011.
All right. I'm well aware that anyone who agrees to appear on the guest panel of The Steve Wilkos Show has to know that Mr. Wilkos is not going to coddle them, to say the least. His audiences are best described as the Harper Valley PTA. Therefore, it is already established knowledge that they won't be throwing anyone on the guest panel a love fest, unless, of course, that individual is a genuine victim of some heinous crime.
Nevertheless, Matthew Koso and Crystal Guyer Koso were and still are genuine victims of an oppressive criminal justice system and government overreach that have plagued the United States for some time now. Yes, Crystal was 13 years old when Matthew got her pregnant, and he was 21 years old in a state jurisdiction (Nebraska) where the statutory age of consent was 16 at the time.
Yes, Crystal was 14 years old and Matthew was 22 years old when they married each other down in Hiawatha, Kansas. Here is my problem. The local prosecutor and the police in Falls City, Nebraska had the discretion not to pursue any criminal matter against Matthew. They exercised that discretion and decided that they wanted to leave well enough alone.
Here is the kicker. Jon Bruning, who was the Nebraska Attorney General back in 2005, decided that he wanted to make an example out of Matthew. He falsely accused Matthew of being a pedophile, even though no psychiatrist had ever clinically diagnosed him with pedophilia.
Mr. Bruning was from the Republican Party, which is the party that is supposed to support the institutions of marriage and family, yet he tried every way to deny the recognition of Matthew and Crystal's marriage as being legitimate. Mr. Bruning only proved that an adult man in his early twenties can get into more trouble for falling in love with an adolescent girl than a teenage minor can do so for brutally raping a girl the same age as him here in our nation.
I make this point, because down in Mississippi, a 12- or 13-year-old boy violently raped a 12-year-old girl named Aubreigh Wyatt and was never arrested for it despite that the local authorities conducted an investigation of the matter. This girl died by suicide because of what this punk did to her.
On the other hand, Mr. Bruning treated Matthew as though he were some kind of serial child molester. He hauled him into court despite that Crystal begged him to let the matter go. Matthew needlessly served 15 months in prison for doing something that would have been perfectly legal for a 14- or 15-year-old boy to have done. Meanwhile, the authorities treated a 12- or 13-year old boy's sexual atrocities against a 12-year-old girl with complete impunity.
Below are two clips of that same edition of The Steve Wilkos Show in which Matthew and Crystal appeared. They should have contacted Maury Povich instead. He might not have approved of their marriage and their relationship, but at least he would have listened to what they had to say and he would have treated them with respect on his television talk show.
Steve Wilkos Roasts Matthew Koso And The Guyers On His Television Talk Show
I decided not to read all that many posts in the comments section of either video. Too many of these YouTubers prefer to live in their make-believe world of age-appropriate perfection and wholesome purity.
First of all, I feel that "First Degree Sexual Assault Of A Child" was way too excessive of a charge against Matthew, especially since the local prosecutor and the authorities in his community did not wish to pursue the criminal case against him but had to do so inasmuch as Mr. Bruning forced them into it. I saw the documentary about this matter on 20/20 on ABC back in 2005, and Mr. Bruning behaved like an absolute pompous derrière during the entire interview.
I find it offensive that American sex laws go easier on underage boys that commit violent, heinous sex crimes against teenage and pre-teenage girls than it does on men who fall into similar or identical circumstances as Matthew. Our society has been indoctrinated into believing that the Puritanical Establishment is always right no matter what the circumstances are or what the evidence proves to the contrary.
Second of all, Mr. Wilkos went off on a tangent about a number of things that made no sense at all in the first place. He kept asking Crystal, "What if an adult man wants to have sex with a 9- or 10-year-old girl?" Well, of course, it's going to be wrong. Girls that young are not looking to be sexually molested. However, when an adolescent girl in middle school or high school meets the love of her life, it's an entirely different matter if she wishes to consummate that relationship.
I'm not saying that anybody should be having sex before they're ready to do so, but it angers me how loosely words like "rape" and the likes get used in the English language. The masses are poorly educated on these topics.
Mr. Wilkos was absolutely rude toward Crystal's mother, Cecilia Guyer ("Cee Cee"), even though she objected to her daughter's relationship with Matthew back at its outset. She even took out a restraining order against Matthew after he first began seeing Crystal. Of course, Mr. Wilkos would never have mentioned anything about that fact himself. He knew about it, however, because Cee Cee mentioned about it at the beginning of the television show.
Cee Cee looked happy when Mr. Wilkos told her to leave his stage. As long as she was to get the payment from him that he was to give her for appearing on his television show, she was probably thinking, “I thought that jerk would never let me go.”
The audience never brought anything to the table. They merely insulted the Kosos instead of expressing why they really opposed their marriage.
I find it somewhat hypocritical that our criminal justice system will give adult men exorbitant prison sentences for falling in love with a teenage girl, but then there is not even one state jurisdiction where prison rape is a capital offense. It's as though people in power here in the United States choose to define rape any way they please rather than how it is supposed to be defined.
Mr. Wilkos stated that life was difficult and hard. I agree. However, does he honestly believe that Mr. Bruning made Crystal and Matthew's lives easier? Mr. Bruning certainly did nothing to increase the quality of life for that couple's children, to say the least.
Mr. Wilkos concentrated more on getting a shock effect from his audience than he did focusing on the bare facts of the matter. Why did the audience clap after Mr. Wilkos stated that Matthew was going to have to register as a sex offender for the next 25 years? If he can’t get a job because of it and he and his family would have to apply for welfare benefits, it’s coming out of their tax dollars.
It goes to show you how stupid many Americans can be. Fortunately, people are more open-minded about these topics beyond the barbed wires of the so-called land of milk and honey.
Furthermore, it should be noted that the sex-offender registry not only puts the people whose names and information appear on it into imminent danger, but it also puts their loved ones into imminent danger as well. Below is a video in which Norman Michael Achin describes a registrant who fell prey to an arsonist inasmuch as his information was publicly available.
Norman Michael Achin Describes How An Arsonist Received A Light Sentence For Setting A Registrant's House On Fire
In the preceding videos above of The Steve Wilkos Show, Mr. Wilkos claims that when he was 21, he couldn’t think about sleeping with a 12-year-old girl. Really?
Mr. Wilkos is from Generation X, which were the latchkey kids of the late 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. Because many middle-school and high-school girls were coming home to empty houses back in the late part of the twentieth century, there were more adult men having secret relationships with them back then than there are adult men having secret relationships with girls that age now in that there were no parents at home during the early afternoon to run interference back then.
Many of these forbidden-love-style relationships flourished into successful marriages and happy families later on. Of course, none of these self-proclaimed child advocates are going to admit to something like that, because then they would have to admit to being wrong. Moreover, police officers were not as aggressive back then as they are now about zeroing in on teenage-adult relationships and making arrests.
The United States was a much happier place to be back when Generation X was going through their teenage years than it is now. Mr. Wilkos is from that same generation, so he has to know all about those events. He's not fooling me.
The fact alone that Matthew did not divorce Crystal after she had a baby with Dominic Pagnano Jr. during Matthew's incarceration demonstrates that Matthew always had her best interests at heart. If he was only looking to steal her innocence, he would not have come back to her after he was released from prison. Why didn't Mr. Wilkos bring that point up after he began talking about Mr. Pagnano Jr.'s role in Crystal's life?
Mr. Wilkos claims that there are reasons that elected officials enact statutory-rape laws. He insists that they are on the law books to protect "children." Oh, brother! According to medical science, teenagers are not children.
Furthermore, if you read both the article titled “Rage of Consent” by Heather Corinna and the online publication titled The Paradox of Statutory Rape by Russell Christopher and Kathryn Hope Christopher from beginning to end, you’ll find that these lawmakers do not have the public interest at heart. Unfortunately, way too many Americans support our nation turning into a Fascist totalitarian police state.
Even if we were to agree with Mr. Wilkos for the sake of argument and ONLY for the sake of argument that adolescents are still children, then I have to ask one pressing question. Why wasn't the late Aubreigh Wyatt protected from the punk that raped her? She was 12 years old at the time that she was attacked. Why didn't anyone protect her from her tormentors? She committed suicide because of it.
Last of all, it offends me that Mr. Wilkos actually tried to pull Crystal and Matthew down a rabbit hole of suggesting that Matthew could casually have sex with another 12-year-old girl without a second thought about it. Merely because he and Crystal were each on opposite sides of the legal age line when they first fell in love with each other, it doesn’t mean that Matthew is incapable of monogamy.
Overall, Mr. Wilkos presented a very one-sided narrative about Crystal and Matthew's ordeal with the criminal justice system. Why can't people like him simply admit that our nations' statutory-rape laws are ridiculously draconian and need to be revamped so that they are not punishing the wrong people as they punished Matthew? These same laws caught both Crystal and her children in their line of fire.
There was this one self-righteous do-gooder in the comments section of the second video of The Steve Wilkos Show whose user name was timTim78660. Therein he posted:
He doesn't and he never will have the abilities inside of himself to feel that s-attraction to a child and teenger is inappropriate in our society.
He knows that it's inappropriate in our society. He knows the right words to say to try to make people ease up on him when they talk with him about the subjects.
But like i said, he doesn't and never will have the abilities to feel it. The approach is wrong. Striving to get anyone like this to dishonestly feel that it's inappropriate is NEVER going to work.
People always say
"They will never change"
And that's true, it's absolutely impossible to rewire something that is hardwired in their psyche. And trying to get them to say the appropriate things is counterproductive and does absolutely nothing to help the vics, society, or the perps.
YouTuber timTim78660? You have your head up your backside! Everything you post is puritanical propaganda at best. Did it ever occur to you that perhaps society got it all wrong? The only "perps" here are Mr. Bruning and anyone else that condoned his actions. Yes, I agree that Crystal was a victim, but she was not a victim of any of Matthew's actions but rather a victim of the despotic criminal justice system that oppresses our nation.
2. A Softer, More Recent Side To Steve Wilkos
Believe it or not, I came across a much more recent interview that Steve Wilkos held with Matthew Koso and Crystal Guyer Koso. It contains a copy of the above-described 2011 television show, and then it shows the recent interview with the couple. The video is below.
Steve Wilkos Does An Update Interview With Matthew Koso And Crystal Guyer Koso
I read a few of the posts in the comments section. I get so sick and tired of these detractors always pushing all their bogus conspiracy theories about grooming.
I agree with Crystal that American society is a cesspool of busybodies. What outrages me is that society will also come back and say that the world owes you nothing, which reeks of hypocrisy.
It's as though American society expects for every man to be a Macaulay-Culkin/Tony-Danza centaur and marry his same-age high-school sweetheart at age 19. That is not the real world. Also, men who follow that same pathway are not all necessarily saints. Look at Toby Willis. He raped all his daughters from the time they were 3 years old, and he was that high-school hunk who got married to his same-age high-school sweetheart right out of high school.
Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks opposes marriages like the one of Crystal and Matthew, yet she thinks it's perfectly okay for a 16-year-old boy to rape his 16-year-old girlfriend. All you have to do is watch her videos on YouTube and while she runs her mouth about how teenage marriages should be illegal, she refuses to believe Bristol Palin's accusations against Levi Johnson of his having raped her when they were both 16 years of age.
I am happy that Matthew's name and information were permanently removed from the sex-offender registry sooner than they were scheduled to be removed. I am sad that Crystal's mother is dead. Mr. Wilkos was so much more compassionate in this latest interview of his with the Kosos than he was back in his interview with them back in 2011. It’s almost as though he actually saw the light. Even his audience was better behaved.
Mr. Wilkos is an influencer, and he obviously doesn't even realize it. That's not an insult but rather a fact.
3. My Participation In A Discussion Thread About The Koso Marriage
Recently I stumbled across an article about the Koso marriage. The author named Jessica appeared to be against draconian statutory-rape laws, but she didn't like the idea of marriage being misused as a tool to establish the integrity of Matthew Koso's marriage to Crystal Guyer Koso.
I didn't realize that one of the comments that were posted below this same article belonged to me until after I read so many words into it. I had posted this same comment 17 years ago. Oh, wow! How time flies. It read:
Give Matt Koso a break. He may have been eight years older than Crystal Guyer and she may have been in her early teens when she became pregnant with his baby. However, when I saw the special about Matt Koso and Crystal Guyer on 20/20 back in 2005, the biggest gripe that Matt Koso's mother had was that the law seemed to be applying a double standard by treating her son as a sexual predator and deadbeat teen dads younger than 18 as redblooded American boys who could do no wrong. If you want to call anyone sick, you ought to call LEVI JOHNSTON sick. Sure, he was only one year older than Bristol Palin (Sarah Palin's daughter) when he started having sex with her and she was 14 years old, but look at how disgraceful he has behaved since Bristol Palin announced she was pregnant with his child. He misused her and her family to build himself his 15 minutes of fame and now he's parading around the country like an out-of-control gigolo acting like the whole world is in love with him when probably a lot of people are able to see what a scumball he is. Whenever a suspicion of abuse against a young teenage girl arises, our society should focus more on the ACTIONS of her sex partner rather than his age. And I'm sure you would at least agree that if you had to choose between having Matt Koso as a father or Levi Johnston, you would likely choose Matt Koso. AND DON'T SAY YOU WOULD CHOOSE "NEITHER"! "NEITHER" is an option that only exists in Never-Neverland. Society goes too easy on deadbeat teen fathers younger than 18 years old, especially ones who physically abuse their teenaged girlfriends, yet our country continues to have among the most upside down age of consent laws anywhere in the world. One night I saw a show on WE about this 16-year old boy who regularly beat on his 15-year old girlfriend and told her that she had to have his baby at 15 or he would kill her. What possibly can make you believe that the life of a girl in her early-to-mid teens automatically becomes a bed of roses by being with a boy the same age as her? Teenage boys in this country have progressively become first-class a--holes with their girlfriend over the past 10 years. The age of consent in the Netherlands was 21 years old up until 1990. That is, 18 and 19-year old year old girls were also jailbait in that country back in the 1980's. Now that country's age of consent is 16 years old and 12 to 15 year old girls are given the option to contest a charge of statutory rape against their boyfriend to a government agency there known as the Council for the Protection of Children. This government agency has the power to force the criminal court system to drop the charge against the accused if they don't feel that the ends of justice will be served. This makes more sense than the way the laws are here in the U.S. Come on. Get your mindset out of 1957, and let's stop treating this issue as a sore subject every time someone like myself suggests a change in her laws that is not consistent with the standpoint on this issue of the Puritanical Establishment.
I stand by that same comment of mine today. Deadbeat teenage fathers have it way too easy, while our statutory-rape laws have become beyond ridiculous. Levi Johnston's parental rights over his oldest biological son, Tripp, should have been terminated before they even came into existence.
Levi Johnston and other deadbeat teenage fathers like him, former and current, are the faces of justifiable patricide. Never mind what the Ten Commandments say about "Honor The Father." Moses was an inbred and an assassin. I'm an agnostic who has no use for organized religion anyhow.
Jmcchesney certainly had his head in the clouds upon posting the following in that same comments section:
That is sick... just plain sick. Sorry. Any grown man that impregnates little girls (and 13 is a little girl in my book) deserves statuatory rape charges brought up immediately. It would be over my dead body that he would be allowed to marry my little girl... in fact, I don't know that when I got done with him he would be able to. Here's the thing... I very much believe that teenagers are capable of making a lot more decisions then society as a whole gives them credit for. But we have statuatory rape laws for a reason, that being so older and more experienced people don't coerce much younger and less experienced people into something they don't want to do. I'm certainly not giving this a--hole any medals for marrying her.
Jmcchesney? How do you know that Crystal wasn't Matthew's first love? In light of all the deadbeat teenage fathers out there that treat their underage baby mamas deplorably, you should at least cut Matthew some slack. Besides, Matthew never forced Crystal into doing anything she didn't want to do, and she even said so herself that her sexual involvement with him from an early age on was always volitional.
Statutory-rape laws do more harm than good to our nation. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that much out.
Jmcchesney? A little girl is 4 years old, 5 years old, 6 years old, 7 years old, 8 years old, 9 years old, and 10 years old. A little girl is not a teenager. Duhhh!!!
4. Final Thoughts
In my school of thought, righteous people are the most disgusting and deplorable people in the world. They're not too hard to find here in the United States.
Matthew Koso only wanted to be a good husband to Crystal Guyer Koso and a good father to their seven kids, but government overreach stripped them of five of their children. To all those idiots on YouTube who believe that this governmental action was justified, I'd like to remind you that social services agencies have been forcibly taking children away from teenage girls based upon false accusations against parents.
Not too long ago, YouTuber Styxhexenhammer666 was asking his followers to contribute money to fund the legal representation of a friend of his who fell into similar circumstances as Matthew and Crystal and was even behind bars because of it. Governmental overreach is becoming more and more of a threat to the American way of life.
My recommendation to Matthew and Crystal is for them to do everything they can to get their five kids back by hook or by crook and flee the United States with them. Steven Robert Whitsett would probably be willing to help them reestablish themselves overseas now that he has become active in getting registrants, current and former, away from the poisonous tentacles of the American criminal justice system.
Pedophile-panic propaganda is tearing our nation apart, and it's hurting everyone. Even people that passionately defend the status quo with our corrupt criminal justice system. I'm glad that Steve Wilkos is finally coming around, but more people need to follow his footsteps in that same regard.
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