UIC Student Charged With Sexual Assault, Claims He Was Re-enacting 'Fifty Shades of Grey'

By Lisa White in News on Feb 24, 2015 3:45PM

(Mohammad Hossain has been charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault./Photo: Cook County Sheriff's Office)

A freshman at the University of Illinois at Chicago has been charged with sexually assaulting a 19-year-old female student, claiming that he was re-enacting scenes from the film Fifty Shades of Grey, according to Cook County prosecutors.

Bail has been set at $500,000 for Mohammad Hossain, 19. The Tribune reports the judge was "taken aback" after Hossain's lawyer stated that Hossain had been involved with multiple leadership programs at UIC, a student ambassador with the alumni association and a member of the triathlon team. The judge asked assistant Cook County public defender Sandra Bennewitz "how can someone involved in all that let a movie persuade him to do something like this?" Bennewitz claims her client "would say that it was consensual."

Sigh. Where do we start? First, "good kids" that do great things on paper are not always good people and they make bad choices; good people do very bad things, this is not some shocking revelation. We need to stop acting so dismayed when a person that gives back to their community or seems well-adjusted and contributing to society does something awful. Let's stop trying to ease our minds with the rhetoric "but they were such a good person!" It's not a scapegoat and it takes away from the seriousness of sexual assault.

Second, don't be that shitty person that blames your bad choice on a movie/celebrity/pop culture reference. Not only do you look like an uneducated moron, it's a crappy excuse that only will make more idiots like you attempt to use it as their crappy excuse when they do something wrong. These things are not real life, merely adaptions. Regardless of what happened, you are deflecting blame and a conversation around assault and turning it into an argument about pop culture. We don't need to talk about Fifty Shades of Grey teaching youth bad sexual practices, we need to talk about our culture not focusing on what consent is and how important communication is when it comes to sex. Stuff like this generally takes away from the bigger discussions that needs to be had.

Third and possibly most important, if you are having sex, consent and communication is mandatory. If you can watch a crappy movie attempting to be about BDSM, you can surely Google it and find out actual facts on the lifestyle. You can find a sex store that has beginners classes, find a dominatrix or dungeon where a professional can teach you the ropes or simply find out the VERY basic and key fact that any play you do, requires discussion with your partner before on every aspect. If this was consensual, and you researched the facts, then you would have been communicating with your partner during play and made sure you didn't pass a boundary hey weren't comfortable with. The prosecutors' accounts show an example of what NOT to do ever with a sexual partner:

Prosecutors said Hossain and the woman went to Hossain's dorm room about 5:30 p.m. Saturday. The two had "previously been intimate" but were not dating, said Assistant State's Attorney Sarah Karr. (Editor's note: whether they are dating or not is not relevant. At all.)

Once inside his dorm, in the 900 block of West Harrison Street, Hossain allegedly asked the woman to remove her clothing and she did, keeping on her bra and underwear, Karr said. He then bound her hands above her head and to a bed with a belt, used another belt to bind her legs and stuffed a necktie into her mouth, Karr said.

Hossain used a knit cap to cover the woman's eyes, Karr said, and removed the woman's bra and underwear. He then began striking the woman with a belt. After hitting her several times, the woman told Hossain he was hurting her, told him to stop "and began shaking her head and crying," said Karr.

Hossain continued striking the woman — including with his fists, according to an arrest report — and she managed to get one arm, and then another, free. But he then held her arms behind her back and sexually assaulted her as she continued to plead for him to stop, according to Karr.

Hossain's roommate came home soon after the assault and, prosecutors said, Hossain held the door shut to prevent him from entering. The woman then left and told another person what happened, then called police.

If you think anything in the above description is an example of consensual sex, please stop having sex now. Go seek a professional to help you understand that anything above should have been agreed upon with both partners before anything happened, including limits and safe words.

Police arrested Hossain later that night in another dorm. He was interviewed by UIC detectives and admitted to assaulting the woman and "doing something wrong," Karr stated. So if Hossain is aware that what he did was wrong, then he'll have no problem doing the time and having it on his permanent record, right? We're guessing that won't be the case because, as the Tribune seemed to focus on, he's a good kid that just made a mistake thanks to that darned film that is teaching kids such bad values! Maybe instead we should see him as an adult that was failed by not being taught the basics of sex and communication with other adults and that there are consequences when you do not respect another person's body and boundaries.

Hopefully, much like our hopes for the popularity of the movie Fifty Shades of Grey, this will lead to a bigger discussion on sexual education and the need for it, especially when it comes to responsibility and consent.