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Category: Rape Culture

More on the Duke Rape Case

It’s not only hit the national media, it’s the fourth-most-emailed story on the Times site.

The incident on March 13, which occurred at an off-campus house owned by the university, has brought into sharp relief long-simmering tensions between the private university and the city. The woman is black, most of the team members are white and law-enforcement officials say they are investigating allegations that racial epithets were shouted at the woman.

Residents, students and faculty members have staged at least five protests in the last four days, including one Tuesday night outside the building where Duke’s president, Richard H. Brodhead, was holding a news conference. They are upset with the silence of team members and the university’s handling of the case.

Mr. Brodhead’s announcement that the team’s season was being suspended came five days after 46 of 47 members of the Blue Devils lacrosse team provided DNA samples to Durham police investigators. The team’s roster includes 26 players from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut high schools. Mr. Brodhead said that he met with the team’s captains Tuesday morning and that they apologized for the embarrassment they had caused themselves, their families, the athletic department and the university. They also denied the allegations made by the woman, who said she had been assaulted in a bathroom by three team members.

It’s running on the Sports pages (thus the references to the local players), but at least it identifies the racial, class and gender issues and the story is getting out there. It looks like the original story from the local paper got picked up by the AP.

Gender, Class, Race and Rape

Rachel says it all.

46 members of the Duke Lacrosse team are taking DNA tests after some of the players were accused of gang raping a woman who they invited to be a dancer at a party. I also don’t want people to think about this story as a gender issue, but as incident that reveals how racism, sexism, and classism intersected to make this young woman particularly vulnerable to a sexual assault. If you read this report from ABC News you will hear very little about race. However, if you this story you get a better idea of what most likely went on. A group of young wealthy White men felt that it was ok to assault this woman, raping her and yelling racial slurs at her. This should be blowing up in the blogosphere folks. This is also one of those “if this had happen to a White woman would we have already heard about it” stories.

From the Duke student newspaper:

Police photographed 46 of the 47 lacrosse team members and collected DNA samples in the form of cheek swabs Thursday afternoon following allegations that the athletes gang-raped, sodomized and strangled a dancer at a March 13 party.

From Rachel:

The young woman is a student at North Carolina Central University (a historically Black University), and she is the mother of two. She was working for the escort service as a dancer to support her family and pay for college.

The race/class/gender dynamics of this whole case are really scary, and they reveal a great deal about our power structure in this country. This young woman ended up in the vulnerable position of being a sex worker because she was trying to better her family and her education. The two young women left the party after the racial slurs began and they feared for their safety, but I can’t help wondering if they were thinking about how they were going to pay their bills or feed their kids when they went back in, something most of these young men don’t even have to think about. I wonder if these guys were thinking about how much power they had over this young women when they yelled racist slurs and when they physically and sexually assault this women? I also wonder if those guys who remained silent were more concerned about protecting their buddies than stopping this terrible assault. How much do they think this woman’s life is worth?

UPDATE: Terrance has more:

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Statements to the Judge by Jane Doe of the OC Rape Trial (UPDATED)

Pinko Feminist Hellcat has two must-read posts on the OC Rape Trial that recently sent three men to jail for raping a girl and videotaping the act.

The first post details the low, low places the defense went to try and get the (young, rich, entitled) men acquitted. For one, Robbie Ruiz, a 28-year-old mortgage banker and the trial’s jury foreman, was intimidated by defense cronies:

Married and a fourth-generation Mexican-American from El Toro, Ruiz can look physically intimidating. If you passed him on the street, you’d see a husky guy with a shaved head, a goatee, big dark eyes and a right arm full of tattoos. But in a three-hour interview, he was also articulate, perceptive and easygoing.

But the case provided startling moments for Ruiz even outside the courtroom. During the latter part of the trial, he says, he was clumsily tailed by Haidl PI Warren to the Costa Mesa Inca Grill for dinner. One night, after the trial, two jurors from the first trial knocked on his front door. They wanted information to discredit the guilty verdicts. He says those ex-jurors, who were on the Haidl payroll, insisted the defendants are “really good boys.”

Some of the defense witnesses, former friends of Doe, were tempted by intership offers, and one admitted changing her statement to help the defense because of her sympathy for the men. They were later dismissed as witnesses and/or the judge found their statements to be provably false. Who needs enemies with frenemies like this?

Jane Doe, the rape victim, was intimidated as well. And harassed. And slandered. In PFH’s second post, a reader provides Doe’s full statement to the judge. I warn you, it will rend the heartstrings and turn your stomach. Triggers aplenty.

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Death Penalty for Repeat Child Rapists

Zuzu’s post below reminded me of the most-thought provoking bit of news I found yesterday, particularly because the young men in this awful OC rape trial (documented expertly for some time by PFH) were only sentenced to six years apiece for violently gang-raping an unconscious young woman, videotaping it, and smearing her name across the country’s newspapers using the same old argument we always use against rape victims: She was a slut and she wanted it. But I digress.

My ears perked up when I saw this bit of news on television yesterday evening. The Oklahoma Senate has approved the death penalty for repeat child molesters and could be signed into law any day. The bill, brought by Democratic senator Jay Paul Gumm, was approved by a bi-partisan majority and is expected to be on the desk of the governor next week.

Under the bill by Sen. Jay Paul Gumm, D-Durant, a second sex offense against a child could subject someone to execution or life in prison without parole.

Some senators questioned the bill’s constitutionality since the U.S. Supreme Court had required aggravating circumstances to be present in murder cases that lead to the death penalty.

To the chagrin of many readers and friends, I am not against the death penalty. I agree with many of the problematic points people have laid out — many of which Jill details in this post and even more points hashed out in the comments — but I’m ultimately not concerned with whether or not the death penalty is a deterrant for the crimes of others, especially when it comes to sexual assault.

For obvious reasons, I have zero sympathy for perpetrators of sexual assault, especially repeat offenders, and their apologists. As a parent I’d want to see the fuckers fry, not merely sentenced to a decade in prison. I’m human.

Nonetheless, this bill debatably unconstitutional not only because of the “aggravation” terms for the death penalty mentioned above, but also because of Coker v. Georgia. (Calling all lawyers.)

Issue: Whether the crime of rape committed by a criminal with past serious criminal record can be punished by a death sentence.

Holding: No

Rationale: The court ruled the death sentence was too excessive for the crime of rape. The court considered the statistics of how states were stepping away from death sentences in rape cases and used these statistics to back up its ruling. The court reasoned that death sentence in itself is not cruel and unusual, but this sentence in a rape case is too disproportionately excessive. The court stated: “a punishment is excessive and unconstitutional if it 1. makes no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment and hence is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering; or 2. is grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime.” In the current case, an adult woman was raped and even though it was a serious crime, but still it was not as serious as a murder. So the death sentence was simply too harsh. Sentence reversed.

Years ago, my therapist, who also doubled as a sex therapist, told me that preferential child molesters are essentially unable to be rehabilitated. Unlike situational child rapists, who enact their lifelong patterns of violence on anyone around them, man, woman, or child, preferential child rapists prefer children as their sexual “partners.”

These offenders have a sexual preference for children and usually maintain these desires throughout their lives. Preferential child molesters can have an astounding number of victims and these crimes can remain undiscovered for many years. … One long-term study of hundreds of sex offenders found that the pedophile child molester committed an average of 281 acts with 150 partners. These types of offenders wreak havoc upon society far out of proportion to their numbers.

Perhaps the precedence is set for the current bill to be challenged and overturned.

But you won’t see me challenging it.

UPDATE: Amanda posts on the subject and perfectly explains why I can’t get worked up about the death penalty and “tough on crime” crap.

I’m not exactly going to wail and bemoan if the government actually starts taking sexual abuse and assault seriously, even though the trend seems to be in the other direction. But that’s the problem with legislation like this is that increasing the penalties for crimes is mostly a feel good exercise so politicians can look tough without actually doing shit all to actually reduce the crime rate.

That’s my problem with the death penalty in general. It’s not about reducing crime or helping victims or even about justice. It’s about politicians grandstanding and making sure that the scariest kinds of crimes, which are also the rarest more often than not, are in the news and you and yours are scared and keep voting for them because they look tougher.

That and innocent people get drawn up in the public outcry to see blood. But I still can’t drudge up much sympathy for predators of any vein.

Orange County Rapists Sentenced

Three men who videotaped their rape of an unconscious woman and then claimed that she was faking unconsciousness and wanted to be a porn star sentenced to six years.

The first jury had deadlocked in 2004, but the second, last March, had convicted them of 15 counts of felony sexual assault, but not rape.

The sentences came after the victim told the judge she had been violated “in every way possible” and urged the maximum penalty so her attackers could feel the same pain she did.

Now 20, she choked back tears as she described viewing the taped assault so she could testify against the men effectively.

The video, which has not been made public, shows the nude victim being sexually assaulted on a pool table, prosecutors said.

“When did I become a piece of meat? How can anything human do the things that they did? They did things not even a savage animal would do,” the victim said.

Defense attorneys argued at trial that the girl was a willing participant in a “weekend sexcapade” and was faking unconsciousness because she wanted to be a porn star.

I suppose the pool table was just a convenient horizontal surface, but it’s eerily reminiscent of the 1983 gang-rape at Big Dan’s Tavern in New Bedford, Mass., that was the basis for the pinball-machine rape in the move “The Accused.”

The victim was apparently pleased with the sentences, and the perps themselves made statements that indicate at least some awareness of the wrongness of what they did:

“I look at each defendant as being equally culpable,” Judge Francisco Briseno said Friday. “This was with one intent, and that intent was to degrade the victim.”

Gregory Haidl, 20, the son of millionaire and former Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl, apologized to the victim during the hearing.

“It was never my intention to hurt you and cause you pain,” said Haidl, who taped the July 2002 assault at his father’s home. “I can’t take back any negative feelings and emotions, and I’m sorry for that also.”

Kyle Nachreiner, 21, told the court he accepted responsibility for his “repugnant” actions, while Keith Spann, 21, declined to make a statement but sobbed openly as his mother pleaded with the judge for leniency.

Assistant District Attorney Chuck Middleton the terms were sufficient to “send a message to these three men, and if they’re smart they’ll come out of prison and lead a respectful life.”

The victim told prosecutors she was pleased with the prison terms. She has filed a $26 million lawsuit against the defendants, Haidl’s parents and others.

Few Protections for Pregnant Prisoners

Zuzu touched on this a few days ago, but the mistreatment of female prisoners certainly deserves another look.

Pregnant inmates are routinely shackled, even during childbirth. Forty-one states and the federal prison system allow the shackling of pregnant prisoners, and 23 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons shackle women during childbirth. Some prisoners have had their childbirths forcibly induced.

Female prisoners are routinely sexually assaulted by prison guards, with no recourse. Numerous states have insufficient laws about sexual conduct between jail staff and prisoners, and Vermont has no law. Many states punish the inmate for any sexual relations, unless she can prove that she was raped. Arizona has particularly heinous laws: It allows for criminal punishment of female inmates who have sex with jail staff, even if the sex wasn’t consensual.

Nine state departments of corrections don’t refer to an outside agency when investigating sexual misconduct. Five lack special procedures for investigating sexual misconduct. Twenty-four states may place women in solitary confinement for reporting sexual misconduct.

Read the entire Amnesty report here. Thanks to Dad for the link.

Judge to Victim: Watch Video of Your Own Rape or Go to Jail

This one is just plain fucked. Four young men participate in the rape of a 16-year-old girl at a house party (she’s now 20). She was unconscious, and they gang-raped her, spit on her and scrawled obscenities on her naked body with a marker. Because she was passed out, she doesn’t remember the rape itself.

But since these fine young men decided to record their endeavors, there’s a videotape.

One of the men, who videotaped the incident but didn’t have sex with the woman, has pled guilty and is going through a state-run boot camp as punishment. One of the other men fled to Albania, where he is at large.

While the woman was testifying on the witness stand, the defense wheeled out a television to play the tape. She became visibly upset, obviously not wanting to relive the experience by watching it in front of a court room full of strangers. Put yourself in her shoes for a minute: How many of us wouldn’t be upset if we were sitting in a chair in front of a room of dozens of strangers, and a tape was brought out showing us stripped naked from the waste down and sexually assaulted by two men while a third wrote on us with a magic marker?

But the judge has ordered her to watch it or be held in contempt and face jail time. Which is about as fucked up as it gets.

The defendant should absolutely have the right to face his accuser in court. He has had that right, and she has answered every question asked of her on the stand. And I don’t think anyone is arguing that the video shouldn’t be shown at all. But how does it further justice to force her to watch this video? Let her leave the room and show it. Let the defense attorney make whatever point he’s trying to make with the video. But forcing her to watch it is simply cruel.

Of course, just as problematic is this Chicago Tribune article (registration required) which, after detailing the situation, inexplicably ends the article with:

The fourth defendant, Sonny Smith, 20, of Brookfield, who operated the camera, pleaded guilty to child pornography and was sentenced to the Illinois Department of Corrections boot camp.

In another rape case in 1995, a woman who had accused then-U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds of sexually abusing her when she was 16 was jailed for seven days after refusing to testify against him. She later recanted.

Reynolds was convicted and sent to prison but was pardoned by President Bill Clinton after serving more than 2 years.

…I don’t get it. So there is this rape case, and the fourth defendant pleaded guilty, and then did you know that there was once this other rape case that has nothing to do with this, and the accuser recanted? Totally irrelevant. And really biased. This whole situation — the trial and now the coverage — is just sickening.

Thanks to Julia and Jessica for the link.