So why would it be possible to sexually assault a stripper? Luckily, the good people of Orange County have taken a stand against vice by finding a police officer not guilty on ten counts and three felony charges — despite the undisputed fact that he pulled a woman over and ejaculated on her.
The cop (Park) was also charged with further counts of sexual assault, including fondling the woman’s breasts and using his fingers to penetrate her vagina.
His defense lawyer claims that she was asking for it, and was probably thrilled to be assaulted — after all, she is a stripper:
“She got what she wanted,” said Stokke. “She’s an overtly sexual person.”
The cop had stopped this woman before. He knew where she worked, and that she was a perfect victim. He waited for her car to leave the parking lot of the club she worked at, then tailed her for almost 10 minutes. He had stopped her four months earlier and allowed her to keep a baggie of drugs — in exchange for her phone number. When he called, she was too busy to meet up with the (married) police officer. Coincidentally, in the weeks prior to the assault, Park ran the names of nine female employees who worked at the same strip club as his victim through the DMV computer. Park had been warned by the police sergeant to stay away from the strippers. Twenty minutes after pulling the woman over and ejaculating on her, he called her — he claims to make sure she got home ok, she says because he was threatening her and instructing her not to tell.
Naturally, she was put on trial more than the cop was:
t wasn’t a surprise that Stokke put the woman and her part-time occupation on trial. In his opening argument, he made it The Good Cop versus The Slutty Stripper. He pointed out that she’d once had a violent fight with a boyfriend in San Diego. He mocked her inability to keep a driver’s license. He accused her of purposefully “weakening” Park so that he became “a man,” not a cop during the traffic stop. He called her a liar angling for easy lawsuit cash. He called her a whore without saying the word.
“You dance around a pole, don’t you?” Stokke asked.
Superior Court Judge William Evans ruled the question irrelevant.
Stokke saw he was scoring points with the jury.
“Do you place a pole between your legs and go up and down?” he asked.
“No,” said Lucy before the judge interrupted.
“You do the dancing to get men to do what you what them to do,” said Stokke. “And the same thing happened out there on that highway [in Laguna Beach]. You wanted [Park] to take some sex!”
Lucy said, “No sir,” the sex wasn’t consensual. Stokke—usually a mellow fellow with a nasally, monotone voice—gripped his fists, stood upright, clenched his jaws and then thundered, “You had a buzz on [that night], didn’t you?”
As if watching a volley in tennis, the heads of the male-dominated jury spun from Stokke back to Lucy, who sat in the witness box. She said no, but it was hopeless. Jurors stared at her without a hint of sympathy.
In his closing argument, Stokke pounced. He called Lucy one of those “girls who have learned the art of the tease, getting what they want . . . they’ve learned to separate men from their money.”
Shorter Stokke: Sluts can’t be raped.
It’s worth repeating that Park simply argued that the assault was consensual, and that the woman was agreed to perform the sexual act in order to get out of a ticket. Question: Isn’t it a little questionable — and, I would think, illegal — for a police officer to accept sexual favors in exchange for not giving someone a ticket? And why, exactly, would this woman have reported him if the encounter was consensual?