Sexual Assault – Page 46

Don’t Just Blame the Victim; Prosecute Her

A judge files a false rape report against teen girl because she wasn’t traumatized enough to be credible in her testimony against her attackers.

After a day-and-a-half trial, Municipal Judge Peter A. Ackerman on Friday convicted the woman of filing a false police report, a class-C misdemeanor. Ackerman explained his decision, saying there were many inconsistencies in the stories of the four, but that he found the young men to be more credible. He also said he relied on the testimony of a Beaverton police detective and the woman’s friends who said she did not act traumatized in the days following the incident.

Kevin Hayden of The American Street, who was at the trial last week, has more on the story:

It was especially interesting that the prosecutor kept referring to the three men involved as ‘boys’, when they were fully grown men. The woman was 17.

The judge found inconsistencies in all of the stories, thus establishing reasonable doubt in every story. Yet he convicted the victim. ‘Boys’ will be ‘boys’.

The young woman’s friends were a classmate at high school and her mother. The mother a) has always been seen with an alcoholic beverage or high on prescription pills by all who know her, b) provided the 17-year old with the alcohol she’d had that evening, which she stole from the store she cashiers at and c) was awaiting her boyfriend’s return to her home within two months of the rape. That boyfriend was in prison for molesting his own daughter. That’s hardly a credible witness with any sympathy for victims of sexual assault. But none of this could be introduced into evidence. Only the 17 year old’s sexual history could be exposed.

Additionally, the two ‘friends’ were the ones who convinced the 17 year old that she should report it to the police. So if the young woman is guilty, the instigating accessories to her ‘crime’ are considered credible experts about how a rape victim should act.

This is particularly disappointing for him since he has known the girl since she was an infant.

“Stay tight, wear white”

–advice from a father to his 13-year-old daughter. Is it just me, or is that a completely disgusting thing to be saying?

Feministing scours this one quite nicely, pointing out the huge double-standards in how parents talk about sex with their kids and how it perpetuates young people internalizing this kind of sexism. It’s worth a read, even if a lot of the comments will make you cringe. Not-so-surprising point: In every category of sexual experience, the kids have done quite a bit more than their parents thought they had. For example, only 1 parent thought their kid had given oral sex, while 51 actually had (on the other hand, 10 parents thought their kid had received oral sex; perhaps they believe their children to be selfish?).

And if that’s not gross enough for you, allow Twisty’s latest to stir up some righteous rage about our neighbor to the north: In Canada, you can now get away with rape if you claim you had “sexsomnia.” That’s right, if you rape a woman and claim that you were sleeping while doing it, you’re a-ok — you didn’t know what you were doing, even if you did have the sleep-raping foresight to put on a condom.

Possibly the Most Disgusting Thing I’ve Ever Read

This came up in the comments section a few posts down, and I thought I’d put it up for everyone to see:

I have to confess that I don’t understand this ceaseless quest for victimhood. Being raped doesn’t confer some mystical moral superiority on a woman, it just makes her a victim. And unfortunately, in all too many cases, it just makes her a stupid one.

I’m just curious what basis the moral relativists have for condemning rape in the first place. If I deem the slaking of my desire for lust – or violence, if you prefer that theory of rape – to be an intrinsic good, who are you to condemn it? Certainly, one could argue that it is a violation of private property rights, but then, what of those moral relativists who reject the notion of private property. If all property is held in common, then how can a woman object if I decide to make use of that which belongs to me?

“She Was Asking For It”

This post by Nick Kiddle over at Alas has caused quite a stir. You can see Nick’s follow-up here. To summarize, Nick went out one night for the express purpose of picking up men for sex. She met two men (paratroopers), and went back to their camp. In the process of engaging with these men (it’s not clear whether or not they were having sex, or what kinds of sexual activities they were engaging in), Nick noticed that one of them was no longer wearing a condom. She told him he could either get another condom and put it on, or they could stop. He didn’t agree to either of her solutions. She put her clothes on and left. Nick writes:

If he had persisted, if he had penetrated me despite my objections, that would have been rape. I had consented to sex, but I had made it clear that condoms were part of the deal. When the condom vanished, so did my consent.

In the following post, Nick writes:

In my ideal world, men would not be tempted to commit rape. Sexual encounters would be handled with negotiation, not with one partner’s insistence on getting what he wants at the expense of another. Men would respect the desires of women to control what happens to their bodies, whether they’ve known each other for ten minutes or ten years.

And in my ideal world, the fear of rape could not be used as a justification for slut-shaming.

Seems reasonable enough to me. But it’s not so clear to some other folks:

One Brave Woman

After 30 years, Kathleen Ham will confront her rapist in court. The trial against him three decades ago resulted in a hung jury; now, DNA evidence links him to Ham’s rape, as well as the rapes of at least 24 other women.

Now, I have mixed feelings about this article. But one thing it does an excellent job of is showing how disgustingly flawed our criminal justice system was (and in many ways still is) when it comes to sexual assault survivors.

During her examination at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Ms. Ham recalled, she put up a front of cool control. The doctor’s official report cast doubt on whether she had been raped. She appeared too calm, he wrote.

The night after the attack, when Ms. Ham sought refuge in the home of old friends, a street noise made her scream. “That was when I realized that my life was taken away from me,” she said.

Then came the trial. Under the law at the time, the prosecutors had to prove that force was used on Ms. Ham, and that the rape was consummated. They had to have a witness.

Mr. Worrell’s defense lawyer, George C. Sena, kept Ms. Ham under cross-examination for a day and a half. His third question was whether she was a virgin. He repeatedly suggested that Ms. Ham had engaged in rough love with a pimp.

“Well, why didn’t you get out then?” Mr. Sena asked. “Were both your legs broken?”

The prosecutor, the defense attorney, the judge and most of the jurors were men. The two Manhattan district attorneys who re-discovered this case are women. And while that isn’t an argument for the superiority of female DAs, it is illustrative of the positive influence that under-represented groups have had in breaking into various sectors of society. Women’s presence in the police force and in the legal community has had an overwhelmingly positive effect on how sexual assault survivors are treated. It’s certainly far, far from perfect, but it’s a lot better than it was 30 years ago.

What I don’t love about this article is that is paints Ham as more of a victim than a survivor. This is a woman who seems to have had a very successful life, and currently works as a civil rights lawyer. While it’s certainly important to recognize the tremendous impact that sexual assault has on the lives of survivors, it’s important to also look at how much inner strength human beings have — not to portray her as someone who “got over it,” but as someone who had a horrific thing happen to her but who isn’t broken by it. She’s purposely allowing her name to be published to show that rape isn’t shameful for the person who survives it. Thirty years later, she’s putting herself back up on the witness stand, even after having suffered such humiliation there before. That’s bravery.

And the fact that this story is highlighted on the Times website also shows how far our media has come in covering what are traditionally “women’s issues,” and writing about sexual assault. I don’t want to come across as refusing to recognize the continuing, serious problems with our legal system and how we prosecute rape — just look at the Orange County rape case , the Kobe Bryant case, and the half-assed defenses of rape which suggest that if a woman is aroused, she can’t be assaulted. There are lots of problems. But thanks to people like Kathleen Ham and these Manhattan DA’s, things are improving.

Lamest Defense I’ve Ever Heard

Oh, the ego on this guy: “My dick is too large to rape chicks.”

Wishful fucking thinking.

via Chaos Theory

“How Long Did It Take You To Get Over It?”

Antheia at Mad Melancholic Feminista writes about her experiences surviving rape, what it means to “get over it.” Read the whole thing — her story is written with incredible clarity and honesty, and does a great service to survivors everywhere:

We teach our daughters to fear the possibility of rape occurring at the hands of strangers which oftentimes leads to their reluctance to report rape at the hands of their fathers, male family members, teachers, and boyfriends. We teach our daughters that rape is about sexual oppression when it should be viewed as GENDER oppression. We preach the “potentially lethal lie that if you don’t do anything wrong, if you’re just careful enough, you’ll be safe.”

Antheia walks the same thin line that so many survivors do: She puts her experience in a greater context, she understands it as part of a systematic problem, she positions herself as a survivor and not a victim — but she still has to deal with the day-to-day task of surviving.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about my rape, there’s not a time that I don’t hold my pepper spray when I walk home alone at night, there isn’t a moment where I can walk towards a man on the sidewalk and not feel my body tense up until he passes. Asking me when I’ll be “over it” is like asking a victim of the hurricane when they’ll be over the anguish that they’re experiencing right now, like asking a mother when she will be over the loss of a child. You can try to forget; you can build a new house after the storm, have another baby to fill the cradle, and start engaging in sexual relationships with other partners, but is this “moving on”? And is attempting to cope with the tragedy considered “getting over it”? It’s amazing how short a period of time 10 minutes is in the scheme of things, and yet how easily the mind can continuously remind you of that time, in the brilliant words of John Irving “your memory is a monster. You forget, it doesn’t. It just files things away; it keeps things from you, and brings them to your recall at a will of its own. You think you have a memory, but it has you.”

I simply can’t do her post justice here. Please, read the whole thing.

What To Do About Statutory Rape

I sure as hell don’t know how such issues should be dealt with, but this story is indeed disturbing. Girl, 12, starts dating man, 20. At 14, she gets pregnant and they get married. She was in eighth grade. He was 24.

Now, will it do any good at this point to lock the guy up? No, it probably won’t. In fact, it’ll probably just make it harder on the 14-year-old child who is now at home with a newborn baby. But this relationship is obviously, um, problematic. I’m not trying to be judgmental here, but I’m pretty sure that when a 12-year-old and a 20-year-old are in a sexual relationship (or a business relationship, or any relationship), there’s going to be an inherent power differentiation, and a serious issue of judgment and maturity (on the 12-year-old’s part by simply being 12, and on the 20-year-old’s part for having sex with a child).

I’ve said before that I think it’s important to let women make their own decisions, and to let them be their own moral agents. I’ve also said that being of minor age should not strip someone of their right to their own body. I certainly stand by those statements. But where does statutory rape come in — particularly the more extreme kind, like this? Thoughts?

The Glass Closet

What happens when a female basketball player, backed by the same franchise as Kobe Bryant, is accused of sexual assault? Well, she sure didn’t get the same treatment that Kobe did. Bryant got backed up; coaches insisted tat he play until proven guilty. Byears was removed immediately, and went from playing basketball to working at JC Penny.

I’m not arguing that sexual predators shouldn’t face the consequences, but there should be a single consistent policy for players across the board — a policy that applies to big NBA stars and little WNBA stars alike.

Doctor, It Hurts When I Do This

The whole of American society’s response to rape, it seems, runs along the lines of the old bad joke in which the patient says “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.”

Society’s response: “So don’t do that.”

“Don’t go out at night. Don’t relax with your friends on vacation. Lock your doors. Don’t be friendly with men you don’t know. Don’t trust the men you do know.” It’s a prescription for a very large prison, one that women are expected to carry around with them every minute of their lives.

And they’re expected to do so while the behavior of rapists is – well, certainly not condoned, but explained away as some regrettable extreme right tail of the normal male sexuality bell curve.