Ohio Principal Tries to Cover Up Gang Rape in School Auditorium
| April 15th, 2005From the New York Times (via Michele):
A high school principal in Columbus, Ohio, has been fired and three assistant principals suspended without pay because they failed to notify the police last month about accusations that a 16-year-old special-education student had been sexually assaulted in the school auditorium by a group of boys, one of whom videotaped the incident, school officials said yesterday.
The principal and her assistants not only failed to report the incident but also urged the girl’s father to avoid calling the police out of concerns that reporters would become aware of the assault, according to statements given to school investigators.
The police are investigating four teenagers in connection with the incident, a spokeswoman for the Columbus police, Sherry Mercurio, said yesterday, but no charges have been filed. […]
One of the three assistant principals, Richard Watson, said he had found the videotape and then viewed it with other administrators. Their conclusion, they told investigators, was that there had been no coercion.
From what the NBC story says, it appears that the boys may have been caught because they were showing off by playing the video for friends in math class. While the school administration may not have found any signs of coercion, the police investigators found quite a lot. From the Times:
One witness’s statement said a boy pulled the girl onto the auditorium stage, ordered her to be quiet, pushed her to her knees and forced her to perform oral sex on him.
“If you scream, I’ll have all my boys punch you,” the boy told her and then hit her in the face, causing her mouth to bleed, a student told the investigators.
The girl told a special-education teacher minutes after the incident that she had been forced to have oral sex with two boys behind a curtain on the stage while at least two others watched. She said the boys stopped only after someone arrived in the auditorium and scared them off.
The girl, who has a speech defect, “just kept saying she was scared,” the special-education teacher told the investigators.
Maybe there’s less to this story than it seems; maybe the witnesses are lying, for example. But if the witness statements are accurate, then the boys should be arrested and tried as rapists.
MaxedOutMama , aka MOM, has an interesting post regarding this story. She doesn’t think the boys will ever be punished:
I’m outraged too, but not at all surprised. For one thing, multiple boy on one girl blowjob orgies aren’t that rare any more, even in school. There is a fine line between manipulation, intimidation and outright force. Stories such as these aren’t that rare - developmentally disabled girls are often manipulated and abused in this way in school. So are emotionally vulnerable girls. Once you have kids blowing each other in the school johns in junior high, things get pretty much out of control.
I’ll give you my guess. This boys will not be convicted of any criminal charges. There will not be enough evidence; the testimony (said quietly behind closed doors) will be that the word was that this girl was known for giving blowjobs to boys. Those involved will say they thought she was consenting. Those witnessing it will agree. Not one of all the boys involved said anything to school authorities. Not one. They don’t know the difference between right and wrong, consenting and enforced acts. If they haven’t participated themselves they have all heard about such acts before.
(Link to MOM via My Whim is Law).
MOM is already mistaken about what at least one of the witnesses is saying (if the New York Times‘ account is accurate). I’m also more than a little skeptical about how common “multiple boy on one girl blowjob orgies” are - as far as I can tell, adults have always vastly exaggerated how much sex kids are having. But I worry that she’ll be proved right about the odds of any of these boys being convicted of rape.
MOM goes on to suggest that “instinct” may be responsible for this disgusting act: “Instinct in a young, roving band of teenage boys dictates imposing sexually upon a vulnerable girl…” In MOM’s view, young boys have an instinct towards gang-rape, which they need to be guided away from. I don’t think there’s much evidence to support MOM’s view, however. Have any anthropologists found that hunter-gatherer societies have a high incidence of gang rape, or if they don’t, that they spend a lot of time teaching their boys that gang-rape is wrong?
I don’t think boys have a natural instinct for gang-rape. However, I do think boys have a natural instinct to rely their peer group for validation and for their self-identity (that’s something I think MOM and I agree on). In a culture which teaches boys that masculinity is measured by “getting some,” that if they’re not a man they’re nothing, that having sex is not only normal but an entitlement, and that women don’t have much worth, it’s unsurprising that gang rapes happen. It’s even less surprising that the victim is (it seems) disabled, since the disabled are also not seen as being worth much by our society.
I doubt these boys were acting out of a desire for sexual release. I think they were acting out of a desire to show each other that they’re not scared, that they’re brave, that they’re men. From the point of view of the boys, their victim was just an object, which they used for demonstrating their masculinity to each other.
MOM then makes what seems to me to be a surprising, and out-of-place, digression:
Here’s reality. Girls can be imposed upon sexually, but once they learn the sexual game they can often whipsaw adolescent boys with it. Boys often find one-on-one sex really frightening until they’ve proved to themselves that they can do it, but no such inhibitions exist in a group. Adolescent boys are often just as emotionally vulnerable as girls. Girls have an instinct to use their own powers of sexual attraction. Nature made it so. An attractive, intelligent girl can become a superstar by her junior year in high school if she plays her cards well, especially if she is carefully and selectively sexually active. In the process she may cut an old boyfriend into emotional pieces.
No doubt some girls act just as MOM describes. But what does any of this have to do with a “developmentally disabled” girl who is dragged onto an auditorium stage, hit, and told “if you scream, I’ll have all my boys punch you”? The girl in this case wasn’t using her “powers of sexual attraction” to make herself a “superstar”; she was raped by a bunch of assholes using the power of threats and fists. To use a discussion of a girl being gang-raped as a springboard for discussing how girls are victimizers, too, is bizarre and disturbing.
There’s a lot more to MOM’s post, some of which I agree with, some of which I don’t; take a look.
UPDATE: Due to having nearly 500 responses, this thread is now closed. If you want to continue the discussion, please do so on this new thread.
April 15th, 2005 at 5:15 am
This is such a difficult topic–it’s hard to talk about ways to prevent gang rape without drifting into a pity party for boys who do it. Inarguably, though, one extremely effective way is swift and severe punishment for perps.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 5:40 am
Unfortunately, I’m not stunned by the incident itself. Several of my high school friends were gang raped, and that was the early eighties. This has been going on for a long time. This is not a “new” thing, and has nothing to do with media displays of sex and violence, or video games. It has everything to do with a sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, and the knowledge that society as a whole pretty much condones rape of the vulnerable. None of the girls I knew who were raped felt comfortable going to the police or even to their parents, because they knew they would be ostracized, shamed, vilified as whores, and set up for further victimization. Once you’ve been raped, you are considered to be “sexually experienced”, thus it’s open season on you; you are a slut and your word is no good.
I am incensed at the level of bullshit misogyny implicit in “MOM”’s post. WTF??!!! A girl can be a superstar if she selectively dishes out pussy and shakes her ass for the “right” boys?! And this is “instinct”? BULLSHIT. I still haven’t learned that “instinct”; guess that’s why I’m not a superstar, huh? All that knockin’ the books when I should’ve been knockin’ the boots, hey? ‘Cuz funny, the young women I knew who were all focused on getting the “right guy” and being sexually manipulative, trying to play a “game” where the rules (which they didn’t understand) weren’t written for them and they were already behind the eight ball even if they didn’t know it—-they ended up burned up, used up, angry, and broke as hell by the time they were in their early twenties. This is where some of our best militant feminists come from.
Just some more tired old blaming-the-victim bullshit. Good fucking morning. I haven’t had enough coffee yet for this shit. It’s a damn good thing this girl has a father who is an advocate for her, instead of blaming her for her own rape.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 6:45 am
I refuse to believe that girls are routinely gang raped in high school. I just don’t buy it. I do buy that mentally challenged women are at a high risk of being sexually abused, and I do buy that when things like this happen, the authorities might feel more inclined to protect the boys instead of being horrified over what they did, which, even if it was consensual ( big if, since mental capacity has to be examined as well as implicit threats, etc. ) was unbelievably disgusting.
There is a lot of hysteria about kid’s sexuality and oral sex these days. Personally, I heard a lot of wild stories about orgies and group girl on boys oral sex in high school in the eighties and it was all b.s. Notice how the stories are always about someone you don’t know very well, or someone from another school. I learned an important lesson on how willing some boys are to lie through their teeth when four boys who passed my sister in a bedroom on their way to the bathroom at a party all said she went down on them. Not only did they lie, they all agreed to a conspiracy to lie.
The hysteria and exagerations are important because if these administrators really believe, like Rush Limbaugh, that high schoolers are all out getting blow jobs constantly, they might not have been as disturbed as they should have been by the incident. They should have known how unusual it is for a girl to service a group of boys like this and been appropiately alarmed.
This comment was written by Elena.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 6:54 am
I’d like to take the question of adolescent girs, sex, and manipulation outside of this context. I don’t think it’s possible or apropriate to talk about them in the context of this gang rape. I especialy agree that it’s blaming the victim in a really disgusting way. In some other context, the topic warrants a fair discussion, but here, the real focus is rape, and specificaly the gang rape of a child by other children, and the coverup by the school.
What amazes me about the coverup is that the principal and the other administrators seem to have decided that there was no coercion after only viewing the video tape. What training do they have in making such a judgement? for that matter, what right do they have to tell the girl’s parent not to file harged for fear of reporters?
I see a huge lawsuit against the school, and I hope to hell those administrators are never put in charge of a child’s saftey again.
As for the boys, lock ‘em up. They’re known sex predators now, and I see no current reason to think they won’t do it again if they have the chance.
And for god’s sakes, have some people teach the kids at the school how to react to situations like this. The teachers are obviously useless.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 6:55 am
I agree with Amp that boys do not have an instinct to gang rape. I also agree with La Lubu that girls do not have an instinct to be sexually manipulative. Both of those generalizations are bullshit and I’ve never read anything that backs them up.
This comment was written by Redneck Feminist (drumgurl).Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 7:57 am
This incident is beyond unacceptable and appalling. How come we’re not teaching boys and young men in school that it’s not okay to penetrate a woman or girl against her will, or force/coerce sexual activities, more thoroughly than we do now? Schools seem to be “aloof” when it comes to this. I may have been out of high school for about year, but I can remember the “rape is just sex–forcing a girl to do something sexual in nature against her will is no big deal” attitude that some boys and young men had. Forcing your dick down an unwilling girl’s throat is considered to be cool to some guys, even manly. Certainly not all (not even a 1/4) boys and young men of course have this attitude, but one is more than enough and every bit as dangerous. I strongly believe that this goes back to how our culture treats rape especially the victim (ie: denial of the victim). The principal practically condoned this by trying to cover it up. Unbelievable!
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 8:05 am
This was a forcible rape (or pick the criminal sexual assault term of your choice). The mentally handicapped victim was more vulnerable, more easily lured to a secluded place, more easily intimidated and less credible. I think she was chosen simply for her vulnerability. I don’t buy that it has something to do with not valuing the mentally handicapped — these boys could not possibly have valued any woman if they were willing to beat one into performing sex acts.
What really gets me angry is the administration’s willingness to cover this up, for fear that they would be held accountable. I’ve dealt with school administrators before, and seen the absolute determination to minimize any incident that happens on their watch. The administrators ought to be charged with obstruction of justice, IMO, depending on what the Ohio statute says. Criminal charges are the only way of showing them that the consequences of a cover-up are worse than the consequences of dealing with this like adults.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 8:52 am
I live in the discrist in which this incident occurred (Columbus Public Schools), and the cover-up of this incident was not at all surprising to me. Of course it’s revolting and inexcusable. That almost goes without saying. However, the school where this took place has been in the news on an almost-weekly basis (this school, one school of about 18 high schools in the district) for the past several months for violent fights, riots at basketball games, racially-based near-riots at lunch periods, guns in school, and assault in the halls between classes (a girl stabbed another girl in the eye). They have what one might lightly term an “image problem”. It’s not surprsing that they would want to keep this out of the news. Dsicpicable and sickening, but not surprising. From my perspective as a teacher and a resident in the district, I’m more confounded about why this particular school is in such a mess. In light of this cover-up, though, it seems that poor administration might have something to do with it…
This comment was written by Grace.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 8:52 am
FTR, this girl is not “mentally handicapped”. She has a speech impairment.
Interesting that the boys chose oral sex.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 8:56 am
Apologies for my rampant misspellings.
This comment was written by Grace.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 9:09 am
When I was 12 I went through a shoplifting phase. When I got caught nabbing a bottle of perfume from Sears I, of course, lied and said it was the first time I had ever done anything like that.
This is what comes to my mind here, because I wonder how these boys raped their first victim, probably off school property maybe videotaped, maybe too spur of the moment to have video preparation ready. When the Glen Ridge boys gang-raped a mentally handicapped girl they regretted not having made porn out of the rape and had concrete plans to gang rape her again, this time with more boys and videotaping it, when they were arrested.
How many times must these boys have gotten away with gang raping other girls to get to the audacious point of making gang rape pornography at school thinking they wouldn’t get caught? For each one of these incidents we hear about there are many more we don’t.
There’s a Canadian feminist musician I like a lot, Andrea Florian, who has a line in her song “Feminist”, Statistics will say that a certain number of women are raped by men and I want to know about the ones who don’t announce it to the government.
My heart goes to this victim and all the silent, and silenced, victims of rape.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 9:43 am
Good point Samantha. My friends who were raped were not raped at school, but all of them went to school with their rapists. I agree that these boys probably had done this before. It’s pretty bold to rape on school grounds; they must have felt reasonably assured that they would not get caught—that the school grounds were a safe place for rapists to conduct their business.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 9:54 am
The principal and her assistants not only failed to report the incident but also urged the girl’s father to avoid calling the police out of concerns that reporters would become aware of the assault,
Well, that plan worked out well, did it not? At least these administrators seem to be as competent at cover-ups as they are at protecting their students.
This comment was written by Decnavda.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 10:46 am
I am amused by the idea that girls have access to special status to be gotten through sex. How valuable can such status be if it can only be gotten through the boys? Doesn’t that mean that the boys are always of higher status?
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 10:54 am
“Doesn’t that mean that the boys are always of higher status?”
Yes. When it comes to quid pro quo sex, usually a guy has the “higher status.”
This comment was written by Pseudo-Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 10:58 am
Or if there’s such a clear and present threat of it being taken by force anyway?
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 11:25 am
Q Grrl, I assumed she is mentally handicapped because she is “developmentally disabled” (according to NBC) and a special ed student(NYT). I may have been incorrect. We are told that she has a speech impediment (NYT), but it is not clear to me whether that is the sum of her disabilities, or merely one of them. If you’ve got a source with a better explanation, let me know.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 11:34 am
while i agree with many here that certain elements of the media are currently in high panic overdrive at the thought of teenage sex & that this creates an ideal condition for the growth of many rumors & legends i also wanted to put out there that just because the media’s freaking doesn’t mean that it (or something similar to it) isn’t happening
while there might not be massive Caligulating orgies going on i have little problem believing there are boys out there raping girls on a regular basis. the basis for my belief is the amount of friends i have who have confided in me that this happened to them & their friends in high school. that & my memory of the boys in my school, and how often they would talk about raping the girls they were interested in (often quite openly & in front of others not part of their group - e.g. in the lockerroom after gym). it deeply disgusted & frightened me then… i remember trying to tell myself they were full of shit, that it was all banter, but the feelings of fear & horror never left - & i hated them, hated them all, deeply & violently.
i know, i know - anecdotes do not a structural analysis make. but after years of listening to painful stories & grieving for the suffering it caused for folks i hold dear i have been left with a sorrowful & bitter cast in my mind towards teenage boys & their sexuality. sorrowful b/c so many of them are so clearly fucked up & desperately ignorant when it comes to understanding sex & intimacy (not to mention how susceptible to peer pressure)… & how clearly this is the result (at least in part) of little if any support in schools for dealing with sex in a straightforward manner. bitter b/c i just want to lock ‘em up. actually i want to stomp the shit out them (including the administrators) - make them feel what it’s like to live in fear, what it’s like to be tortured - then lock ‘em up.
but how does sending them to rape camp (which is what prison is) going to help? believe me - i am not trying to start a pity party here (see “stomp the shit out of them,” above). but, given that we know that the prison system is a colossal failure, what other possibilities exist for dealing with this situation? for not only stopping these kids from doing it again, but stopping other kids from ever even wanting to do it?
this is one of those subjects that usually leaves me in complete despair when i try to think of ways to positively change it for the better….
This comment was written by jam.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 11:49 am
Amanda, that’s what radical feminists say about prostitution and pornography, and yes, it does mean boys are always of higher status because they continue to set the terms of girls status.
One of my favorite Dworkin quotes goes something like (sorry I can’t quote it in her own elegant words), “How is it boys who once gave lives to rocks and names to trees in their youthful playing grow up to become men unable to see the humanity in women?”
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
In that case, I don’t see why there’s any cause to admire the “status” of Best Object.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
Does anyone remember the scene in “Sixteen Candles” when the love interest dreamy guy gives his drunk girlfriend to Michael Anthony Hall and says “Enjoy”. Just wondering.
Once, on Oprah she said that people tend to want to protect sex perps from prosecution because they tend to think that the girl had sex, she would have anyway, what’s done is done, now let’s be reasonable and not ruin these boys lives. I remember Glen Ridge and how people actually defended those boys. But even if this is blown out of proportion, that it, if it wasn’t rape ( and whether mentally handicapped persons can be sexual without it being rape is a whole other ball of wax), it was at the very best very unethical sex on the part of the boys. People will defend these boys, watch and see. It’s as if they don’t want to see how mean it is to treat a woman this way, let alone how criminal. They fired the principal, who, interestingly but sadly not significantly, is a woman.
This comment was written by Elena.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
I am shocked by how little time this conversation has spent on the female administrator (the adult in the matter) who attempted to keep the father from calling the police. Would she have behaved differently had this girl not been a special education student? It’s adults like this who tell boys like those they can behave any way they want.
As I grew up, the boys in my family got away with sexual abuse because the women in my family covered things up for them. My brother is now in prison for the rest of his life because he was a serial rapist. If my mother had not told him he was allowed to do that — as a young boy — he may not have behaved that way as a man. Both women and men contribute to that atrocious mindset. We see that in the female administrator who wanted to just brush the incident under the rug.
This comment was written by Genia.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
Hmmm, I shouldn’t admit it, but occassionally I troll a board that is made up primarily of sexist males (it’s a board that I got in the habit of frequenting because it’s initial purpose was as a community board for an Everquest Server - somehow along the lines it became a good ole’ boys club). They generally give me the view of ‘Joe Backwards’ - going to post the article there and see what responses occur and to see if as you say, the defense rallies around the young men instead of the girl.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
Jam: but how does sending them to rape camp (which is what prison is) going to help?
Well, it helps in that they’re removed from the presence of non lawbreakers, because if we leave them to run around in freedom, they’ll quite likley rape someone else. I’d like it if there were some method of removing the thoughts or ideas in the heads of those kids that tells them that this is OK, but absent magic, this is the best solution I’ve got from a harm reduction model where the people I’m trying to protect are no longer those boys, By raping that girl, they removed themselves from the category of innocent citizenz. This means they get some, but less rights than the rest of us.
I think we ought to be focusing on making sure that a new generation of these
kids does not crop up. I think it’s possible to do this, but it’ll take some work, political power, and money, none of which other than the willingness to work are something I’ve got.
After we do that, we can work on fixing prisons to remove the chance of recidivism from parolees.
This is triage in a war zone. We have limited resources, and lifeboat ethics are all we’ve got.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
On the issue ” young boys have an instinct towards gang-rape”
That seems to be a somewhat flippant and definitely erroneous conclusion. It would be like saying that because humans are prone to aggression, they have an ‘instinct to kill their sibling with rocks’. It takes a truism and then extends it to a specific (and usually ridiculous) conclusion.
Young boys (and young men), in groups, do definitely seem to have a heightened since of aggression, power and bravado that individually they do not have. Lots of studies on that (this article is a place to start)
It fits with my experiences anecdotally too. I was always afraid of groups of boys or young men, not because they were larger, but because they seemed to act more aggressively toward me than any of the boys individually (they’ve got backup to put it bluntly).
But you could as easily say that groups of boys instinctually build buildings as to say instinctually gang rape based on changes in behavior when in groups.
It’s letting these boys off way too easy to say it is ‘instinct’. They could have channeled that group power, aggression, energy, whatever into a basketball game, digging a swimming pool or cutting down weeds or pulling off an elaborate but harmless prank (crop circles?).. but instead (if the evidence and testimony holds), they channeled it to gang rape of a single defenseless girl.
NO excuses. Not in biology, not in instinct.
This comment was written by trey.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 3:17 pm
Ampersand,
I linked to your post. I hadn’t read the NY Times story yet, and it was far more detailed. Not that it clears anything up. If they have a witness testifying to force why haven’t the police charged already? This flabbergasts me.
You wrote:
“But what does any of this have to do with a “developmentally disabled”? girl who is dragged onto an auditorium stage, hit, and told “if you scream, I’ll have all my boys punch “you”??”
In my own defense, you are missing the fact that I wasn’t talking about the specific incident at all by the time I “digressed”. And it is not a digression to me at all - we need to prevent such incidents as well as prosecute them. A girl was assaulted on school property. There were multiple witnesses - and the school administration didn’t feel the need to do anything but confiscate the videotape? I was thinking that whole school must be out of control, so I was very interested to read Grace’s comments.
You are focusing on prosecution (understandably). I am caught and horrified by what the girl experienced. How could that happen in a school? Why did none of the boys realize that what was happening was wrong? They don’t appear to have had any sense of shame or fear of being caught! How could the administrators not call the police? I read about police being called for 8 year olds thwapping teachers with rubber bands, for heaven’s sake!
Sigmund, Carl & Alfred have been conducting an interesting series of discussions on kids, raising kids, sex and schooling. During the course of it a public school teacher wrote about rampant sex in schools and the lack of support for stopping it from the parents and the administration. My contention is that a no-sex-in-school line has to be drawn - otherwise this sort of thing will continue to happen.
The entire point of all my ramblings that you find offensive is changing the environment so that such an incident won’t happen again! And in a very sexualized environment, where kids are often giving each other blowjobs in the school johns, I think you are facilitating such incidents and lack of response to them by the school administration - because the presumption will be that it was consensual. Not that I am excusing the administrators, because there is no excuse for their behavior IMO.
Back when I was going to school I knew of cases of girls (especially girls with developmental lags) being raped outside of school, but never in school. Are there no safe places left?
A blog with the name of “Alas” is very suitable to the subject.
You say that you don’t think teenage boys have an instinct to rape or force sex on a girl. I think you don’t know very much about the behavior of teenage boys in a group. I think many teenage boys do instinctively regard women as sexual objects. Recently I read about a very similar incident occurring in French housing projects where Muslim teenage boys were gangbanging the girls. This is one of the default human states if we have been taught no better. Many of us are not born with empathy and compassion - we have to learn it. If our society no longer understands this, then we are in deep, deep trouble. Clearly those boys had not been taught those lessons.
After reading the NY Times article my bet is that this isn’t the first such incident many of these boys were involved in. If they aren’t prosecuted I’d bet it won’t be the last.
And yes, I have known quite a few teenage girls who are very comfortable with their sexuality and do use it to control men and get where they want to go. I knew several in my day, and I have met several recently. Facts are not misogyny, and both sexes are capable of extremely disrespectful sexual behavior. Both sexes. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.
This girl was nothing but a victim, but all the girls who are sexually active in high school are not. If there is rampant sexual activity on school grounds, it’s a sure bet that many of those incidents are consensual, although I can’t see any way that any person could interpret this incident as consensual sex. Somehow, though, that’s the suspicion that seemed to have emerged in the school administration’s collective consciousness, if you can call it that.
Oh, and btw - I was shocked to find a comment on my blog from a woman who said that some people liked to be hit. She thought we shouldn’t presume it was not consensual. I don’t know whether she would still write that if she had read the NY Times article.
This comment was written by MaxedOutMama.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 3:30 pm
I’d like to contribute some anecdotal evidence here confirming some of the previous author’s statements. FYI, I graduated from high school only six years ago.
1) After having been raped, as Lubu said, it was “open season” on me now that I was “sexually experienced.”
2) I learned that I could either shrivel or take hold of my sexual power. This made me “promiscuous” even though the relationships were quid pro quo.
3) Yes, there are high school orgies. I’ve been to a few. I don’t know how often this kind of thing actually occurs, but each involved older people well into their twenties (we were all too young to drive), and I would suspect their presence made all the difference between a rumored orgy and an actual one.
For a long time my sexual behavior or lack thereof defined me among my peers, even though I sought to have it otherwise. Even today, I have a hard time not playing that card in certain situations. Sometimes it is easier to shake the ass and show some cleavage than it is to make legitimate gains. Luckily I’ve nearly outgrown that urge.
And RE: the sexual superstar statement. This is probably going to make me very unpopular, but I believe that girls learn very early that their sexuality is what defines them among their male peers. As all these kids are seeking to develop their identities, they rely on archetypes and stereotypes to confirm and deny their burgeoning subjectivities. Again, I did it. I also wisened up relatively quickly. Where I disagree is that this is an intrinsic trait — but anyone with a strong enough desire to belong will exploit what they can to become a member of the favored crowd, even if that means sacrificing good judgement.
This comment was written by Lauren.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
Thank you for sharing that Lauren. My experiences in school were similar to yours, though I was lucky to have gotten out with only one attempted rape.
Still, I was sexually mistreated and sexually abused in more ways than I will relate here, but is was cruel - intentionally cruel. In the worst situation that wasn’t the attempted rape, I believe the boys who set me up did it mainly so they could brag about it to the whole school the next day.
As a pretty, gregarious teenaged girl I thought it was better to the Best Object than the Ignored Object or the Uninvited Object, since not being an object at all wasn’t in the equation. I think about girls like this one, about girls like that one in Orange Co. who had a lit cigarette put to her delicate vagina and the boys saying she consented to it because she was a slut, and I know intrinsically the meaning of the phrase, “There but for the grace of God go I”.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 4:58 pm
“Clearly those boys had not been taught those lessons.”
Well, clearly that’s what the law is* for, when all the beautiful ideals of education and progress have failed. Stick them in jail for twenty years, or more, you bet they are going to learn a lesson.
*should be
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 5:45 pm
OK, I’m going to make a big honest admission here and say that I have helped organize “play parties” held by adults. If you read my LJ, you could find that out anyhow.
I would never ever invite anyone under the age of consent, anyone who’s underaged, or even 18 and still in high school. and I’ve had underaged kids ask me about that. It just isn’t going to happen. Flat out never, as long as I’m in charge. The legal risks are *huge*, as well as the potential ethical problems. I’d never attend one if I even suspected that the people running it were violating statutory rape laws, or getting close to that.
Monica: I’m not as interested in teacching them anything as I am in getting them away from potential victims.
MOM As someonw who does, in fact, like to be thwapped form time to time (sure is a day for startling admissions), I still assume this was non consensual.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
The problem I’m seeing with all of the above (and don’t even think for a minute that I can’t relate or am not in the know) is that these issues are NOT instinct. They are societal gender roles that we as ADULTS are responsible for instilling and perpetuating in our children. I think it’s really irresponsible of some of the prior commentors to perpetuate the instinct myths over the reality that we are teaching our children to be predators and victims.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 7:41 pm
Jiminy Cricket. And anti-feminists complain that feminists are “anti-male?”
That something like “I don’t think boys have a natural instinct for gang-rape” still needs to be said in our culture is embarassing. Look, we are talking about rational human beings here, not beasts. If they have come up to their late teens with a more-or-less unreflective desire to sexually assault young women then that’s deeply disturbing, but it’s not something that they are compelled by an inborn drive to do. It’s something that they have chosen and have been taught by other men in the culture at large to think is O.K. An appeal to mythical “instincts” to explain why they don’t think or care enough about a young woman’s humanity not to assault her amounts to nothing more than a cheap way to let young men off the hook when it comes to their own humanity.
This comment was written by Rad Geek.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
I think many teenage boys do instinctively regard women as sexual objects.
If it were “instinctive,” it wouldn’t be many teenage boys, it would be all of them. That’s sort of the definition of “instinct.”
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 8:10 pm
It’d certainly make for a good argument in front of a jury.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 8:51 pm
It’d certainly make for a good argument in front of a jury.
That’s what always gives me pause with these claims that boys or men have an “instinct for rape”. It’s a method of ducking responsibility for moral action. If it is only natural to rape, then how can we be blaming these kids? There’s nothing instinctual about gang-raping, as others have noted above, its cultural. Saying otherwise is cultural code for “the poor boys, they just can’t help themselves”.
A while back, I found myself aimlessly watching an episode of Dr. Phil (blech) on the issue of “those sex-crazed teens!”. The terms in which they discussed the behavior of teenage boys were these exact terms of natural behaviors. The good doctor cautioned a young girl’s mother to be sure and teach her daughter that men are pigs that will do anything to get what they want. When these boys grow up hearing from every direction that it is only “natural” to use the bodies of women for their own sexual purposes, it’s no wonder they wind up becoming rapists.
Maybe if we spent our time talking about how these boys are criminals who chose to commit a wicked, violant crime instead of plain old folks caving in to “instinct”, we could gain some ground here.
This comment was written by Zenmaster.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 9:06 pm
in a sense i think the media getting a hold of this story becomes part of the problem. all your concerns about how bad this even is will get washed away. only the idea of the event as a sexual fantasy will remain. the new york times all the way to the enquirer love stories like these because they play to male sexual fantasies and they sell.
the other thing that is more frightening is the deep sexual repressions this whole thing reveals. first of all that so many are viscerally interested in this topic, nationally. we relish the opportunity to revisit the landscape of sexual taboos in our mind. the violent attitudes toward the “perps” and “administrators” expressed here is also an element in this sexual power-play of the national mind. we would be better off pursuing our own healthy experimental (to the extent we’re interested) sexual relationships than indulging our sexual desires cerebrally and mixing them with our ideas of justice and power. that is to say i’d rather not be writing this.
it does nothing for you or me or “our children” to model behavior whereby we wish to act out revenge on sexual deviants. “our children” will then confuse sex, power, and revenge themselves and end up raping someone to get revenge on someone they read about in a news paper.
i hope this makes sense even though it’s a bit convoluted.
This comment was written by pornstorm.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2005 at 10:35 pm
There are actually two statements there - yes, many teenage boys regards women as sexual objects - this has much to do with hormones. However, there is nothing instinctively about regarding them solely as sexual objects.
I can regard Angelina Jolie as a object of my desires (and hence a sexual object), and still hold her in high regard for her wonderful work for UNICEF and her good work as an actress.
Regarding the behaviour of boys in groups. Well, being male, and having been in what could be considered a borderline all-male gang, I can say for sure that if anyone had even remotely suggested rape, it would have ended badly for them.
This comment was written by Kristjan Wager.Some groups of boys behave that way, but it is not common!
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April 16th, 2005 at 12:03 am
Pornstorm;
Who in this thread has talked revenge? Are you implying that people noticing this is only out of some lascivious or vicarious sexual thrill instead of genuine horror and frustration that our society has cultivated such mindsets? How have you gone from reading people desiring justice to people desiring revenge? Surely you aren’t suggesting we all just go back to getting ourselves layed in lew of paying attention to crimes such as these that call attention to the very core of many gender/sex based problems that affect SO many people. Or are you?
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 2:50 am
Josh Jasper, I see prison rape as rapists getting away with it. It’s more of the same problem. Also, it’s a level of torture which isn’t an appropriate part of a sentence in a civilized society–and the justice system isn’t careful about making sure that only guilty people end up in prison.
This comment was written by Nancy Lebovitz.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 8:39 am
I don’t know if people realize this, because it’s so deeply blacked out of public consciousness, but rape committed by adolescent males is routinely dismissed as nothing by the courts, and was twenty years ago.
I can’t say, in detail, how I know this, because it isn’t my story. I was involved in it, because it was in my neighborhood, but more than that I cannot tell. If it *were* me, I would be doing the no shame, no silence thing now, but it’s not.
Here is the best I can do - when it came out that a junior high school boy had been molesting young girls in the neighborhood, the cops said, flat out, that there was no point in prosecuting it, because the system took the view that a) boys would be boys, this was part of the normal sexual experimentation, and b) no harm was done, after all, the kids were too young to know what was done to them - but c) harm *would* be done if they were publically revealed as rape victims, which is what any (doomed, futile) efforts at prosecution would do.
The molestor’s family moved, shortly thereafter. The girls *were* psychologically harmed, but how much didn’t fully come out until years later. But I was, and remained, in shock that this was known to law enforcement as a common occurrence and nobody who knew and had power in society had any intention of doing anything about it.
–Another reason I was less surprised to find out that the DA in the archdioceses of Boston and New York had been abetting the coverrups, when they found out about molestation in past decades, until the dam finally broke.
This comment was written by bellatrys.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 8:45 am
Zenmaster, when anyone brings that up - and I agree with you 100% and also that it is insulting in less ugly things, like “guys can’t multitask/speak/think” bs - my answer is this.
What do we do with sexually-uncontrollable male domestic animals, or with uncontrollably-vicious animals of either gender who attack people? Hint: we *don’t* just tolerate it and never have.
Is this the direction you want to go in? It wouldn’t have to be literal gelding, it ight be possible to do a little less. Chemically-neutering all males until and iff they get married, from puberty on, for the sake of the safety of women *and* yes, other males, from that “majority” [sic] who are “naturally” predators…
Alternately, we could just require all women to be armed in public, concealed carry, trained to use and also in some form of unarmed combat. I’ve found that telling someone who’s being impertinent “I have a knife, you know,” tends to make the smirk and the hands go away very quickly - followed by a skittish look as they try to figure out *where* the knife is, without giving offense by ogling.
This comment was written by bellatrys.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 10:12 am
Nancy Lebovitz: sure, prison rape is, in fact, a horrible thing. But as I said, I don’t see much of a vaild alternative in the immediate sense. If there was a safe, rape free place for those kids to be sent to, I’d be for sending them there. I don’t want them to suffer, I want them to stop being a threat to people. I don’t accept that it’s neccesary to put them in a painful environment to get that goal met, but I don’t see any alternative.
If you’ve got one that could work imemdiatley, I’m all for it. If you’ve got a plan to fix things in the future, I’m all for that too. But right here and now, that girl, and other girls like her needs to be safe from those boys. they are my immediate primary concern, and I think they should be everyone’s primary concern in a case like this.
After we remove the immediate threat, I’d like to see the schools get serious about rape prevention. I think there are several good, inexpensive ways to do that. A friend of mine helps run a “model mugging” group that teaches people self defense, situational awareness, and prevention techniques. They’re struggling financialy, but they do good, effective work in teaching people how to react to a variety of dangerous situations with a harm reduction model in mind.
If this girl had known those techniques, and if others in the room had been trained in them, this situation naver would have gotten furhter than threat from those boys.
Belatrys: Your point about just saying “I have a knife” is similar to whaat I’m talking about. I don’t know if we could make it mandatory, but seeing an after school rape awareness training class for jr highschool and highschool age students would, IMO, be a start.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 11:14 am
I don’t want a “No-sex” area at school. One of my old high school’s had a strict no-pda rule. Hand holding was even forbidden.
The only thing was, is it didn’t do a goddamned thing and became a joke. I think it would have been far more effective to offer self-defense class, but oh no, can’t do that because of the strict no-tolerance policy, so even if someone sexually assaulted you, and you knew how to defend yourself, automatic ISS (I’ve seen it, firsthand).
Sexuality is not something should be suppressed. And girls shouldn’t have to be little sluts. The problem is not with the girls, in my oppinion, it’s about a lack of cohesion in policy.
This comment was written by Antigone.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 11:15 am
Has there been talk of a “no sex” policy? I might have mised that in other people’s comments.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
Maxed out mama
This comment was written by Antigone.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
I hope those boys are punished.
La Luba said:
t has everything to do with a sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, and the knowledge that society as a whole pretty much condones rape of the vulnerable.
I don’t know if I buy the claim that society as a whole pretty much condones rape of the vulnerable. Please explain.
I knew of one incident at my high school where a guy was rumored to have coerced a girl into giving him a blowjob. I don’t know if it was true. But I do know that all the guys I heard talking about it vigorously condemned it. I knew many guys at my school who had chauvinistic attitudes, but I don’t think they were extreme enough to condone rape or coercion. If behavior like that was going on, it must have been at parties (which I never went to).
Amanda said:
I am amused by the idea that girls have access to special status to be gotten through sex. How valuable can such status be if it can only be gotten through the boys? Doesn’t that mean that the boys are always of higher status?
Women can gain special status through their sexuality (not just sex). I don’t understand how this idea would be revolutionary. Even if flaunting sexuality makes a woman “Best Object,” she can still derive a lot of power from that role in some contexts. I think feminists are correct in pointing out that beauty standards are a source of powerlessness for women, but I think they are leaving out the other side of the picture: that beauty can also be a massive source of power for women.
I went to highschool in a very affluent area, and one of the consequences was that the girls would have access to expensive clothes and beauty care. Quite a few of them looked liked models. These girls would get a ton of attention from males. Guys would be fawning after them. With some of the most beautiful girls, guys would sometimes act like groupies, and help the girls with their homework, do favors for them, or provide a listening ear in the event that a girl wanted to complain about her problems to him. Some of these girls obviously had low self-esteem, some did not.
I remember one girl in particular that just about every guy in the school had a crush on. She was talked about as if she was a minor celebrity. Object? Maybe. Powerless? Definitely not. Female beauty can make males feel very powerless, especially during youth, when the females are the most beautiful and the males are the least able to master their emotions. Being faced with someone who you can’t help but want very badly, but who doesn’t really want you back creates feelings of powerlessness and insecurity. Actually, I suspect that chauvinistic attitudes in males are often a reaction to feeling helpless in the face of greater female sexual power. What can a young man do to have the dynamite sexual effect on women that an attractive young woman can have on him through cute clothes and beauty care?
jam said:
i have been left with a sorrowful & bitter cast in my mind towards teenage boys & their sexuality. sorrowful b/c so many of them are so clearly fucked up & desperately ignorant when it comes to understanding sex & intimacy (not to mention how susceptible to peer pressure)… & how clearly this is the result (at least in part) of little if any support in schools for dealing with sex in a straightforward manner.
Yes, and it is worse than that. And it is more than just sexual repression (which pornstorm mentioned), though sexual repression is definitely part of the problem. Young males are expected to play a very difficult role: that of the initiator, which requires confidence, social skills, and assertiveness. Yet men are given no practical training on how to initiate things (let alone in a way that women are actually comfortable with!), but rather expected to figure out how to do it “naturally.” But not all men are confident, socially skilled, or assertive (especially not during youth), so not all men can play their role “naturally.”
Hence, we have an obvious recipe for disaster. During highschool, males have a high desire for sex, but only a limited ability to interact with girls. Because mainstream culture provides no practical help with girls, young males are left to their own devices to figure things out: their peer group, or the internet. It should be no surprise that some of the “solutions” they come up with are extremely unhealthy both to them and to the young women they interact with (though that is simply an explanation, not an excuse).
Another problem is that young females, just like young males, tend to internalize the current construction of masculinity to some extent. In my highschool, the males who were most popular with girls in general were actually the most “patriarchal” and “chauvinistic”! They would tease girls all the time, and often treat them in a patronizing manner. Although there were definitely girls who found this behavior to be condescending (several of the more “artsy”/intellectual girls told me so), the majority of girls seemed to enjoy it. It wasn’t just that the girls would tolerate the patronizing to gain status from attention from the popular guys. It seemed that one of the reasons those guys were popular was because the majority of girls would respond well to their behavior.
I believe that this system of gender roles is based on unhealthy power dynamics (which is part of the reason why I feel that I have common ground with some feminists), yet it is NOT only males who uphold this system.
I suspect that dynamics like this are common in highschool, and to some extent college also. It feeds the myth that girls want “jerks,” or to be mistreated by males. I have encountered many guys who have this perception, and such a belief is not likely to foster healthy relationships and intimacy with women; actually, it is likely to foster misogynistic attitudes.
Josh Jasper said:
Your point about just saying “I have a knife”? is similar to whaat I’m talking about. I don’t know if we could make it mandatory, but seeing an after school rape awareness training class for jr highschool and highschool age students would, IMO, be a start.
Perhaps you are correct, but we must be careful or else the solution could become almost as bad as the disease. I am talking of date rape seminars, such as the one at my school when I was a sophomore. Date rape speaker Katie Koestner told us all about her rape in graphic detail. Total overkill, and there were people younger than me in the audience. I grew up being very ashamed of my sexuality and being male in general, and this seminar definitely contributed to that shame (partly because I was too young to think critically about it). Surely date rape can be addressed in a way that doesn’t have adverse effects on the males who are already in no danger of committing it, and are lacking in a sexual aggressiveness and confidence with women in the first place.
Lauren said:
And RE: the sexual superstar statement. This is probably going to make me very unpopular, but I believe that girls learn very early that their sexuality is what defines them among their male peers. As all these kids are seeking to develop their identities, they rely on archetypes and stereotypes to confirm and deny their burgeoning subjectivities.
Exactly. Now that I am in college (freshman), I see young women using their sexuality to have men do them unreciprocated favors. Some of these women seem to have a mentality of entitlement, where they assume that the guy will do what they ask. This suggests that they are used to having guys ask “how high?” when they say “jump.” They are taking advantage of the chivalrous messages that are foisted on many young men. I don’t think a majority of girls, even of attractive girls, behave this way, but it is definitely going on… and it shows that the current gender roles don’t always advantage males.
This comment was written by Aegis.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Aegis, I would be more than happy to explain how society as a whole condones rape.
1. If a young woman goes to a party, gets drunk (or is “slipped a mickey”) and passes out, and men attending the party take her into a back room and rape her while she is unconscious, it’s pretty much considered her fault. After all—she attended the party, and she had a drink. Anything goes.
2. If a woman is raped after dark in a parking lot, either on her way home from work or while running errands, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all—what was she doing out after dark?
3. If a woman is raped while she is wearing what could be considered to be “sexy” clothing, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all—she’s wearing that clothing to attract male attention, right? Attracting the attention of rapists is something she chose to take a chance on, right?
4. If a woman is raped while out jogging alone, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all—what was she doing out there by herself?
5. If a woman who lives alone is raped in her own home, in the middle of the night, by a rapist who came in her window, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all—why did she have her window open? Even if the window wasn’t open, but closed and locked, it’s still her fault. She should have had a roommate, or a dog.
In my city, a real estate agent was raped in broad daylight, while she was showing a home to a man she thought to be a potential client. This woman was well-known in the community, with an impeccable professional reputation. The rapist had stalked her (unbeknownst to her; this came out during the trial) and had planned his location. Her held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her if she fought back. When he left the house, she immediately slammed the door, locked it, and started screaming to the neighbors to call the police. Lucky for her, they did.
She not only reported the rape, but went to the emergency room and had a rape kit done. She cooperated with the police fully. She did all the things a woman is supposed to do after a rape.
The rapist used a false name when he made the appointment, but the police were able to track him through the rental car he used. When the police interviewed him, they noted that he had no bruises or scratches on him. He told the police it was all a misunderstanding; that the sex was consensual. The woman had lacerations and bleeding in her vagina and rectum. The man told the police that she was really wild and wanted it rough. He acted sheepish about it. The police chose to believe him, and told the real estate agent there wasn’t enough evidence. They believed the man when he said he didn’t have a gun. The police had found out his real name by this time, yet seemed mysteriously unconcerned that he was using an alias. His alias was a man relocating from out of state on business. His real identity was a local construction worker.
Not long after, another woman was raped. Her body was found dumped in a cornfield. She was shot. The DNA on the dead woman’s body matched the DNA sample taken from the real estate agent. Finally, the police decided to bring charges against the rapist.
In between these rapes, the real estate agent found it hard to do her job. Because of the trauma of the rape? The stress and fear of it happening again? Sure. But also because she was losing business. This rape had gotten a lot of media attention, and although her name was not revealed in the press, this is a small town (only around 120,000), so folks figured out who it was. The real estate agency she worked for was named in the press, and she was one of the full-time agents—not hard to narrow down. She lost business because this rapist was believed by the police. He was released. So, instead of sympathizing with this poor woman, the public thought of her as that nasty slut who brings strange men into your house to sleep with them, on your bed, while you’re trying to sell your house! Yuck! This traumatized her more than the rape itself—the idea that she could go from a pillar of the community to cheap slut in one rape.
Wanna real kick in the ass? Women are even more likely to blame a woman for her own rape than men are. It’s a form of denial. Women want to believe that this is something that isn’t going to happen to them; that in fact can’t happen to them. Rape is something that happens to “loose” women, or “not careful enough” women, or “weak” women, or…..whatever. Don’t believe me? Talk to some criminal lawyers, especially the prosecution. Rape is a difficult crime to prosecute. Not because the evidence is any weaker than any other crime, but because of the psychological baggage the jury brings with them. Female jurors tend to be especially hard to convince, because they want to believe that had the shoes been on their feet, that they would have escaped, or successfully fought back, and wouldn’t have been raped.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 5:43 pm
La Luba, thank you for your extensive explanation. I am still a bit skeptical: your arguments would have made sense if they were intended to describe the world 20-30 years ago, but I don’t know to what extent they apply to the world today.
. If a young woman goes to a party, gets drunk (or is “slipped a mickey”?) and passes out, and men attending the party take her into a back room and rape her while she is unconscious, it’s pretty much considered her fault. After all…she attended the party, and she had a drink. Anything goes.
Who, exactly, considers it her fault? The men raping her, or people in general? I think that is an important distinction. At my university, it has been made pretty clear that the kind of situation you describe is date rape. There is a fraternity on campus who is rumored to be an unsafe environment for females to go. I have seen quite a few upper classmen (males) warning freshman females to avoid that frat. If our culture condones rape, then why does that frat have such a bad reputation, especially among males? I do believe that some males may hold the attitudes you describe, but those males seem to be a vast minority. Hence, I really don’t believe that our culture condones the rape of women while drunk.
2. If a woman is raped after dark in a parking lot, either on her way home from work or while running errands, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all…what was she doing out after dark?
I’m sorry, but I don’t buy this at all. I don’t believe that there is any significant amount of people, even chauvinistic men, who think that woman shouldn’t be out after dark nowadays (or that they are inviting rape if they are). This argument seems like an anachronism that would have applied decades ago, but doesn’t today. Same with your example #4 about a woman out jogging alone.
3. If a woman is raped while she is wearing what could be considered to be “sexy”? clothing, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all…she’s wearing that clothing to attract male attention, right? Attracting the attention of rapists is something she chose to take a chance on, right?
Ok, I find this more believable than #2 and #4, but it still strikes me as anachronistic. Again, I will grant that there are people today who who hold this belief, but I am not convinced that they are anything more than a minority. Can you provide any evidence to show that such beliefs are widespread, or culturally condoned?
5. If a woman who lives alone is raped in her own home, in the middle of the night, by a rapist who came in her window, it’s pretty much considered to be her fault. After all…why did she have her window open? Even if the window wasn’t open, but closed and locked, it’s still her fault. She should have had a roommate, or a dog.
I don’t buy this either. Honestly, it sounds like you are drifting into the realm of hyperbole here.
In my city, a real estate agent was raped in broad daylight, while she was showing a home to a man she thought to be a potential client.
Ok, this story does cause me concern. Now I’m wondering (a) when it was, and (b) how typical it is. I would need a lot more evidence to believe that cases like this are typical, or that society as a whole condones rape.
Rape is something that happens to “loose”? women, or “not careful enough”? women, or “weak”? women, or…..whatever. Don’t believe me?
I believe you on this point.
This comment was written by Aegis.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 7:12 pm
Aegis, you might want to check out the info on the recent Haidl and OC cases that Sheelzebub posted on under this category.
This comment was written by Anne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 8:38 pm
Thanks for the link… those stories were shocking.
Still, they don’t seem to demonstrate that our culture condones rape. Actually, they might demonstrate that attacks on the victim’s moral virtue don’t fly any more. The defense lawyer was chastised for his despicable tactics, and the boys were found guilty.
This comment was written by Aegis.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 9:05 pm
I’m not sure condone would be the right word, but it’s naive to think that rape and sexual assault get even close to the amount of investigative energy and time that they should. Given time, I’m sure you’ll start to come across more stories and anecdotes that back this up, Aegis, but right now your perspective is still pretty fresh. While I’m not pointing a finger and stating that you’re naive, but just the same, from reading your posts I don’t think you’ve yet had it sink in just how prevalent (despite I’m sure your awareness of the statistics) rape and sexual assault are, and how very trivial certain types (the more common types) are written off as insignificant in our culture. As for attacking the victim’s moral virtue, while this might be starting to become frowned upon in the courtroom, it’s definitely not as quick to catch up in the many, many, many cases that do not get reported. Hell, look at the Kobe Bryant case as a perfect example of even the courtroom still taking part in such scandelous antics. It’s victimization after being victimized and it’s one of the primary reasons women don’t step forward more frequently upon being raped or sexually assaulted.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
Kim said:
Actually, it does sound like you are pointing a finger and stating that I am naive. I don’t particularly mind this: I know that I am younger than probably everyone on this blog, so it wouldn’t surpise me if there is many areas where I am naive. Yet even if I am naive, I am not sure that I am wrong.
By the way, can you cite some evidence that rape and sexual assault don’t get the amount of investigative energy and time that they should (and is this different from any other crime)?
On the other hand, I can see how some trivial types of sexual assault might not get reported. The other day, I overheard a girl describe an experience with a guy she had been “hooking up” with that sounded like borderline date rape. The guy had shut the door, turned off the lights, thrown her on the bed, and jumped on top of her in the space of about two seconds without any positive response from her. He had also insisted repeatedly on her giving him a blowjob.
[blockquote]Hell, look at the Kobe Bryant case as a perfect example of even the courtroom still taking part in such scandelous antics. It’s victimization after being victimized and it’s one of the primary reasons women don’t step forward more frequently upon being raped or sexually assaulted.[/blockquote]
Wait, as I recall, there was evidence that Kobe Bryant’s accuser had sex with another man very shortly after she was supposedly raped, then tried to explain this as having put on dirty underwear. If she was so traumatized by the rape, why have sex with another man before being examined, then lie about it? From what I have read about the case, my suspicion is that her accusations are false. False accusations create skepticism towards women who have actually been raped. Are you suggesting that the courts behavior was scandalous regardless of whether Farber was probably lying or not (such as by leaking her name)?
This comment was written by Aegis.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 11:24 pm
You misunderstand me Aegis, I wasn’t calling any sexual assault trivial, I was saying investigations often treat them as trivial; oddly enough, just like you did when discussing what a friend of yours spoke about. As for evidence, well, if I have time sure, but in the meantime, please feel free to google, as I’m sure you’ll find plenty of evidence and statistics on how under-reported rape and sexual assaults are.
And on to Kobe Bryant - I watched a special on Dateline the other evening and the thing that kept striking me was the fact that the girl was afraid of going forward because she feared her prior sexual activity coupled with Kobe’s celebrity status would make people not believe her. By the way, as far as I’ve heard, the sex act that occurred earlier that day was with a friend of hers, and another sample was from Kobe Bryant.
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
Pardon, the sex act was afterwards, yes. My mistake. This is the situation as it stands now, and unlike you I’m not nearly as convinced that a sexual assault didn’t occur:
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 11:41 pm
*sigh*
Okay, I actually did a google just so you’d have some facts at your fingertips - you’re responsible for the rest of your search beyond this:
and…
This comment was written by Kim (basement variety!).Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
Aegis, you are probably right that society as a whole doesn’t condole rape, and that the “blame the victim” mentality is becoming less and less prominent among younger generations, however the people in charge of enforcing the laws and procecuting alleged rapists are still belonging to those older generations.
There is no dispute that the US have horrorfying rape statistics, and that’s only the reported cases. It is commonly acknowledged that for every rape case reported, there is probably at least one not being reported.
This comment was written by Kristjan Wager.In other words, there are real problems that needs to be addressed. How they should be addressed is not clear, but saying that there is no problem (or alternatively that it’s nature/instincts) is not the solution.
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April 16th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
Thank you for locating those numbers for us Kim - as I said they are horrorfying.
One thing that confuses me is the use of “forcible rape” - isn’t rape forcible per defini