(This is the second of a series of posts criticizing how the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAW) measured rape prevalence. This post is the first of two examining how NVAW measures attempted rape, as opposed to completed rape. This post will criticize the methodology of the question used to measure attempted rape; the next post, which I think will be more interesting, will look at underlying questions of how we define “rape” and “attempted rape,” and what that means for a survey attempting to measure attempted rape prevalence. Future posts in this series will look at ways that NVAW is both underestimating and overestimating rape prevalence, and at issues with how NVAW measures the prevalence of rape against men.)

(WARNING: This post and the subject it discusses may be triggering. This post, and other posts in this series, discuss rape prevalence studies in an “academic” tone, similar to the tone used by academic studies of rape prevalence. Understandably, some folks may not want to read that. The post itself is below the fold.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last few years there’s been a lot of publicity and discussion about police rape in New Zealand, including a damning report into how police respond to police officers who rape.¹ Given this you’d think the police would try, at least a little bit, to avoid looking like they’re blaming women who have been raped for their rape. You’d be wrong:

Police are warning young women against walking alone at night, after a Wanganui teenager was abducted and sexually violated on the weekend.
[...]

“It’s a timely reminder to young girls that they shouldn’t be walking on their own,” Ms Mansell said.

“These types of attacks are rare but they do happen and girls who are walking the streets on their own at night-time are making themselves targets.”

I wanted to write less about rape, not because I don’t care, but because I feel like I was writing paint by numbers posts, where I assembled basic feminist ideas one after another.

1. The people who are responsible for rape are the rapists.
2. Blaming women for being raped is not acceptable.
3. If you tell women to modify their behaviour to avoid rape then you are placing the responsibility for rape in the wrong place.
4. Avoiding being out alone out night is a serious restriction on a woman’s freedom.
5. Anti-rape advice isn’t just victim-blaming, it’s also wildly inaccurate.
6. Most rapists know the women that they are rape.
7. Rape is most likely to happen in someone’s home.
8. A woman who walks home with a man she knows is at more danger from rape than a woman who walks home by herself.
9. Clint Rickards is a rapist.²

I guess I’ll keep writing it till there are no longer people who need to hear it.

1. In case you were wondering, they make the rapist one of the highest police officers in the country (back)
2. Not strictly speaking relevant for this particular paint by numbers post, but I wanted a number for it. (back)

Here is the page that includes the report summary and links to the full document and related resources, and here is a quote from the executive summary.

One in three Native American or Alaska Native women will be raped at some point in their lives. Most do not seek justice because they know they will be met with inaction or indifference.

Barriers to justice
The majority of perpetrators go unpunished as many Indigenous women never report the abuse committed against them, while those who do report it find other barriers to justice. The US government has created a complex maze of federal, state and tribal authorities. As a consequence, Indigenous women are being denied justice.

Failure to act
The US authorities have not only failed to respond adequately to the threats faced by Indigenous women, but federal policies and practices have actually denied Native American and Alaska Native women protections available to other women in the USA.

Urgent action is needed to stop sexual violence against Indigenous women in the USA. But action must be shaped by understanding, not prejudice; by fact, not assumption. Indigenous women’s organizations and tribal authorities have brought forward concrete proposals to help stop the abuse against Indigenous women – but the federal government has failed to act.

Over the years, I’ve frequently referred to the National Violence Against Women Survey’s statistics regarding rape prevalence.¹ And I’ll probably continue to refer to NVAW Survey: it’s probably the best measure that’s ever been taken of national rape prevalence in the USA. It used a large, random, nationally-representative sample; the survey included people “from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds”; and it asked about some things no previous national survey had effectively asked about, such as rape by intimate partners.

Nonetheless, there are important flaws in the NVAW survey, and in particular with how it measures rape prevalence. This is a first of a series of posts which will describe the flaws in the NVAW survey. This post will look at some general shortcomings with the survey; future posts will look at different ways the NVAW study may be both undercounting and overcounting rape prevalence, and at how the NVAW study does a particularly poor job of measuring rape prevalence among men.

1. The NVAW study needs to be repeated at regular intervals.²

Although there have been multiple good studies of rape prevalence done over the last twenty years, they each use different methodologies, making it impossible to use these studies to get a reliable estimate of how rape prevalence has changed over the years. Not all the studies are structured the same way; not all of them use nationally representative samples; not all of them use exactly comparable questions. As a result, we can’t use these studies to see if rape is increasing or decreasing over the years.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. A relatively brief summary of the NVAW survey’s findings can be read here. (back)
2. Shorter Amp: “The NVAW study is deeply flawed, and we need to do it more often.” :-P (back)

Two days ago an All Black1 who had been discharged without conviction after he assaulted his wife, because if he did that would make it harder to travel and he wouldn’t be able to play in the rugby world cup. One fan said:

Fan Craig Clapson, at the match with his son, said Sivivatu should be able to play. “I can’t condone wife beating, but from what I’ve read, it was basically a domestic that got a little out of hand and they’ve reconciled.”

Yesterday, the NZ Herald used the following headline: “‘We thought first shooting just domestic,’ authorities say” (it has now been taken down, but Audra wrote about it). [Note this appears to be just paper assholishness and not necessarily the opinion of the university or the police, although it wouldn't surprise me]

‘Domestic’ is such a tidy way of saying ‘what men do to women who are in a relationship with them doesn’t matter.’

**************

World Socialist Website has an article: The Virginia Tech massacre–social roots of another American tragedy. Lenin’s Tomb covers some of the same ground

Do you want to guess what they don’t mention? Do you want to guess what they don’t think might be relevant?

It’s not actually that hard to include some feminist analysis, even if you’re a Marxist. It’s true that better minds than mine have been defeated in trying to understand reproductive labour within a Marxist economic framework. But looking at the history of school shootings, and some of the details that have come out about this one, you don’t have to rewrite any Capital to understand that maybe a deeply misogynist society might be playing a part.

Edited Updated to reflect more accurate information - bloody New Zealand Herald.

1. Member of the NZ rugby team & God of masculinity in these parts (back)

I’m vain enough to check the stats on my blog reasonably often. Not as much as when I first started writing, when ever reader was a victory, but a few times a week I check how people found me.

Usually they’re searching for Brad Shipton, Clint Rickards or Bob Schollum. That people who want to know about those men find what I’ve written satisfies me.

There are always some upsetting searches which manage to convey a weight of racism or misogyny in so few words. I think most feminist bloggers have it worse than I do; I don’t write much about pornography.

But a few days ago someone found my blog by searching for: “rape a woman” “get away with it”.

I’m on the second page. He hadn’t found what he was looking for in the previous 18 sites, so he checked me out. This is what he read:

For most rapists, there are no consequences, formal or informal. There are consequences for all too many women out there who try and pursue justice and safety.

So any men out there, know you can rape women with impunity, know that there is no need to treat women as human beings. I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like to live as a woman knowing that, maybe you could try.

I’m scared he read my words and ignored what I was saying. I know that most men who rape face no consequences. I’m terrified that this man is now going to add to that number.

From the New York Times:

RALEIGH, N.C., April 11 — North Carolina’s attorney general declared three former Duke University lacrosse players accused of sexually assaulting a stripper innocent of all charges on Wednesday, ending a prosecution that provoked bitter debate over race, class and the tactics of the Durham County district attorney. [...]

“We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations,” Mr. Cooper said at a news conference.

“We have no credible evidence that an attack occurred,” he added.

Mr. Cooper said he had considered but ultimately rejected the possibility of bringing criminal charges against the accuser, who continues to insist she was attacked at a team party on March 13, 2006, and asked him to go forward with the case. Mr. Cooper said his investigators had told him that the woman “may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling.” He said his decision not to charge her with making false accusations was also based on a review of sealed court files, which include records of the woman’s mental health history.

Mr. Cooper reserved his harshest criticism for the Durham County district attorney, Michael B. Nifong, at one point even depicting him as a “rogue prosecutor.” [...]

The North Carolina chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. released a statement saying it respected and accepted the work of the attorney general’s office. Irving Joyner, a law professor at North Carolina Central University, who had been monitoring the case for the N.A.A.C.P., echoed that theme, saying, “Based on my personal knowledge of him and high respect of him, I accept his conclusions.”

Likewise, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, one of the largest such groups in the nation, released a statement saying it was satisfied with the attorney general’s decision to drop all charges.

A few points:

1) Race, Class and The Duke False Accusation¹

(This is rewritten from a post I wrote in February.)

It’s tempting to compare the Duke case to the Long Beach Beating case and the famous Central Park Rape case of the 1980s. In all three cases, a horrible crime was reported; in all three cases, there was enormous pressure from the public for arrests and convictions; and in all three cases, police and prosecutors used biased and unfair procedures to concoct a case against a group of young people.

But let’s not overlook one enormously significant difference: The Duke players were ultimately exonerated. That doesn’t make the unjust suffering the Duke players went through all right, of course. But what we’ve seen here is that the kind of railroaded conviction of poor, black suspects that happened in the Central Park rape case, and which I strongly suspect went on in Long Beach, simply doesn’t fly when the defendants are rich and white.

I’ve seen some conservatives imply that looking at these cases shows that white institutional power — and racism — are myths. But what I see is that the system pretty much works the way it’s supposed to for white defendants, or at least for white defendants with some money; for us, the system doesn’t convict without sufficient evidence. That’s simply not true for black defendants. And that’s why comparing these cases convinces me that institutional racism is still treating non-whites like crap, and still matters, and still needs to be fought.

2) I’m still not naming names.

I’ve already had demands that I blog the name and photo of the Duke accuser, as some other bloggers have done. I’m not going to do that.²

I certainly agree that a tremendous injustice was done to these three men by broadcasting their names and images all over the country. But publishing the name of their accuser will not undo that harm. As I argued a year ago, neither the names or faces of the accuser or of the accused should be made public in criminal cases.³

Obviously, some suffering is an inevitable result of being arrested. But having your names and images broadcast on network news is not inevitable; it’s a result of an irresponsible decision made by the news media. If someone is found guilty of a crime, then the harm done by deferring broadcasting their names and faces until the trial is over is minimal; but when an accused person is innocent, the harm done to them by having their names and faces made public is both avoidable and significant.

3) Why Does The “Presumption Of Innocence” Not Apply To The Accuser?

As Marcella notes, many commenters who, a year ago, were saying that it’s wrong for anyone to believe a rape accusation without a “guilty” verdict in a court of law, are now saying that the accuser made false rape allegations.

This is obviously a double-standard. If it’s wrong to conclude that someone is a rapist before he’s had a trial, then it’s also wrong to conclude that someone has made a false rape accusation before she’s had a trial.

1. Whether or not the Duke accuser was attacked, it’s clear that the three particular men put on trial were falsely accused. (back)
2. Nor have I ever blogged the names or images of the three accused players, that I can recall. (back)
3. I can imagine particular circumstances in which there’s a genuine public interest in knowing the name of the accused before the trial is over — for instance, if the accused criminal is a politician. But that’s not the case in the overwhelming majority of cases. (back)

My friend Rowan and I have a bit of an Emma Thompson thing going. We’re planning a grand rewatch of all her movies (except Maybe Baby and Henry V) that will end with Sense and Sensibility. Tonight we were watching Much Ado About Nothing. I don’t think I’d seen it since it came out when I was 15. It was the first movie I ever went to see twice at the cinema - I loved it.

Seeing it tonight was a little different; I no longer consider Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh the perfect celebrity couple (which is good because neither do they). But we found one plot-line distressing.

Like most Shakespeare plots it’s quite ridiculous. Claudio and Hero are betrothed and the villian* sets it up so Claudio will think that Hero is having sex with another man. Claudio confronts Hero at the wedding, throws her across the room. Her father is also abusive. Hero then pretends to be dead, but than makes no sense at all.

We couldn’t listen to it; we changed the language to Polish so we wouldn’t have to deal with how awful Hero’s situation was. There were some nice moments - Emma Thompson was taking it all seriously, and Kenneth Branagh was backing her up, and choosing the abused women over his abusive friend.

But then Claudio and Hero marry - and we’re supposed to be joyful about it.

There is a version of this play that I could watch - where the horror of Hero’s situation was given weight, where their marriage is not a joyful event, but one the audience dreads. I feel the same way about Taming of the Shrew, from what I’ve read a feminist version of the play is usually one where Katherine implies she has some sort of power. I disagree, a feminist version would be one that played those events absolutely straight. Taming of the Shrew is a tragedy; a tragedy that occurs far more often than young lovers commit suicide because their parents don’t like each other.

* Played by Keanu Reeves! He’s only the second worst actor in the movie too - Robert Sean Leonard plays Claudio and we cracked up when he tried to act sad when it was revealed how wrong he was.

Jean Kilborne, I hope you’re reading (I know she probably isn’t, but I figured I would give her a shout out anyways.). I’ve got some pictures you can add to your award winning films on misogynistic media.

First, we have last night’s episode of America’s Next Top Model, where the photo shoot consisted of simulations of murdered models. Jill mentioned it over at Feministe, and Jennifer at WIMN’s Voices has a much longer post, including this link to the actual pictures. The pictures also include the comments of the judging panel, which adds another touch of misogyny to the photo shoot. I saw the episode last night and dropped my jaw in amazement.

A few weeks ago the NYT magazine featured another blatantly misogynistic fashion spread. This spread included women in nooses and bondage. I was able to find the blogger Musings of a Working Mom who posted a few of the pictures on her site (You can see all of the photos here.). The photo from above is one example from the NYT Magazine.

I say we start a letter writing campaign. If you want to email the New York Times Magazine about their photo shoot. Here is the email: magazine@nytimes.com

America’s Next Top Model is sponsored by a few companies. One such company is Sprint. I found the name and email of some folks at Sprint. I’m not really sure exactly who one is supposed to contact, but you could CC an email to each of these folks:

Sprint Nextel Executive Services
866-398-4606
executive.offices@sprint.com

Director of Consumer and Business Communications Laura Lisec
Laura.m.Lisec@sprint.com

I had a hell of a time finding contacts for Cover Girl, but they also sponsor ANTM if you can find a contact. In fact, if anyone knows the right people to contact, feel free to tell me in the comments section.

I was disappointed and upset to see that this case resulted in an acquittal. It’s hard to be surprised, the woman was drunk, and it’s hardly news that there are people who believe a drunk woman automatically consents to sex. But what really upset me, was the effects this is going to have on her life:

The complainant, who is also a student at the polytechnic, told the Nelson Mail that she planned to pull out of her studies at NMIT and transfer to another polytechnic, because she felt she could not return to the campus if Mr Singh was there.

NMIT chief executive Tony Gray said the polytechnic would continue to manage the situation if both students decided to stay there, as it had done previously by making arrangements to limit their contact on campus.

Without a guilty verdict this woman has nothing. Her polytech can’t even guarantee that she won’t have to see the man who raped her. To do this is to choose the abuser over the abused, because it is those who have least power who will feel compelled to move on.

The justice system don’t care what survivors of sexual violence want, or what they need to get on with their life. There is no way for a woman to say: “I want to live a life free of the man who raped me” without first proving that he raped you beyond reasonable doubt.

We all know that most rape cases will not result in convictions. We must be able to offer those who have been raped something more than the responsibility to avoid their rapist.

This post is open for feminist and feminist friend commenters only.

This is cross-posted at Cool Beans, however, due to the time issues and my desire to get word of this out to as many people as possible, I’m also posting it here, rather than just hoping others will link to it

At ReZoom.com, they are collecting votes for “A Better World” Awards. You can vote once a day (every day) until March 31, 2007. More than 20 charities will win $5,000, with the grand prize winner winning $100,000. You can check to see if your favorite charity is already nominated and vote for them. If it’s not, you can nominate them by filling out the on-line submission form and writing an essay that states why that charity is making the world “A Better World.”

At this point, I will take the time to try and persuade you to vote for the charity of my choice. Why should you vote for this one over all of the other deserving charities? Well, besides the fact that it could actually help me out, personally (ahem), The American Domestic Violence Crisis Line is the only crisis line of its type in the world. It is the only service available to US women, men, and children, living in foreign countries who are trying to escape domestic violence and child abuse. US crisis lines, including the National Domestic Violence Crisis Line, can only help those currently living in the US. And DV agencies in other countries (if they exist at all) can only help in very limited ways (if at all), and probably have no way of helping these women (and men) relocate back to the US (and the financial assistance is only one aspect — the legal issues are even more complex). The US Embassies may be of some help, but that will partially depend on the particular workers that are currently working in that location and how much they know or care about domestic violence.

From the essay posted on ReZoom:

The American Domestic Violence Crisis Line, (ADVCL), 866-USWOMEN, operates the only international toll free domestic violence hotline serving abused American women and children living in foreign countries. The line is currently toll free from 175 countries. Our target population is the estimated 6 - 7 million American civilians and military living in foreign countries. Officially 4.2 million civilians are registered with American Embassies along with ½ million military personnel and their families. To give a perspective of the size of the civilian population we serve, if the number of Americans registered with embassies were placed in one state, it would be the 25th most populous state in the nation. Although no statistics exist for abuse in this population, applying abuse statistics in the USA to our target population, an estimated 57,000 women and 45,000 children are abused annually.

ADVCL began crisis line operations in April 2001 just two years after Paula Lucas, Founder and Executive Director, finally escaped a foreign country with her three children to flee 12 years of domestic violence and child abuse. Frustrated at the absence of services for her and her children while overseas, and shocked at the legal obstacles she encountered upon her return home to be able to keep her American children in their own country, Paula was determined that other American women & children would not need to suffer the same fate. Paula first founded the non-profit organization as an online resource for abused Americans living in foreign countries in September 1999. At that time, she and her children were still homeless themselves, living in a domestic violence shelter.

Since 2001, the organization’s crisis line advocates have served an estimated 1,000 families on the crisis line providing crisis intervention, domestic violence advocacy, case management, safety planning, information & referral. Also since 2001 the organization has provided danger to safety trans-national relocation to 26 families back to the USA, paid 13 legal retainers to enable battered mothers to file for custody of their children in the USA, provided professional counseling to 19 abuse survivors and placed 3 families into a one-year transitional housing program.

In 2006 alone, crisis advocates received 1158 crisis calls and emails, providing services to 248 families in 47 countries. Collectively volunteer advocates volunteered 3,849 hours on the crisis line in 2006. The crisis line currently operates continuously from 9am Monday PST through Friday 11pm PST.

And here’s something else to consider, something that separates the needs of this charity from just about every other charity on this list. This valuable and much needed service takes significant amounts of funding (the phone bills alone can cost thousands of dollars every month). At this point in time, due to the inability to provide a concrete “population” (many of the numbers are estimates — and the exact percentages of DV may vary from county to country), we are unable to gain access to government grants and funds. All of our funding comes from private grants and donations.

If you already have a local charity that you believe is truly deserving of this award, by all means, vote for them. But, please consider voting instead for the ADVCL. Or, perhaps you could switch back and forth each day (again, you can vote once a day, everyday, until March 31).

The next article is hard to translate, because so much of it is based on specifically New Zealand references, but the idea of comparing urban, liberal, middle-class people with conservative, rural, working class people isn’t limited to New Zealand.

Chris Trotter’s column on Friday made connections between 1980s police rape cases and the tour.¹. I’m not willing to concede that police rape belongs to a by-gone era, but I do think there’s probably a point there. These men’s obsession with using their batons to abuse women, clearly comes out of the same culture that created the red squad.²

The first part of Chris Trotter’s article, which covers the incident in some detail, is very interesting. But I disagree with most of the conclusions that he draws from it:

The thing about the 1981 Springbok Tour that made such vicious confrontations inevitable was that people who would normally never come within half a mile of each other were suddenly arriving at the same place. The New Zealand of The Listener and film festivals and feminist consciousness-raising was on a collision course with the New Zealand of the TV Guide and “adult” videos and steaming male bodies in the rugby club changing- room.

On the surface it might have been a case of “liberals” and “progressives” meeting “reactionaries” and “racists”. But, beneath the political veneer, a deeper, more visceral, dynamic of cultural attraction and disgust was at work. In some part of their respective psyches, “Pro-” and “Anti-” responded to the Springbok Tour like a carnival freak show at the edge of town with each group defining the other as the geek.

This simplistic analysis is a reasonably common explanation for what happened in 1981. There’s enough truth in it to sound plausible, but it ignores more than it explains. It was the connections that he drew between this and the police rape cases that I strongly disagreed with:

In its essence, the public outrage surrounding the acquittal of Clint Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum represents the moral collision of two mutually incomprehensible sub-cultures. Like Banquo at the feast, the ghost of 1981 pro-Tour provincial New Zealand has returned to trouble the consciences of the morally, politically and socially victorious veterans of the anti-Tour protests.

It’s as if we’ve all been trapped in an episode of Life on Mars with a New Zealand twist. Here, we don’t have to travel back in time to discover a world governed by sexism, racism and homophobia – we have only to take a trip across town.

When I read that Brad Shipton’s brother had described Louise Nicholas as “that maggot-lying bitch”, all I could think of was the scene with the placard 26 years ago, and wonder how many Kiwi blokes still think of courageous, outspoken and assertive women as dogs to be kicked, punched, raped, intimidated and cross-examined into a proper appreciation of male power.

The first problem with this argument is that he’s wrong. I’ve talked to lots of people about the police rape cases over the last year, middle-class, working-class, urban, provincial, progressive, conservative, and the vast majority have believed those women. I think this issue has united people across usual boundaries, not polarised them.

There is a more fundamental way that Chris Trotter is wrong. He is arguing that objectifying, abusing and degrading women is intrinsic to working-class provincial masculinity, and alien to middle-class urban masculinity. I’ve addressed this argument before, in a slightly different form.

This idea is one that I’ve only ever put forward by middle-class men, and you can see why - because it is in their interests. Either they can use it to argue that women shouldn’t fight sexism, because to do so would alientate the working class (who are inevitably entirely male). Or they can use it to distance themselves from men who abuse women and so not examine their own behaviour, or that of their mates.

In reality Chris Trotter wouldn’t even need to cross town to find men who “think of courageous, outspoken and assertive women as dogs to be kicked, punched, raped, intimidated and cross-examined into a proper appreciation of male power.” I’m sure he knows some (as Span says “Of course I spotted one particular man who really shouldn’t have been on the march, given its focus, but then activist circles aren’t necessarily less sexist than general society, and sadly I suspect he wasn’t the only hypocrite pounding the tarmac for International Women’s Day.”). Most abusive liberal men are probably smooth enough not to call a rape survivor a ‘lying maggot bitch’, but they’ll discredit her just the same.

I’ve never heard a woman express this idea, whatever her class background. You don’t have to have much experience with middle-class men to know that some of them are abusive misogynist assholes. You also don’t have to have much experience with working-class men to know how much some of them respect and support women.

1. I’m not sure I can explain what the tour means, although I’ve written about it on my blog - possibly comparing it to the anti-vietnam war movement is the best term of reference, if the anti-vietnam war movement happened in 1981 over a period of 6 weeks (back)
2. New Zealand police brigade used during the tour (back)

The New Zealand Herald, the NZ newspaper with the biggest circulation, nominated Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty the blog of the week for capturing the public mood (and quoted from this post - I was pretty happy), which gives you an idea of how widely felt the anger is.

I’m going to repost a couple of the posts I’ve written here, edited slightly to make sense All you need to know is the basic details of the case. Clint Rickards (one of New Zealand’s top police officers), Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum were police officers together in Rotorua (provincial New Zealand) in the 1980s. They used police power to rape and abuse women. Over the last two years they have stood trial for sexual offences three times. In the first trial Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton were convicted of rape. The next two juries were not told about these convictions, and each case came back with verdicts of not guilty. The women told very similar stories of being raped and abused by these men, and I believe all of them.

This post is a response to something Russel Norman, co-leader of the NZ Green party, wrote. Their focus is on the environment, and they’re usually the most left-wing party in parliament in terms of social issues. I voted for them reluctantly, but it’s very unlikely that I’ll do that again.

**************

Today Russel Norman wrote about the police rape trials on frogblog.

I don’t see that being involved in consenting group sex is any reason for him not to go back to work. And people use sex aids so using a police baton in a consenting situation doesn’t seem grounds for refusing him his job back.

What the fuck is anyone who has ever heard of the existance of feminist analysis doing suggesting that these incidents involved consenting sex?

I understand that most people have more to lose than I do, and would face consequences if they said “Clint Rickards is a rapist piece of scum” at every opportunity. But just because the jury believed that the case hadn’t been proved beyond reasonable doubt, that doesn’t make the sex consenting. Two women have come forward and said that they were raped by these threemen. Anyone who states categorically that Clint Rickards had consenting group sex is saying that they don’t believe those women.

Usually that’s what you’d expect, but all the female Green party representatives are feminists and one has talked bravely and publicly of her experience of being raped. I would have expected him to pay attention to these women, and their experiences, and not choose the words of rapists over the words of rape survivors.

Russel Norman did acknowledge that there might have been a power imbalance in an addendum, but says:

My original comment above about group sex was in response to my perception that a lot of the reaction to the case was of a conservative moralistic nature about group sex rather than about an abuse of power

I’ve paid obsessive attention to all the media, and any reading which saw a lot of the reaction to the case to be conservative and moralistic is ridiculously inaccurate. I can’t imagine what sort of priorities you have if your response to everything that’s happened is to worry that people are condemning group sex.

Those paragraphs are offensive, the rest of the article just focuses on side-issues. Russel Norman believes that the two issues that come out of this case are:
1. Should the jury have been told that Schollum and Shipton were previously convicted of rape?
2. Should Rickards be allowed to be Auckland police chief?

Here are some of the questions that I think come out of this trial:
How many women’s testimony equals one man’s in the NZ legal system?
Is Brad Shipton the most vile man in New Zealand? (I’m really hoping the answer to this one is yes)
Why was Clint Rickards promoted within the police rapidly, even after a report stated he abused his power?
Why did no-one do something to stop these men?
I’ve talked to half a dozen women who have been raped by police over the last year, how many more are out there?
What alternatives ways are there that we can get justice for rape survivors where they don’t have to go through abusive cross-examination?
Are there actually any ‘reasonable doubts’ here aren’t they all just ‘misogynist doubts’ or is that considered the same thing?
Why is the past of the woman involved fair game in rape trials?
How many times do I have to yell “it’s not a ’sex trial’ at Sean Plunkett before he hears me?
Why are the police allowed to investigate their own?

Why did these women have to go through this?

How can we make this stop?

Generally his post made it clear that he didn’t think this issue was particularly important. He’d read some of the media it wasn’t something he was focusing on (given he didn’t know a lot of rather basic facts about the cases), but he thought he’d chime in.

To me, and to so many other women and men throughout New Zealand, this case is important. It’s important because we put ourselves in those women’s shoes, because we think about the pain and horror that those women went through, because we can imagine how it’s affected the rest of their lives, and the lives of the people around them. The way Russel Norman wrote trivialises all that.

I’m not saying that everyone must obsess about this case the way I have. I’m not bedgrudging people sleeping fine, and having time and energy for other things. Even I want to think and write about other things (the Air NZ redundancies are first on the list). But I do believe that anyone who considers themselves politically progressive should give this topic weight and reverence, and realise that they’re writing on women’s lives and women’s pain.

After long deliberations the jury returned today acquitting Bob Schollum, Brad Shipton and Clint Rickards of all charges. Clint Rickards is now trying to return to his job as Deputy Comissioner of the New Zealand police. Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton are returning to their jail cells, as both were found guilty of a historic rape case in 2005 (a fact that no other jury has been allowed to know about).

A friend of mine wrote a song about this:

JUST ONE MORE THURSDAY IN BLACK

Well the jury retired with a word from the judge
Not to go and do anything rash
And the lawyers withdrew, replenished anew
With undisclosed payments of cash
It was on a Wednesday that the jury retired
And on Thursday came dutifly back
There was nothing so special they had to report
It was just one more Thursday in black

There was no expense spared to make sure it was fair
There was even a guest star Allblack¹
But at closing the law showed who it works for
It was one more Thursday in black

Well if you¹re a pig and sufficiently big
And there¹s several of you in a pack
You can do pretty much what you like to a woman
And know that she can¹t hit you back
Right now somewhere unknown ,there¹s a woman alone
In pain and in fear on the rack
while grinning police ready bottle and grease
for one more Thursday in black

There was no expense spared to make sure it was fair
There was even a guest star Allblack
But at closing the law showed who it works for
It was just one more Thursday in black

Don Franks

There are two things that I choose to hold on to, from the series of cop rape trials. The first is that this it not OK. The legal system does not deliver justice for women, but more than that - this should never have happened in the first place. Many people knew that these cops were abusive, and no-one did anything about it, and these are not the only police who have used their power to rape and abuse. We must hold onto our outrage, because it is out of that outrage that the hope for a something better can be built.

What gives me real hope is the knowledge that I’m not alone. That all over New Zealand, in places I wouldn’t necessarily expect, people are thinking what I’m thinking, and feeling what I’m feeling. If we can get just some of these people together, who knows what we could do.

I’m sure I’ll have more tomorrow, but all that’s left to say tonight is to pay heed to the dignity of the women who sought justice against Clint Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum. And leave the last words to Louise Nicholas: “We did our best. We did our very best. The justice system has let us down again.”

Note for Comments This post is for feminist and feminist-friendly comments only. If you want to doubt the word of any of the complainants take it somewhere else. I’m not hosting that today.

1. Member of the New Zealand Rugby Team - pinnacle of New Zealand’s sporting achievement. Clint Rickards was able to call a friend of his who was an All Black to testify. I always imagined that his testimony would start ‘as an All Black, I know something about rape’ (back)

An “Alas” reader has a question for the “Alas” readership.

Our church has a rectory that is now and is expected to remain unused by a cleric. It is a single family home with 3 bedrooms, a small dining room and kitchen, one and a half baths and a finished basement. It has been proposed by one of our parishioners that we could put it to use as a battered women’s shelter. Can anyone give some guidance on the characteristics that would make it either suitable or unsuitable for such use (construction, location, whatever)? Can anyone give some guidance on what kind of organization (either government or not-for-profit) we should contact to look into the matter further?

If anyone has any advice to offer this reader, please leave it in the comments. Thanks!

When I posted last week about the beating of Billy Ray Johnson, Drydock (in comments) asked why the left wasn’t talking about the Long Beach assault.

“What’s the Long Beach assault?,” I wondered. (I wouldn’t have had to wonder if I had read Rachel’s post back in January). A short google later, I knew that on Halloween of 2006, a mob of black youths¹ beat the crap out of three young white women. One of the young women received severe injuries to her skull and eye, and all three are suffering severe trauma to this day, both physical and mental. Witnesses claim that at least one anti-white remark was shouted out, although it’s not known who shouted it (there were apparently over 30 people present). In addition, the attack caused considerable trauma to the community, making everyone (but probably white people in particular) feel less safe and less inclined to trust. In light of all that, I think whoever inflicted the beatings deserves severe punishment.

Ten black youths — one male, nine female, ranging in age from 12 to 18 (I think) — were arrested, and all but one (a twelve-year-old girl) were found guilty in juvenile court of committing assault and a hate crime.

The judge sentenced the kids to probation, house arrest, and community service. This light sentence, given the severity of the crime, has caused consternation on right-wing blogs. Rick Moore thinks its because black defendants are given light sentences, and this sort of thing could never have happened were the races reversed.

Hecubus has a similar analysis,² and writes:

Do you know why the judge gave such lenient sentences to the offenders? If you do, explain it to me because I still do not understand.

Only the judge knows for certain, but here’s my guess: The judge wanted to give the defendants very little motivation to appeal their verdicts. That way, he’s less likely to have his ruling overturned, which is a real possibility because the evidence against most of the convicted kids is very weak.

I won’t go over every reason this case is weak — Earl Hutchinson’s post does that well. But for me, one factor is paramount: The ID procedure used by police was completely illegitimate. From the LA Times:

For the field identifications, the three victims and an 18-year-old woman, Kiana Alford, who said she had witnessed the attack, were driven separately to the parking lot where the minors were detained.

Alford would testify later that officers told her, ‘We caught the people who did this,’ and that she felt it was her responsibility to identify them.

So the police didn’t include any non-suspects in their lineup, and told the witnesses before they made their IDs that the people they were IDing were the guilty parties. It’s impossible to imagine a less legitimate ID, or a clearer case for “reasonable doubt.” And that’s just the start of the weaknesses in this case — again, see Earl Hutchinson’s post for more.³

Personally, I think it’s likely that some of the convicted defendants are guilty, and others are innocent. But I could be wrong. But what I believe is beside the point; the point is, no one should be convicted in a courtroom without sufficient evidence.

* * *

So how does this compare to the Billy Ray Johnson case? Drydock implied that it’s very much like the beating of Billy Ray Johnson, but with the races reversed. But I don’t see it.

It’s true that both cases involved a despicable and probably race-motivated beating. And both involved slap-on-the-wrist punishments that are inappropriate given the seriousness of the crimes. But that’s where the similarities end.

In Billy Ray Johnson’s case, the local community (or at least, the local white community) seemingly wants the case to quietly go away, and the crime isn’t seen as very serious. In Long Beach, there is tremendous pressure from an enraged community to see people convicted and punished for the crime.

In Billy Ray Johnson’s case, there is no doubt about who did it. In Long Beach, there’s a great deal of doubt — and despite an enormous lack of compelling evidence, a conviction was pushed through the court system.

In Billy Ray Johnson’s case, members of the local white community (including a former mayor and a jury foreman) have been blaming the victim for the crime against him, and claiming that he wasn’t significantly harmed. I haven’t seen anyone, white or black, make those claims about the Long Beach case; the controversy isn’t over whether the crime was bad, but over whether the convicted youths were railroaded without sufficient evidence.

* * *

I think a more legitimate comparison could be made between the Long Beach case and the famous Central Park Rape case of the 1980s, in which — responding to a community’s desperation and anger after a white woman was attacked in a park — a group of black youths were convicted of rape, despite a lack of legitimate evidence against them. In both cases, a genuinely horrible crime happened; in both cases, there was enormous pressure from the public for arrests and convictions; and in both cases, police used lousy procedures to concoct a case against a group of poor black youths who didn’t have the resources (economic or cultural) to effectively defend themselves.

A comparison could also be made between both those cases and the Duke rape case, of course. In all three cases, the police used biased and unfair procedures in their investigation; and in all three cases, there was enormous public pressure for arrests and convictions.

But let’s not overlook one enormously significant difference: None of the accused Duke men have been found guilty in a courtroom. And — unless a genuinely damning case is put against them in a court of law (which seems unlikely) — none of them will be found guilty. The kind of railroaded conviction that happened in the Central Park rape case, and which I strongly suspect went on in Long Beach, simply doesn’t fly when the defendants are white and rich.

If the accused men in the Duke case are innocent, of course, then they’ve suffered unjustly,⁴ and I don’t pretend that’s all right. But I’m also not going to go along with the pretense that being unjustly accused and found guilty isn’t much worse than being unjustly accused and acquitted.

Conservatives imply that looking at these cases shows that white institutional power — and racism — are myths. But what I see is that the system pretty much works the way it’s supposed to for white defendants, or at least for white defendants with some money; for us, the system doesn’t convict without sufficient evidence. That’s simply not true for black defendants. And that’s why comparing these cases convinces me that institutional racism is still treating non-whites like crap, and still matters, and still needs to be fought.

(Hat tip to Happening-Here).

1. ”Youths” is a word that sounds weird and police-y to me. But I can’t think of another word that covers people ranging from age 12 to age 18; 12 is too young to be called a teenager or a young woman, and 18 is too old to be called a kid. (back)
2. By the way, the theory that the justice system systematically gives lighter sentences to black defendants — which is what I think Hecubus and Rick are implying — is exactly the opposite of what the statistics show. (back)
3. There is one solid piece of evidence — a phone belonging to one of the victims was found in a car that some defendants were in. But even if you think that’s enough for a conviction, it should only apply against whichever defendant had the phone, and isn’t evidence against the defendants who were never even in the car the phone was found in.

   It’s also been reported, via an anonymous leak, that a victim’s blood is on another defendant’s pant cuff. If that’s true, that’s pretty damning. But since the judge refused to accept this evidence — which was introduced by the prosecution two weeks after the trial began — it can’t legally be held against any of the defendants. (back)

4. I don’t know what happened at Duke, or if the accused men are guilty. But from what I know, barring some amazing new evidence, there’s not enough evidence against them to justify a conviction.

   Nor do I deny that the Duke Lacrosse team seems to have a lot of racist misogynistic scumbags. But being wrongly accused of rape is not a legitimate punishment for being a racist misogynistic scumbag. (back)

BlackAmazon links to this Texas Monthly article about the case of Billy Ray Johnson, a disabled black man who was knocked unconscious by some white partiers and then dumped unconscious on a deserted roadside for several hours. Johnson lived, but with severe and apparently permanent damage. What makes the case particularly outrageous is that two juries have refused to do more than slap the perpetrators on the wrist, and now the town’s white residents are inclined to excuse the perpetrators and blame the victim.

Here’s a few quotes from the article:

And yet, after Corey, Wes, Colt, and Dallas were each arrested and charged that October with aggravated assault (Lacy, who cooperated with investigators, was not charged), they were seen, by some, to be victims as well. “These boys’ names are ruined for life,” Corey’s mother, Martha Howell, later told one reporter. “And [Billy Ray] is better off today than he’s ever been in his life. He roamed the streets, the family never knew where he was. Now in the nursing home he’s got someone to take care of him.” [...]

Wilford Penny told the Chicago Tribune one month after stepping down as Linden’s mayor that the incident had been “an unfortunate and senseless thing” but that “the black boy was somewhere he shouldn’t have been.” [...]

When I met with the jury foreman, a warehouse manager named John Reed, he explained that some jurors had thought Billy Ray—who had taken the stand to give a few halting answers—had faked his symptoms and had practiced seeming slow and walking poorly. “As far as I’m concerned, everyone’s to blame,” Reed said. “Wes Owens shouldn’t have carried him out to that party, and Billy Ray should have known better than to go drink beer with a bunch of white boys.”

Stupid racist assholes.

(Notice how, in that last quote, Wes Owens gets a last name but Billy Ray Johnson doesn’t?)

* * *

That last quote from the jury foreman (”Billy Ray should have known better than to go drink beer with a bunch of white boys”) reminds me a bit of the frequent response people give after hearing about a rape — “she should have known better than to be drunk in that part of town/ that bar/ that dorm room” etc.

But it’s not reasonable to suggest that black people spend their entire lives avoiding ever being alone with white people. Likewise, it’s not reasonable to suggest that women to spend their lives cloistered like nuns (or prisoners) for fear of making themselves vulnerable to rape. You might as well say, “well, she shouldn’t have been crossing the street; she had to know that crossing the street made it more likely she’d be hit by a car.”

Not useful advice.

We need to get to a point where fewer people, commenting on these horrible attacks, say what boils down to: “The victims should have stayed in their place, then maybe they wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

Ilya Somin and Mark Kleiman have been debating prison rape.

Ilya, a libertarian, argues that it’s not politically plausible for the government to help prisoners. “Government is responsive to those who have political power, and prisoners are the classic example of a group that has almost no power, and is generally unpopular with those who do. … This is an extreme case of an important broader lesson about the nature of government: it usually can’t be relied on to protect the political powerless or even the relatively weak.”

Instead, Ilya suggests two (as he emphasizes) “libertarian” measures to reduce prison rape. First, end the drug war. No more drug war means fewer people in prison, means less prison rape.

Ilya’s second suggestion is to privatize prisons. Privatized prisons means less guard unions; less guard unions might mean less lobbying for pro-imprisonment legislation; which means fewer prisoners; which means less prison rape.

Mark responds by pointing out that prison rape is much less frequent in federal prisons, which indicates that it is possible for governments to act well. Ilya rebuts Mark’s argument effectively by pointing out that the differences in who is imprisoned in Federal verus State prisons makes it unlikely that comparisons are useful; it’s plausible that there’s less sexual violence in Federal prisons because Federal prisoners are more likely to be people who committed non-violent crimes in the first place.

But Mark also points out that looking at other industries — such as the defense industries, and I’d add the health insurance companies — suggests that privatization doesn’t make lobbying less likely. (As Rj3 sarcastically comments, “Yes, the subcontracting of military services has done a great job eliminating lobbying by defense contractors.”)

Another disturbing thing about Ilya’s anti-government approach is that its seemingly regards prison rape as an inevitable and irreducible problem; we can’t stop it or reduce it, all we can do is try to send fewer people to prison in the first place. I’d certainly agree with ending the drug war, and with many other crime-reducing proposals that would result in lower prison populations. But any reduction in prison rape that comes as a result of reducing crime is just a beneficial side effect; it doesn’t relieve us of the moral responsibility to protect those who are incarcerated from rape.

Ilya writes:

Kleiman also argues that the real way to address prison rape is to improve the quality of prison management and to elect politicians who will support reform in this area. These are worthy objectives, but he does not explain how they are to be achieved given that 1) prisoners themselves have almost no political power, and 2) most voters don’t seem to care about the issue.

It’s problematic for Ilya to claim that Mark’s reforms are politically difficult to bring about and therefore not good ideas. Is there any idea that less politically possible, in the current climate, than Ilya’s proposal of “eliminating or cutting back on the War on Drugs”? Congress took the first steps — baby steps, admittedly — towards addressing prison rape just a few years ago, when it passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003. There’s a lot more to be done, but at least Mark’s approach has some demonstrated traction in Congress; the same cannot be said for Ilya’s proposal.

(Just to clarify, I agree with Ilya that we should eliminate the War on Drugs. My point is just that someone who is seriously proposing ending the War on Drugs as a way of reducing prison rape, loses the ability to credibly criticize other people for proposing solutions to prison rape that aren’t an easy sell politically.)

* * *

So how should we be fighting prison rape? There are many approaches, but here are six I’d place high on the priority list:

1) Reform laws that have made it hard or impossible for prisoners to sue for maltreatment. In particular, laws that make it financially unviable for lawyers to take prisoner cases (by limiting the amount lawyers can be paid in such cases) practically guarantee that prison authorities who are indifferent to prisoner rape will never be held accountable. (Read this post at That Lawyer Dude for further information.)

2) Research has given us a fairly good idea of which prisoners are most likely to be targets of rape, and which are the most likely rapists (see chapter IV of the Human Rights Report). As much as possible, these two groups of prisoners should not be held in the same facilities, or in the same prison blocks.

3) Double-celling — that is, cellmates — should be eliminated. Where double-celling can’t be completely eliminated, extreme care should be taken to choose cellmates who are well-matched for safety; non-violent prisoners should only be housed with other non-violent prisoners, for instance. Even in prisons which not everyone can have a single cell, those prisoners who are most likely targets of rape (genderqueer prisoners, child molesters, etc) should be given singles.

4) Current tort laws make it possible to sue prisons for maltreatment only if it can be shown that the prison was aware of the specific problem and chose to ignore it (or encourage it). This gives prison administrations a huge incentive to avoid being aware of prison rape. The law must be reformed to make prisons responsible for the safety of their prisoners without a “see no evil” excuse.

5) Guard-Independent reporting mechanisms, so that prisoners can report rape and abuse to someone other than guards. This is especially important because sometimes the people raping prisoners are guards.

6) Federal grants to help fund prison equipment and construction should be used as a carrot to encourage substantial reform; states that aren’t pro-actively acting to eliminate prison rape should lose federal funds for their prison systems and prison equipment.

(For a longer list of potential reforms, see the “recommendations” section of the Human Rights Watch report.)

* * *

Last week I did a round-up of blog posts about prison rape. Here are a few more:

Bean provides a useful overview of regulations restricting the access of male guards to female prisoners, based on this amnesty international report.

Masculinities in Media writes:

As long as power is held by one so fiercely over another, whether by men over women, or by institutions like prison over their inmates, the dynamic will be recreated in the most intimate of ways – against our bodies. Our response to rape in prison cannot be only to push for more counseling services for prisoners, or more segregated housing units, but must include questioning the way we address crime in this society, and the role of the prisons themselves in creating this crime.

Simon at Stubborn Facts comments. Be sure to read Pat