A Bad Precedent For Rape Victims

Update 12/5/05: Sheelzebub comments on the gang rape case.

Update: Here is another ugly rape case, from the U. K. NYMOM told me about it. The woman in question was clearly too drunk to consent to sex, but the court decided that she did consent, saying "drunken consent is still consent". The decision was based on the victim saying she was too drunk to remember if she had consented. She got drunk at a party, and was escorted back to her dorm by a security guard, who had sex with her in the hallway while she was unconscious. She claims she was attacked, but the guard's lawyer said that she "regretted having "steamy, exciting, spontaneous sex" with a stranger." This case sends a message to potential rapists that they can have sex with a drunken, unconscious woman, and get away with it. Once again, a woman's behavior is judged against her. "Real" rape victims don't get drunk, so what happened was her fault.

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Shakespeare's Sister alerted me to a heinous rape case in which the victim was found guilty of filing a false police report. Dave Johnson at Seeing The Forest also commented on the case. The 17 year old woman in question claimed to have been gang-raped. She had never changed her testimony during the rape trial. The reason she was found guilty was because the judge decided to believe the gang-rapists. Since the judge believed them, it was assumed the victim had filed a false report.

That is not necessarily the case.

Shakes' Sis pointed out that bona fide false allegations of rape are rare. She wrote that "Heather J. Huhtanen, Sexual Assault Training Institute director for the Attorney General's Sexual Assault Task Force, reports that Portland police have found that 1.6% of sexual assault cases were falsely reported. By way of comparison, 2.6% of auto theft cases were falsely reported."

Shakes' Sis also pointed this out: "Here are some things we hear a lot: Vindictive women use rape charges to get back at men. Women’s sexual histories can be informative in a rape case. Women who were "really raped" are easily identified by the way they behave."

That's the kind of crap you find at men's rights web sites, and none of it is true. Men's rights activists also say that false allegations of rape, domestic violence, and child abuse are rampant. They aren't. Men's rights activists lump in unproven cases with bona fide false cases to get those "rampant" numbers. As I've already posted here, bona fide false allegations of rape are rare. When they occur, they are usually found almost immediately, and are thrown out before trial.

While the judge found inconsistencies in both the rape victim's testimony and in the testimony of the accused gang-rapists, the judge decided to side with the accused gang-rapists, in part because "a police detective and the victim's friends testified she did not "act traumatized" in the days after the incident." The "friends" were one friend and her mother.

I can relate to not acting traumatized. I was raped. I went into auto-pilot, called the police, and was coherent if a bit detached when reporting the incident at the hospital. I knew enough not to take a shower afterwards because I knew the police and hospital personnel had to gather evidence. I didn't cry, tremble, or break down, which I suppose is what it means to "act traumatized". I made the big mistake of dropping the charges, under pressure by people who sided with my attacker. I don't want to go into much more detail than that since this is very personal, and I don't like to get very personal on my blog. I'm fortunate in that the police and the hospital personnel believed me, even though I didn't "act traumatized". What scared me in retrospect is that my rape rested on whether or not I was believed by other people based on the way I acted after the rape. I didn't know there was a way that rape victims were "supposed" to act. I just went on auto-pilot, and did what I thought I was supposed to do. I know that I could easily have been seen as wanting to create a false report because I knew enough not to take a shower immediately after the rape.

Kevin Hayden at American Street knows the victim. He has known her nearly her entire life. He said that those posing as her "friends", in particular her mother, did her a great disservice. He had plenty to say about the gang-rape case.

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

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

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

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

The outcome took me completely by surprise, as it did many others. But then, boys will be boys.

(My report cannot be truly objective as I've known the victim since she was a baby. I was sufficiently upset at the proceedings that, in the hallway outside the courtroom, I told the prosecutor and lead detective that they were "miserable pricks" and "a disgrace to their profession.")

When a rape victim cannot prove her case, that does not mean she lied. It certainly doesn't mean that she made a false allegation of rape. It means she could not prove her side of the issue. "Unproven" does not mean "false". This court made the mistake of believing that she lied because (1) she didn't "act traumatized", and (2) the prosecutor and lead detective sided with the gang-rapists instead of her. She could very well have been raped, and I believe that this victim was gang-raped.

This case sets a bad precedent for rape victims. Rape is hard to prove in court. The victim is often placed on trial. This victim saw her past sexual history put on trial. A sexually-active woman can be raped, even by someone with whom she had previously had sex. A married woman can be raped by her husband. A woman's sexual history is irrelevant to rape. Focusing on a woman's sexual history gives voice to the popular myth that a sexually active woman can't be raped because "she must have asked for it." That kind of attitude placed the blame on the victim, as if she could have done something to prevent the rape, or "acted traumatized" after the rape in a way those looking down on her think she should act. This kind of attitude blames the victim for her own rape.

Rape victims should not be punished for not being able to prove that they were raped, or for others who choose not to believe her. Oregon Live described a previous case where a woman was punished for claiming she was raped. The article stated that "prosecuted a similar case a year ago in which a judge ordered the woman to pay $1,100 in restitution for the city's investigation costs, said Officer Paul Wandell, a Beaverton Police Department spokesman.

This case and one where the alleged victim was ordered to pay restitution will scare rape victims out of filing charges against their rapists. It's bad enough that rape victims are not believed, but it's worse that they are being punished when they cannot prove their cases. Cases like this set a bad precedent for rape victims.