“She Wasn’t Conscious So She Technically Didn’t Say No” Is The New Defense In Rape Cases

I’ve tried to be quiet about the Steubenville rape case but I can no longer keep my mouth shut. A sixteen-year-old girl found out she was raped, multiple times, when she went on to her social media and saw pictures of her unconscious body being carted by two boys. She texted the boys and others from the party and was met with ‘you wanted it’ type responses. In fact one of her rapists told her he looked out for her and if she told anyone what happened he, “would never do anything nice for you again.” It was so nice to put your fingers inside her while she was unconscious in the backseat of a car while someone else filmed it. Good looking out, bro. Or wait, maybe he was referring to the time he tried to make her give him a blowjob in the basement while others watched and testified she “wasn’t into it”.

The boys took her from party to party where they (and others) raped her. I’m not putting “allegedly” in there because they did it. There is photographic evidence of it and recently someone has testified that they even recorded some it on their cellphone.
This case has gotten a lot of attention because Anonymous, the hacktivist group, hacked into some social accounts and uncovered a video in which a few football players, including both suspects, were joking about the incident. Here are some choice quotes:

“He’s puttin’ a wang in the butthole, dude.”

“They peed on her. That’s how you know she’s dead, because someone pissed on her.”

“They raped her harder than that cop raped Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction.”

“They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson raped that one girl.”

“They raped her more than the Duke Lacrosse team.”

“Her puss is about as dry as the sun right now.”

“It isn’t really rape because you don’t know if she wanted to or not.”

As disgusting as that is, what’s worse is the defense for these cocksuckers. The defense is, “it was not rape because she was unconscious therefore she didn’t SAY no.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!? That’s the defense? That’s what we’re calling a “defense”?!!? Those lawyers should be brought up on charges of their own. Half the people in that town are SUPPORTING the rapists. I don’t care if she was a “party girl” I don’t care if they play football THEY RAPED SOMEONE.

It’s disgusting, it’s frustrating, it’s infuriating and I hope those boys find themselves in jail where they meet a lovely cell mate that will be “puttin’ a wang in a the butthole, dude”. I hope those lawyers have daughters that drink too much at a party one night and they see pictures of her unconscious with two men dragging her to the back room where they will “rape her harder than that cop raped Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction”. I hope that half of that town find themselves at a party with the Duke Lacrosse team.

When will it stop? When will men learn that women are not their property? When will men learn DO NOT RAPE?

On Sunday, March 17th 2013 these two men were found guilty of rape. They were tried as juveniles and received minimum 1 and 2 year sentences, respectfully the maximum time they will spend in a juvenile detention center is 5 years. It will be up to the center to decided their release and they will get credit for all time served. The only punishment that they received that I found fitting to the crime is: they will have to register as sex offenders for the rest of their life. Good, because that is exactly what they are.



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Kym Worthy Is Freaking Awesome

Kym Worthy is the prosecutor in Wayne County, Michigan (where Detroit is located). If you are on Tumblr, then you have probably read about her. If you read “prosecutor” as just whichever attorney is prosecuting someone in court, I do not blame you. The position is known as district attorney in most counties (who head departments of assistant district attorneys or deputy district attorneys). In Illinois, the title is state’s attorney. It’s kind of silly how some states wanted to be hipsters and come up with their own names for these things, but whatever.

Kym Worthy is, well, awesome. One might even say that she is giving that wretched county the prosecutor it deserves.

I’m not praising her for prosecuting Detroit’s absurdly corrupt mayor a few years ago. I’m not even praising her, specifically, for being a strong black woman doing a difficult job in a difficult place.

I am praising her for being vocally outraged and calling attention to the fact that thousands upon thousands of genetic samples gathered after rapes are simply kept in storage rather than being processed in a timely manner.

This is not a problem specific to Detroit. Federal crime labs and, well, basically every other crime lab in the country has this problem. The genetic material gathered in rape kits by those few rape survivors (or, even more tragically, from those who did not survive their sexual assault) is not given priority and is not processed. Over time, genetic material degrades when not properly stored. Over time, evidence storage buildings flood.

Women (and men) who come to the police and undergo invasive medical exams immediately after suffering, in most cases, the worst traumas of their lives do so because they want justice and because they want to stop their attacker from attacking anyone else (there aren’t “one-time rapists,” you guys. There are rapists who are stopped or, better yet, die after their first rape. That’s all that keeps them from continuing to rape).

When a rape kit is put on a shelf, a rapist remains free. And finds other victims.

Kym Worthy (herself a rape-survivor) is making processing rape evidence a priority (as it should be). We may not, at the moment, live in a civilization that is particularly good at deterring rape or supporting rape-survivors or giving rapists what they deserve, but even a prosecution and a few years of incarceration (along with the “sex-offender” label) is better than letting these sickening monsters run free.

Kym Worthy’s efforts have already put a spotlight on the systematic failure to move forward in rape investigations. And they have, of course, already identified serial rapists—at least one of whom has also committed murder since original samples were taken from someone whom he had raped.

Kym Worthy’s cause is just. We need more people who are willing to get things done.



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India Has Problems

India has been in the news lately. In part, for gang-rape (which, as you may have noticed, is a horrific evil on which India does not have a monopoly). A seventeen-year-old girl in India killed herself after she was gang-raped and failed by her law enforcement community. A twenty-three-year-old Indian woman (a medical student) was raped in front of her boyfriend and left in critical condition.

I suggest that you read this post on HelloGiggles (which is an excellent site, by the way, and often covers topics a lot less upsetting than this one). Among other things, it details the struggle that the teenage girl underwent in attempting to file her complaint with the police. Being sexually assaulted is horrible—and that horror should not be compounded by police who try to convince the young woman who survived the assault to drop the charges or to possibly marry one of her attackers. Her attackers were only detained after she specifically named them in her suicide note. Barring the most dreadful of illnesses, I would never counsel suicide as the better option, but I can understand why she did it.

India has more problems than that—and, honestly, nightmarishly high levels of incidents of violence against women should be enough of a problem for any country. I think that a lot of us have read about villages and other local governments in India in which unmarried women are being forbidden from using mobile phones. “Reasons” (using the word reason loosely, here) range from that they might form their own, independent social connections to simply that mobile phone use will “spoil” them. It is disgusting.

Online communication through computers, whether they sit on our desks or we carry them in our pockets, are opening up isolated communities, helping to advance peoples’ educations, and gradually transforming the entire world into one community out of many. It is wonderful. But that is also frightening to some more conservative individuals who believe that too much freedom for younger generations will erode their culture. Honestly, it will. It happens in the US. Sometimes, the internet and television can help a closeted fourteen-year-old boy in rural Alabama …

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Review: The Invisible War

photo of the invisible war pictures
The documentary “The Invisible War” should be mandatory viewing for everyone currently living in the United States of voting age. “The Invisible War” talks about sexual assault in the U.S Military and the system that protects rapists and punishes victims. This documentary is disturbing it is heartbreaking it is disgusting. It is by far one of the most important documentaries that any American can see. This is happening to people that serve our country. This is happening to men and women who are willing to give their life for our freedom and we’re not protecting them.
Let me share a few facts from this documentary:
• Over 20% of female veterans are raped while serving.
• 47% of homeless female veterans have been raped while serving.
• 25% of servicewomen don’t report their rape because the person they would report it to is their rapist.
• Women who have been raped in the military have a PTSD rate higher than men that served in combat.
• The Army Criminal Investigation Division is told to treat victims like criminals and told to interrogate until you “got the truth out of her”.
• Air Force Security Police says rape cases were only given to men not women they were told women were too sympathetic and couldn’t see what was really going on because woman always take a woman’s side.
• 200,000 women in the military reported being sexually assaulted in 1991.
• 15% of incoming recruits have attempted or committed rape BEFORE entering the military.
• According to the Department of Defense 3,230 women and men reported assault 2009 the DOD admits that 80% of assault survivors do not report because of retaliation.
• Single women who report rape, if their rapist is married, will be charged with adultery.
• 1% of males had been victims of sexual assault in the last year that equals 20,000 men.
• In units where sexual harassment is tolerated rape rates triple.
• Most rapists in the military are heterosexual males.
• According to the DOD 3,223 active members reported being sexually assaulted, out of those only 175 did jail time in 2010.
• Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office campaign slogan is “Don’t risk it…ask her when she’s sober”.
• In 2008 the Department of Defense instructed the Director of SAPRO to not testify before congress.
• The final decision in sexual assault cases in the military lies with Command. Not with legally trained experts.
• AN assailant was awarded the Air Force ‘Airman of the Year’ award during his victims rape investigation.
This documentary focuses on the fact that once a victim is raped they are raped again by the system. Watching this documentary I was blown …

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