Note: What Makes the Stanford Case So Unusual is a great article, though I'd argue, that it's also totally typical.
- The actions of offenders are minimized.
- The actions of victims are scrutinized.
- The legal process itself re-traumatizes - which is not exactly just.
- The privilege of being white, wealthy and male is undeniable.
The results, for the victim, despite the physical evidence, witnesses and minimum sentencing requirements show why so few women come forward to prosecute.
The statement, by the victim, shows what the experience is like for a victim of rape and a person who prosecutes.
The response, by the man convicted of three felony counts, his father and the judge represents what many widely held beliefs about sexual violence that permeate the culture still. For three felonies to be described as "20 minutes of action" is one example. For the offender himself to blame his behavior on a few months of college culture drinking and sexual promiscuity, rather than himself, is another.
For the experience of the victim and the facts about sexual violence to be ignored - by everyone - that too is not uncommon.
In The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, David J. Morris reported that “45.9 percent of female rape victims suffered from persistent PTSD.”
And yet, the impact of prison is considered too serious for this particular offender. And a judge decides, despite evidence to the contrary, that he poses no future risk....
I don't know what we all do with the race, class and gender issues so clearly revealed and which impact us all.
It will be harder, at least, to deny their existence. For me, maybe that's what makes this case most unusual.
Now, to Adrienne LaFrance's great article.
The realities about sexual violence are so staggering that they’re often reduced to numbers. One in six women and one in 33 men in the United States have been the victims of attempted or completed rape in their lifetimes, according to Department of Justice figures. Every two minutes, another American is sexually assaulted.
But there’s danger in looking at sexual violence this way. For one thing, the true scope of these crimes is notoriously difficult to measure. Despite widespread efforts to understand sexual assault, there’s no official clearinghouse that attempts to track its prevalence. Complicating matters further, many victims remain voiceless, and understandably so: They’re often traumatized and afraid people won’t believe them, which is why many victims are reluctant to tell anyone what has happened to them in the first place. It’s impossible to know how many sexual assaults go unreported.
But the 23-year-old victim in a sexual assault case that has touched off a national uproar did speak out. “You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today,” she said in a statement, which she read to her attacker in a Palo Alto courtroom last week. The woman went on to describe, in painstaking detail, what she experienced in the hours and months after she was found half-naked and unconscious behind a dumpster on Stanford’s campus the night of the attack.
(Note: Photo from an interactive exhibit on trauma by Margaret Bellafiore and author at Mobius in Boston)
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