ginmar ([info]ginmar) wrote,
@ 2006-03-01 18:32:00
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Relive your own rape or go to jail
A gang rape victim is ordered to watch the video of her rape at the defense attorney's request, and the judge tells her she'll be cited for contempt if she doesn't do so.

One person was convicted. Another defendant fled the country. (Two of them, actually.) The girl was unconscious when the rape occurred, and she'd already testified that she had not given consent.

Uh, yeah.

I saw comments on various sites that said, "That's what you get for getting that drunk." All I can think is, this is what life is like for women under Bushie's reign. They've finally come out of the woodwork. They don't think they have to conceal the hatred any longer.

In other news, in a post pointing out that Andrea Dworkin never said, "All sex is rape", some dipshit got bent out of shape when it was pointed out that saying society thinks of sex and rape as interchangeable is not the same as saying it's a personally-held belief of Dworkin's. Christ on a crutch, already. Also, Dworkin should have apologized for it and backed down from the statement that she never f ucking made.

I swear, some days I feel like a proctologist with an overbooked schedule. Too many fucking assholes and not enough suppositories.

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[info]bigbigtruck
2006-03-02 12:44 am UTC (link)
I don't think I've felt quite so hated as today.

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[info]ginmar
2006-03-02 12:47 am UTC (link)
Get used to it. Under fundies, everybody will get treated like a feminist or a rape victim, unless they kiss ass.

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[info]idemandjustice
2006-03-02 12:52 am UTC (link)
I'm sorry that happened. *sigh*

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[info]ginmar
2006-03-02 12:54 am UTC (link)
Why? It's not your fault. It's the dipshit's. They sure whipped out every sexist cliche there was, once pressed...Kind of reminds me of the oh-so-senstive-PrinceSensitiveWarriorStallionGuys I had in here last summer, who were oh-so-feminist as long as they got to be the boss. The minute you questioned them, they got just as hostile and vicious as your basic winger.

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[info]flewellyn
2006-03-02 05:52 am UTC (link)
Where was this anyway?

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[info]akubra_fedora
2006-03-02 12:57 am UTC (link)
AUUUGH.

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[info]ginmar
2006-03-02 12:59 am UTC (link)
The judge has backed down, at least. However, this is what---the third or fourth videotape rape case? And getting a conviction in these cases is by no means assured. In fact, the defense attorneys in these cases appear to fight even harder and dirtier because there's so much proof against their scumbags clients.

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[info]idemandjustice
2006-03-02 12:59 am UTC (link)
On the other thing, she's not going to have to watch the video after all. But shit. The fact that it came up AT ALL!

Hmm, and according to this article, the judge is male. Some journalist fucked up in one of these. I hope. Because the alternative is that there's a similar case, and that just boggles my mind.

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=3950383

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[info]ginmar
2006-03-02 01:08 am UTC (link)
Same case.

However, there was another case from the same region where I remember reading that at least one guy had fled the country.

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[info]pecunium
2006-03-02 01:01 am UTC (link)
[info]iocaste212 has a discussion of this, pointing out that there are valid (if unpleasant) reasons a judge might allow this.

Me, I think, given the nature of the case, that it's predjucial, but there are arguments for the flip side.

BTW, the judge has backed off the contempt charge.

TK

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[info]ginmar
2006-03-02 01:05 am UTC (link)
The advantages are so negligible and the potential harm to the victim so extreme that there really doesn't appear to be any justification for it at all.

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[info]pecunium
2006-03-02 01:09 am UTC (link)
From here, I agree, but I also know the differences between the way things are portrayed, and what actually gets said in the courtroom.

There are actually two issues here.

1: The probative value of the tape. This has to be weighed against the predjudicial value, and I think the latter greater (for reasons I detailed in [info]iocaste212's Lj).

2: If the tape is deemed sufficiently probative, then the complaintant can't just refuse to watch it/testify. The right to face one's accuser comes into play.

So, for all I think the actual decision to allow it (which it now seems is no longer the case) is daft, the subsequent threat of contempt isn't.

TK

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[info]ginmar
2006-03-02 01:13 am UTC (link)
She's been questioned by the defense: that's all the confronttation they're entitled to.

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[info]winna
2006-03-02 02:11 am UTC (link)
I just asked two Harvard law school graduates and both of them say that there would be no probative value to forcing someone who was UNCONSCIOUS at the time to watch the tape. It would be like forcing someone who was suing for malpractive to watch their botched surgery- there's no point to making them confront a videotape.

So, you know, whatever.

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[info]pecunium
2006-03-02 05:05 am UTC (link)
The argument the defense was making is that she wasn't unconscious at the start of events, and so her memory might have been jogged by seeing the tape.

Again, I agree with those you spoke with, but 1: I didn't hear the arguments/read the motions, and 2: I (and from your description of them as graduates, I assume they as well) have no practical experience in weighing the demands of the defense against the demands of the complaintant.

While it may not be what I like, the presumptive case must be that 1: the defendant is not guilty, 2: as a result what is allowed by the defense must get more leeway than the offerings into evidence of the prosecution, because 3: it's better that the guilty go free than the innocent suffer.

TK

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[info]fromaway
2006-03-02 06:26 pm UTC (link)
Oh, man, the last anonymous comment in that discussion...


The poor woman in this case would have been far better off if this case had never gone to court, and she was allowed to recover and seek counseling in peace.


Um, except that then her rapists would still be at large, and possibly doing the same things to other women...

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[info]pecunium
2006-03-02 07:25 pm UTC (link)
I didn't see that.

The only words which come to mind are, disgusting, pathetic, cowardly, pigheadedly wrong. After that all that I might say ceases to be fit for public consumption, and borders on the incoherent.

TK

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[info]dontletsstart.com
2006-03-02 01:13 am UTC (link)
I just don't understand how anyone can justify this under "facing your accuser". Surely there's a line (and a big fat one at that) between having someone testify and forcing them to watch what is no doubt some pretty horrifying footage that's likely to do psychological harm to them.

It's intimidation, pure and simple. The fact the judge fell for it, well I don't know what to say.

"I swear, some days I feel like a proctologist with an overbooked schedule. Too many fucking assholes and not enough suppositories."

You nearly made me spray my monitor with hot tea with this line though.

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[info]ginmar
2006-03-02 01:17 am UTC (link)
What, moi? But I'm such a mean, nasty feminazi....

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[info]erikagillian
2006-03-02 02:38 am UTC (link)
I swear, some days I feel like a proctologist with an overbooked schedule. Too many fucking assholes and not enough suppositories.


May I .sig?

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[info]ginmar
2006-03-02 02:39 am UTC (link)
By all means. :}

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[info]journalfag
2006-03-02 01:29 am UTC (link)
Jesus mother fucking christ.

Ya know...Id fucking watch that tape just so I could puke all over the fucking court room hysterically. You wanna force me to watch something traumatic? Watch it bite you right fucking in the ass you fucktard. They'd see on of the best fucking flip outs in the history of this fucking world and Id send my goddamn pysch bill to the defense attorneys house.

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[info]mamid
2006-03-02 03:22 am UTC (link)
victimize the victim twice now thrice?

AUGH.

I'm too mad to spit.

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[info]cissa
2006-03-02 07:31 am UTC (link)
I was very disappointed that in last Sunday's op-ed piece, Ellen Goodman mis-quoted Dworkin as saying that. I'd thought better of her previously. And in a context where she was pointing out the wing-nuts' habit of mis-quoting, too, if I recall correctly...

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[info]ginmar
2006-03-02 02:07 pm UTC (link)
Anybody got an email for her?

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[info]hexyhex
2006-03-02 08:01 am UTC (link)
Holy crap. I consider myself to be fairly well adjusted when it comes to the rape in my past, and I'd rank myself pretty high on the "has moved past it" scale. It was 13 years ago, after all.

I still couldn't watch even 20 seconds of footage of it happening without completely and irrepairably falling apart. I don't think I could even watch footage of my rapist TALKING to me, let alone RAPING me without being thrown straight back into the post-traumatic hell I was in for most of my teen years.

To even consider making her go through that... god. It's beyond horrific. That's fucking torture.

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[info]neutronjockey
2006-03-02 09:05 am UTC (link)
A third man, Sonny Smith, 21, of Brookfield, pleaded guilty to videotaping the incident and served time in a state-run boot camp program.

Stood there and watched and got nothing more than 'time' in a state-run boot camp program?! Fucking accessory to rape and he gets away with a boot camp program? Fucking sad.

It was mentioned by a commentor on that blog linked, but seemed to have slipped the judge's mind: she was 16 at the time. Now last I checked Chicago state law that makes her a minor, and that makes that video child pornography---regardless of its status as court evidence. I would think a judge who's reigning over a sex crimes offense would have the COMMON SENSE not to order an entire courtroom to view child pornography. These are our law makers and enforcers? Fucking shoot me.

-=Jeff=-

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[info]ginmar
2006-03-02 02:07 pm UTC (link)
I"d much prefer to shoot them.

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[info]pecunium
2006-03-02 07:33 pm UTC (link)
The time he served was for pleading guilty to a charge of child porn. I'm not sure accessory would be a valid charge, as (in most jurisdictions, it requires both active help (as opposed to passive observation/lack of prevention) and the appropriate mens rea to commit the crime itself.

So, given those caveats, so long as he didn't participate in actually helping (removing clothes, giving her drink; with the intent that someone else might violate her, holding her down, fetching someone so they might join in, etc.,) he may have been no more than a witness.

If the situation had played out differently, e.g. he filmed it, and then went to the police, turning the tape over as evidence; saying he was certain he couldn't stop it, and that absent such evidence she wouldn't be believed, and so he made the tape would your ire be the same?

Because his actual actions, at the scene, wouldn't be any different.

TK

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[info]vassilissa
2006-03-02 11:58 am UTC (link)
I can't believe it's come to this.

I... I thought they were trying to make things as bad as they were before, not *worse*. Yeah, that was a stupid thing to think, wasn't it.

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[info]jaxomsride
2006-03-02 07:40 pm UTC (link)
This puts me in mind of one of the very first comments I heard about rape, when I was too young to know what rape meant.
It is this "When a woman gets raped she is raped three times. First by her attacker. Second by the medical examiner and the third time in court.
Child abuse victims are not required to face up to their attackers in court and yet the woman who has been raped not only has to face her attacker but also has to put up with the defence attorney who is doing his best to discredit her and her evidence so his client can walk free

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[info]ginmar
2006-03-02 07:47 pm UTC (link)
And the easiest way for the Defense attorney to do that is to just rely on sexist bullshit about rape victims.

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