Maybe I’m not up-to-date enough on the whole DSK story, but I find myself increasingly uncomfortable with the new consensus that just because the ‘accuser’ (now it is accuser, rather than ‘victim’) is unreliable or a bad person that she could not have been raped. Or just because she turned tricks she could not have been raped (as though prostitutes are never raped!). We are conducting a trial of the woman in the court of public opinion that may result in no trial at all for the man who may have raped her. There is a lesson in this for rapists: so long as you rape those on the margins of society – immigrants and prostitutes and other people with shady backgrounds or connections – you will get away with it. Maybe he didn’t do it, maybe he did. I don’t know. I just don’t like the way that one set of assumptions have replaced another.
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I felt that way the moment I first saw the NYT story that there were now ‘doubts’ about the strength of the case.
I can understand that the alleged recorded phone conversation where it was stated that she stood to gain from the scenario might make it somewhere between hard to impossible to convict, but everything else discussed seemed to be a primer in who it’s apparently OK to rape since those victims could never be trusted enough to support charges even when there’s physical evidence of the crime.
Do you even need to be on the “margins of society?” It seems a track record of enjoying sex without being married can do in a pinch, whatever side of the tracks you’re from.
We get what, one of these stories a year? Kobe Bryant?
The only solution I can see is to see their rape and raise them aggravated bodily assault. If you want justice, give up your personal safety and resist. It’s only if someone’s marked so violently that the DA can’t turn the case down that you’ve got a chance at justice. You just have to put your life in greater jeopardy to get that chance.
That’s pretty shitty, but I don’t see much way around it. Unless you want to bring back dueling.
For the worst of it, read the comments to McMegan’s post on the subject, which largely amount to “See! We told you the liberals and the dark-skinned people were conspiring to oppress a rich white guy!”