Yet another victim-blaming travesty

Six footballers who were imprisoned for raping 12 year old girls have been released, after judges ruled that their 2-year sentences were "excessive". The six men all admitted various charges of rape, after raping two 12 year old girls in a park late at night. But today Lord Justice Moses, Mr Justice Holroyde and Judge Francis Gilbert QC ruled that being imprisoned was inappropriate as it was a 'difficult' case.

In an astonishing display of victim blaming, the Mail (I know, I know, but there are only two papers reporting on it so far) stated that, "The court heard [one of the girls] was more sexually experienced than the men and it had been her idea to arrange the meeting". It is not ever appropriate to describe a 12 year old as 'sexually experienced'. If she has had previous sexual 'experience', then it should be correctly named as abuse.

The fact that the girls apparently looked older than 12, and had been 'looking for sex' is quoted. But the truth is that children sometimes behave in a precocious fashion. It is up to the adults around them to not exploit this by having sex with them. 12 year old girls often do want to look, and act, older than they are, but this is nearly always clearly visible to those around them. Adults hold the responsibility of not taking advantage of children. Under the law, children are considered to be unable to consent to sex, and this is usually taken most seriously when the child is under the age of 13.

The men have now been released, and their sentences cut to one year, and suspended.

It is clear, yet again, whose side the legal system is on. If it can't protect two pre-teen girls against six grown men, then who can women and girls have faith in?

Edited to add: I have just been reminded that, while reporting on this case at trial, the Daily Mail was widely criticised for referring to the 12 year old rape victims as 'Lolitas'. It reinforces just how much these girls have been up against in the coverage and treatment of their trial.

[The image is a photograph of a smiling woman holding a banner. The banner has a rainbow background, and the words 'No more silence about violence'. The photograph is used under a Creative Commons Licence and was taken by Rebecca Dominguez.]

Disabled women and sexual assault.

[A photograph of a bright pink, hand-written placard against a brick background, which says "I hate rape". There is a marker pen in the background.]

The Guardian has published an interview with Kier Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, about restoring rape victims' confidence in the criminal justice system.

Rape Crisis reports that

Only 15% of serious sexual offences against people 16 and over are reported to the police and of the rape offences that are reported, fewer than 6% result in an offender being convicted of this offence.

The lousy conviction rate is a key reason that many women do not report being raped. It can feel like a waste of time to even report, when the likelihood is that it will go nowhere?

In recent years, new concerns have emerged among women who are raped, as we hear of more and more being imprisoned themselves when their rape allegations were not proved in court, and perhaps most high profile, a woman who was imprisoned for retracting true allegations. With regard to this specifically, Starmer has now requested that all perverting the course of justice cases that involve retracted rape and domestic violence allegations should be submitted to him for approval.

It seems he is taking action, and I am very glad of that, as it is sorely needed. And Starmer insists that the 25% funding cut to the CPS will not affect sexual or domestic violence services.

One group of women that has been overlooked in these efforts to improve reporting of rape, is disabled women. Around 10 years ago I spoke to a specialist sexual assault police officer about having been raped. It did not go well, and we both decided that I should not proceed with making a formal report. This was initially because I was unable to tell her the details of what had happened. From my point of view, she was a stranger, a quite intimidating one at that, and I had never told anyone the intimate details of what had occurred (and in fact, I still haven't). From her point of view, if I couldn't tell her, then I would never be able to stand up in court and tell a roomful of strangers. I agree. The other reason, however, was that she found out I had mental health diagnoses. She said that this would make me an 'unreliable witness' in the eyes of the court, and my word would not be believed. There was no acknowledgement of cause and effect - that in fact sexual violence may have caused my distress. Many women experience mental distress after rape. If that automatically means we are not 'reliable witnesses', then it needs looking at urgently.

And it is not just women with psychiatric diagnoses who have difficulty reporting rape, or being taken seriously in the judicial system. Women with learning disabilities face similar prejudice, and may have difficulty communicating that any abuse has taken place at all. Disabled women can have more difficulty leaving an abusive relationship, particularly if they rely on the abusive partner to assist them with communication or mobility, and very few refuges are fully accessible even if they can leave.

In terms of domestic abuse, as well as physical, sexual and emotional abuse, there is an extra layer of abuse which can happen to disabled women. Their partner can withhold medication, over-medicate, refuse to assist the woman at all, or refuse dignified assistance options, if the partner is also the woman's carer. They can withhold communication aids, and limit mobility and outside contact considerably.

And it is not just that disabled women are less likely to be taken seriously, and less likely to have access to support and judicial services, we are also much more vulnerable to abuse.

As many as 83% of women who have been disabled since childhood have been the victims of sexual assault, 49% of whom experience 10 or more incidents. 40% of physically disabled women in one study reported have been sexually assaulted, and for individuals with psychiatric disabilities, the rate of violent criminal victimization including sexual assault was 2 times greater than in the general population. 45% of female psychiatric outpatients report being sexually abused during childhood, and horrifyingly, lifetime risk for violent victimization was 'so high for homeless women with severe mental illness (97%) as to amount to normative experiences for this population'. (Statistics all from Wisconsin Coalition against Sexual Assault - the sheer dearth of figures available about sexual assault and disabled women other than these from WCASA, is very telling in itself).

If these efforts to encourage women to come forward, and efforts to support women following sexual assault, do not start addressing the specific issues faced by disabled women, then they are doing all women a disservice. If there is a space in a refuge, but the steps into the building prevent a disabled woman from taking that place, then we are letting women down. If nobody checks with the woman who is unable to speak, whether her assistants are taking care of her with respect and not hurting her, we are letting women down. And if somebody doesn't believe the 'unreliable' learning disabled or mentally ill woman who talks about abuse, then we are letting women down. If disabled women do not have the same access to justice as non-disabled women, then women do not have access to justice.

(Photo by Steve Rhodes. Article cross-posted at The F-Word blog).

More on Polanski

Another good article has appeared online, called Common Roman Polanski Defenses Refuted.

I don't agree with it as utterly as I did yesterday's post, but it's still worth a read, and posting as much anti-rape stuff as possible seems vital.

Common Roman Polanski Defenses Refuted

Roman Polanski, the 76-year-old filmmaker who was accused of drugging and raping 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in 1977, has been arrested in Switzerland. Polanski, who was convicted of having sex with a minor but fled to France before he could be sentenced, is currently facing extradition back to the United States, where he could finally be sentenced for his 32-year-old conviction. In the wake of Polanski’s belated arrest, commentators have posed dozens of arguments in the Oscar-winning director’s defense. Most of them are bullshit.

—

“But he’s already paid his price, because everyone knows he’s a rapist, and he can never work in Hollywood.”

As Patrick Goldstein wrote in the LA Times, “I think Polanski has already paid a horrible, soul-wrenching price for the infamy surrounding his actions. The real tragedy is that he will always, till his death, be snubbed and stalked and confronted by people who think the price he has already paid isn’t enough.”


Ahh: “the real tragedy.” Some people may be under the impression that a 13-year-old being drugged and raped by a 44-year-old man constitutes a “real tragedy.” Others may contend that both Polanski and his rape victim have suffered “real tragedies” in their lifetimes. But no, there can only be one the real tragedy, and it is that people have “snubbed” Roman Polanski because he raped someone and skipped town. If only the recognition of the Academy Awards, the BAFTAs, the Berlin International Film Festival, Cannes, the Directors Guild of America, the Golden Globes, the Independent Spirit Awards, the Stokholm Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival, and dozens of other awards organizations could begin to heal that wound.

—

“But he escaped the Holocaust / his mother died at Auschwitz / His wife was killed by Charles Manson”

Talk about real tragedies: These, of course, are real tragedies. Upon hearing of Polanski’s arrest, French Minister of Culture Frederic Mitterrand announced that he “strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them.”

This is a fair argument—and one that can be made about many, many people convicted of crimes in the United States. A lot of the people who are locked up behind bars have endured unspeakable traumas in their own lives—sexual assault, poverty, drug addiction, gang life, homelessness, and mental illness. Why are they held accountable for their actions, while Polanski gets to be like, “Peace, I’m just going to chill in France for thirty years, try not to rape anybody else, and maybe win an Oscar. See you guys later”? It’s not because of what he endured. It’s because he makes movies.

But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Polaski isn’t getting a break because he’s famous, but rather because he’s had a hard life. When France decries “the ordeal” being “inflicted” on Polanski, what the country is really saying is that rape is not important because it’s not as horrific as the Holocaust, and not as evil as Charles Manson. And that’s a pretty fucked-up standard, oui?

—

“But he made The Pianist / Chinatown / Rosemary’s Baby / Revulsion.”

Congratulations, the Huffington Post’s Kim Morgan: You win the prize of penning the most disgusting defense of Polanski I’ve read to date! Morgan prefaces her post by saying she is “not going to go into my Roman Polanski defense,” but suffice to say she is “not happy about his arrest.” Instead of getting bogged down by the legal gobbledygook, Morgan shoots off a blog post entitled “Roman Polanski Understands Women.” Seriously.

“One should not,” she writes, “take Polanski’s films literally, for they are often heightened versions of what occurs naturally in our world: desire, perversion, repulsion.” Okay, but how about his rape of a 13-year-old girl? Are we allowed to take that “natural occurrence” literally? Morgan doesn’t directly address that question, but she does argue that Polanski’s very brilliance is a product of his relationship with human “darkness”:

Polanski’s removed morality is exactly why he is often brilliant: He is so empathetic to his characters that, like a trauma victim floating above the pain, he is personally impersonal. He insightfully scrutinizes what is so frightening about being human, yet he doesn’t feel the need to be resolute or sentimental about his cognizance. He is also, consciously or subconsciously, aware of the darkness he explores, especially in his female characters, who could be seen as extensions of himself.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-morgan/roman-polanski-understand_b_301292.html

You know what I find revolting? When a film critic prefaces her work with a disclaimer about how much it sucks that a rapist is getting arrested for raping someone, and then uses the rapiest imagery possible to applaud his film work. Nope! Sorry! Understanding Women is not a valid defense against rape. Similarly, being a really marvelous film director doesn’t mean that you get to rape someone and not go to prison. Even if you made The Pianist.

Remember: making The Pianist and being a rapist are not mutually exclusive.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-morgan/roman-polanski-understand_b_301292.html

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-morgan/roman-polanski-understand_b_301292.ht“not happy about his arrest,” and goes on to defend “Roman Polanski Understands Woman”

—

“But the girl’s mother made him rape her.”

Oops, nevermind, this one is actually an even more disgusting defense of Roman Polanski, also on the Huffington Post:

The 13-year old model ’seduced’ by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies. The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It’s probably 13 by now!) Polanski was demonized by the press, convicted, and managed to flee, fearing a heavy sentence. I met Polanski shortly after he fled America and was filming Tess in Normandy. I was working in the CBS News bureau in Paris, and I accompanied Mike Wallace for a Sixty Minutes interview with Polanski on the set. Mike thought he would be meeting the devil incarnate, but was utterly charmed by Roman’s sobriety and intelligence.

So, Polanski is just a really special guy who was practically forced to have sex with that 13-year-old girl by her mother. It’s almost as if Roman Polanski was raped by that 13-year-old girl. Also, no, the age of consent in California is not “13 by now,” it is 16 18 (!!). By the by: the author of this little gem is Joan Z. Shore, co-founder of Women Overseas for Equality. Thanks, Joan, for your deft approach to women’s issues!

“But he didn’t know she was 13.”


Please, Anne Applebaum. Polanski had to ask her mother for permission to shoot her for Vogue.

—

“But 13 is old enough to consent to sex”

Let’s assume that, like Joan Shore and others have suggested, age 13 is old enough to consent to sex, and Polanski is merely a victim of the Puritanical sex laws of the U.S.A. If that’s true, then surely 13 would be old enough to say no to sex, right? Because here’s what Geimer said happened at the one-on-one Vogue shoots:

According to Geimer in a 2003 interview, “Everything was going fine; then he asked me to change, well, in front of him.” She added, “It didn’t feel right, and I didn’t want to go back to the second shoot.”

Geimer later agreed to a second session, which took place on March 10, 1977 at the Mulholland area home of actor Jack Nicholson in Los Angeles. “We did photos with me drinking champagne,” Geimer says. “Toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn’t quite know how to get myself out of there.” She recalled in a 2003 interview that she began to feel uncomfortable after he asked her to lie down on a bed, and how she attempted to resist. “I said, ‘No, no. I don’t want to go in there. No, I don’t want to do this. No!”, and then I didn’t know what else to do,” she stated.

That’s rape, whether you are 13 years old or 14 or 16 or 44 or 76.

—

“But the American justice system is fucked up.”

Granted. But if we’re going to talk about the fuck-up-edness of the U.S. legal system, surely we can find a better martyr than a famous rich guy with the best lawyers in the world who drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl, struck a plea deal in order to get off with the lesser charge of “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” (or statutory rape), and then fled the country when it looked like the plea deal may not be honored? I’m all for Polanski being tried legally and fairly. Over the years, Polanski has repeatedly attempted to appeal the case—a really cool feature of the American legal process he purposefully evaded—but he refuses to appear in court.

Excuse me while I play the world’s tiniest piano, but if the American legal system is broken, the fix is not for rapists to just choose their own adventure (in this case, France).

—

“But his victim has forgiven him”

From Applebaum’s column: “The girl, now 45, has said more than once that she forgives him, that she can live with the memory, that she does not want him to be put back in court or in jail, and that a new trial will hurt her husband and children.”

It’s certainly a relief to hear that Geimer, after three decades and a settled civil suit against Polanski, has moved on from her childhood sexual assault. Of course, a victim’s should always be considered over the course of a trial. At the same time, forgiveness, sympathy, and identification with one’s attacker are fairly common in sexual assault cases, and these sentiments don’t make sexual assault any less damaging—or any more legal. Again, you can argue that Polanski is an example of how the American legal system unduly punishes its criminals, but until you’re willing to free all the nation’s sex offenders and make them promise to just keep their cool until their victims get around to forgiving them, it’s not a very solid argument.

—

“But his victim doesn’t want to have to relive her assault again.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Samantha Geimer, like many victims of sexual assault, is justified in holding a grudge against the criminal justice system. When a rape victim decides to report her assault to the police, she’s looking at years of intense police, legal, and media scrutiny. She will have to relive her assault over and over again over the course of trial and investigation. She will have her sexual history dredged up and put on display. These are all big deterrents to reporting sexual assault. But while a sexual assault victim may never personally recover from the trauma, the public scrutiny, at least, usually ends with the sentencing.

Unless, of course, your attacker is a famous movie director who refuses to be sentenced, in which case you will be forced to relive your assault: a) every time your attacker attempts to cross another country’s borders; b) every time your attacker releases a new film; c) every time your attacker attempts to have his conviction overturned; d) every time your attacker does anything noteworthy. The fact that Geimer’s childhood sexual assault has haunted her in the press for 30 years is a real tragedy, and one man is responsible for that: Roman Polanski.

Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child

I was so joyous when I heard on the radio the night before last that Roman Polanski had been finally arrested. The next day, I was utterly bewildered on hearing people defend him in the media. I've discussed it with a few people, and it's not just me that is furious.

I just found this article at salon.com and want to thank Kate Harding for speaking the brutal truth about the situation.

Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child.

Roman Polanski raped a child. Let's just start right there, because that's the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in "exile" (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never -- poor baby -- being able to return to the U.S.). Let's keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she'd rather not see him prosecuted because she can't stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let's take a moment to recall that according to the victim's grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, "No," then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.

Drugging and raping a child, then leaving the country before you can be sentenced for it, is behavior our society should not tolerate, no matter how famous, wealthy or well-connected you are

Can we do that? Can we take a moment to think about all that, and about the fact that Polanski pled guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, before we start talking about what a victim he is? Because that would be great, and not nearly enough people seem to be doing it.

The French press, for instance (at least according to the British press) is describing Polanski "as the victim of a money-grabbing American mother and a publicity-hungry Californian judge." Joan Z. Shore at the Huffington Post, who once met Polanski and "was utterly charmed by [his] sobriety and intelligence," also seems to believe that a child with an unpleasant stage mother could not possibly have been raped: "The 13-year old model 'seduced' by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies." Oh, well, then! If her mom put her into that situation, that makes it much better! Shore continues: "The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It's probably 13 by now!) Polanski was demonized by the press, convicted, and managed to flee, fearing a heavy sentence."

Wow, OK, let's break that down. First, as blogger Jeff Fecke says, "Fun fact: the age of consent in 1977 in California was 16. It's now 18. But of course, the age of consent isn't like horseshoes or global thermonuclear war; close doesn't count. Even if the age of consent had been 14, the girl wasn't 14." Also, even if the girl had been old enough to consent, she testified that she did not consent. There's that. Though of course everyone makes a bigger deal of her age than her testimony that she did not consent, because if she'd been 18 and kept saying no while he kissed her, licked her, screwed her and sodomized her, this would almost certainly be a whole different story -- most likely one about her past sexual experiences and drug and alcohol use, about her desire to be famous, about what she was wearing, about how easy it would be for Roman Polanski to get consensual sex, so hey, why would he need to rape anyone? It would quite possibly be a story about a wealthy and famous director who pled not guilty to sexual assault, was acquitted on "she wanted it" grounds, and continued to live and work happily in the U.S. Which is to say that 30 years on, it would not be a story at all. So it's much safer to focus on the victim's age removing any legal question of consent than to get tied up in that thorny "he said, she said" stuff about her begging Polanski to stop and being terrified of him.

Second, Polanski was "demonized by the press" because he raped a child, and was convicted because he pled guilty. He "feared heavy sentencing" because drugging and raping a child is generally frowned upon by the legal system. Shore really wants us to pity him because of these things? (And, I am not making this up, boycott the entire country of Switzerland for arresting him.)

As ludicrous as Shore's post is, I have to agree with Fecke that my favorite Polanski apologist is the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum, who finds it "bizarre" that anyone is still pursuing this case. And who also, by the by, failed to disclose the tiny, inconsequential detail that her husband, Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, is actively pressuring U.S. authorities to drop the case.

There is evidence of judicial misconduct in the original trial. There is evidence that Polanski did not know her real age. Polanski, who panicked and fled the U.S. during that trial, has been pursued by this case for 30 years, during which time he has never returned to America, has never returned to the United Kingdom., has avoided many other countries, and has never been convicted of anything else. He did commit a crime, but he has paid for the crime in many, many ways: In notoriety, in lawyers' fees, in professional stigma. He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar. He cannot visit Hollywood to direct or cast a film.

There is also evidence that Polanski raped a child. There is evidence that the victim did not consent, regardless of her age. There is evidence -- albeit purely anecdotal, in this case -- that only the most debased crapweasel thinks "I didn't know she was 13!" is a reasonable excuse for raping a child, much less continuing to rape her after she's said no repeatedly. There is evidence that the California justice system does not hold that "notoriety, lawyers' fees and professional stigma" are an appropriate sentence for child rape.

But hey, he wasn't allowed to pick up his Oscar in person! For the love of all that's holy, hasn't the man suffered enough?

Granted, Roman Polanski has indeed suffered a great deal in his life, which is where Applebaum takes her line of argument next:

He can be blamed, it is true, for his original, panicky decision to flee. But for this decision I see mitigating circumstances, not least an understandable fear of irrational punishment. Polanski's mother died in Auschwitz. His father survived Mauthausen. He himself survived the Krakow ghetto, and later emigrated from communist Poland.

Surviving the Holocaust certainly could lead to an "understandable fear of irrational punishment," but being sentenced for pleading guilty to child rape is basically the definition of rational punishment. Applebaum then points out that Polanski was a suspect in the murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, a crime actually committed by the Manson family -- but again, that was the unfortunate consequence of a perfectly rational justice system. Most murdered pregnant women were killed by husbands or boyfriends, so that suspicion was neither personal nor unwarranted. This isn't Kafkaesque stuff.

But what of the now-45-year-old victim, who received a settlement from Polanski in a civil case, saying she'd like to see the charges dropped? Shouldn't we be honoring her wishes above all else?

In a word, no. At least, not entirely. I happen to believe we should honor her desire not to be the subject of a media circus, which is why I haven't named her here, even though she chose to make her identity public long ago. But as for dropping the charges, Fecke said it quite well: "I understand the victim's feelings on this. And I sympathize, I do. But for good or ill, the justice system doesn't work on behalf of victims; it works on behalf of justice."

It works on behalf of the people, in fact -- the people whose laws in every state make it clear that both child rape and fleeing prosecution are serious crimes. The point is not to keep 76-year-old Polanski off the streets or help his victim feel safe. The point is that drugging and raping a child, then leaving the country before you can be sentenced for it, is behavior our society should not -- and at least in theory, does not -- tolerate, no matter how famous, wealthy or well-connected you are, no matter how old you were when you finally got caught, no matter what your victim says about it now, no matter how mature she looked at 13, no matter how pushy her mother was, and no matter how many really swell movies you've made.

Roman Polanski raped a child. No one, not even him, disputes that. Regardless of whatever legal misconduct might have gone on during his trial, the man admitted to unlawful sex with a minor. But the Polanski apologism we're seeing now has been heating up since "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," the 2008 documentary about Polanski's fight to get the conviction dismissed. Writing in Salon, Bill Wyman criticized the documentary's whitewashing of Polanksi's crimes last February, after Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that if the director wanted to challenge the conviction, he'd need to turn himself in to U.S. authorities and let the justice system sort it out. "Fugitives don't get to dictate the terms of their case ... Polanski deserves to have any potential legal folderol investigated, of course. But the fact that Espinoza had to state the obvious is testimony to the ways in which the documentary, and much of the media coverage the director has received in recent months, are bizarrely skewed."

The reporting on Polanski's arrest has been every bit as "bizarrely skewed," if not more so. Roman Polanski may be a great director, an old man, a husband, a father, a friend to many powerful people, and even the target of some questionable legal shenanigans. He may very well be no threat to society at this point. He may even be a good person on balance, whatever that means. But none of that changes the basic, undisputed fact: Roman Polanski raped a child. And rushing past that point to focus on the reasons why we should forgive him, pity him, respect him, admire him, support him, whatever, is absolutely twisted.

― Kate Harding