Friday, April 04, 2008

Stephen King Fans Pay Attention

Two proper horror stories out of the recent news. Firstly (via the F-Word) in the UK a woman who (alleges she) was drugged and gang-raped by a group of teenagers. Now I've put the "alleges" bit in brackets because the evidence to support her case is fairly conclusive. The youths videoed themselves raping her and put it up on YouTube. The clip has, of course, been taken down now but the Wimbledon Guardian says in the footage she appears to be unconscious and that the youths grin and laugh into the camera. Now I know whenever we have a rape case come up there is someone around who will be in a hurry to dismiss it as "her word against his" or "impossible to prove", but this isn't such a case, the evidence is as good as it gets. Video footage of the incident. What more could you ask for. So are the police busy prosecuting the youths? No - they would be busy arresting the woman for having sex with a minor (while she was unconscious) and putting her on the Child Protection Register which means her kids could be taken away.

Secondly in Iraq (from Alternet), another defence contractor worker has been raped and then told to keep quiet. Nothing is being done to investigate, etc. Which just goes to show (a) what a bad idea contracting private companies to work in Iraq is and (b) what some guys whose minds have been warped by war will do given the chance. Worse still she has little choice but to go back to work - if she doesn't she's been told she'll have to pay for her own flights home, etc. Too disgusting to think about.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Whaddaya wanna bet this is the line of thought (and I use that term in the loosest possible sense) of the police: "She's 24, she's got five kids. She must be a slut. Everyone knows sluts can't be raped - she must've wanted it! Let's charge her for having sex with minors."

Doesn't it sometimes seem that (a lot of) men just don't think rape exists? No matter how heinous the violation is, there always seem to be men capable of rationalizing it and reversing the blame. All too often, those men seem to be in the criminal justice system as police or prosecutors.

Unknown said...

Apart from Nick, I don't know who Heywood is, or why Blogspot seems to think that (s)he is me, but the comment above is from me, Sooz. So's this one, although it looks like it's going to get blamed on Heywood, too.

Cruella said...

Weird. Btu thanks for commenting. Yeah worrying to figure out how the police can get it so wrong. I was involved in a heated debate in a local bar recently after a customer slapped one of the barmaids on the bum and when confronted he explained that he thought she wanted it because she was "sticking her bum out". Of course the barmaid was arguing that she wasn't sticking her bum out, the other barmaid, Mr Cru and I were arguing that EVEN IF SHE WAS that isn't a license to slap said bum... The guy was totally confused by this.

butterflywings said...

Yeah. Sick.
Oooh, if I had the cash to replace my computer screen...until then will just give imaginary police the finger ;-)
Misogynist idiots. Like Heywood said...we all know nice women, especially mothers, do not have sex (except with the father of said kids, on his terms).
And *rolls eyes* yeah, obviously women go around sticking their provocative female bodies in men's faces - I am reminded of your comment in an earlier post that a male colleague complained you were showing cleavage or something...OMG women are just asking for it, having female forms! If we don't want our bodies touched/ leered at we should just cut them off or something!