Can rape sometimes be the victim’s fault?
Posted by MJ "revoltingpawn" on July 8, 2008
This became a question I started to think about when I read this short article in the Buffalo News yesterday about a young girl who was raped and thrown from a car…
NIAGARA FALLS — Lured by the promise of crack cocaine and alcohol, a 17-year-old girl told police she was raped after going to party with two men she met at a Portage Road grocery store Saturday.
The victim, a former Youngstown resident currently staying with a friend in the city, told police she met the men around noon Saturday and decided to go with them after they offered to supply her with crack cocaine and alcohol. The three used both substances while driving around the city.
At some point, one of the men raped the victim, and she was later kicked out of the car, police said.
First, I need to start by saying that it obvious form my blog that I am a progressive person. I also always have been pro-choice, pro-woman rights, and believe no means no. I just wonder if sometimes a woman can put her self in a situation where the only result you could expect is to be raped.
I am not talking about a situation where a woman who wears a short shirt and had a couple up of drinks who runs into the wrong guy and some one then says she deserved it. The girl in question from the story who is 17 years old meets two guys that she does not know in a store and proceeds to leave with them because they offer her alcohol and crack cocaine . Come on now! The only way this story could have ended if she did not give it up willingly was that she was going be raped.
I know forcing someone to have sex by force and blaming the victim is not politically correct but can their be a situation where we tell the victim take look at yourself and get some help to change your life. What I am asking is can the girl be in the wrong just the same as the two men? I am not saying the guys who were involved are not scum bags and should not be prosecuted. I really would like to hear the opinions from women and men on this so please leave a comment. Any women who have had a similar real life experience and who would like to share please do so. Please note I am not looking for legal arguments but how society should view this episode.
July 8, 2008 at 2:38 pm
MJ- I see where you are coming from and agree that this girl knew she was putting her self in a precarious situation BUT this girl is also obviously a drug addict, with apparently no guidance and it’s no surprise to me that this girl didn’t make the smartest decision.
She is only 17 and to some extent probably a bit naïve about the world. I am by no means saying this kid was an innocent angel; she was staying with a friend so her parents must not be in the picture. She probably doesn’t have any guidance and at 17, is still young. An afternoon of partying with two guys that she probably thought were okay probably sounded good to her.
The girl was wrong for being a drug addict, for being so far away from her parents but I seriously doubt she thought she was going to be raped. So no, in my opinion it’s not her fault for being raped.
What kind of scumbags are these guys messing around with a young girl anyway? Hopefully this was a life changing incident for her and she will change her life from this.
July 8, 2008 at 2:58 pm
I understand that she is young but we do send 18 year old girls off to war. It would be more of a factor if she was like say 14 or 15 I think. She should be old enough to know that it was not a good idea to go with them.
It should be pointed out also that we have no idea if she was a drug addict.
July 8, 2008 at 3:07 pm
We do send kids off to war at a young age, but the 18-year-olds that are going off to war are much different than the 17-year-olds that want to smoke crack and drink with some guys they just met at a grocery store.
I think she did know it was dangerous on some level, which is what makes me think she WAS a drug addict or why else would she take the risk? Most kids build up to the heavier drugs they don’t just wake up and start smoking crack one day.
July 11, 2008 at 7:34 am
“I just wonder if sometimes a woman can put her self in a situation where the only result you could expect is to be raped.”
While she can’t be blamed for his actions, it is obvious that she made some poor choices that put her into a dangerous position. A while back- in preparation for a book I was planning to write- I studied the stories of several dozen murder victims. One consistent thing I noticed was that the “guy breaks in and randomly kills people” scenario is in the minority. More often the person died as the result of being involved in a gang, having married or dated a pretty scummy guy (who they in many cases got a restraining order against, but later inexplicably agreed to get in a car with), drug deals, etc.
It is a lesson to us all that we should think about the risks inherent in our actions.
July 11, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Totaltransformation…
I agree she can’t be blamed for their actions but she can be blamed for her choices. My point is how could she not realize they were scum bags (hold crack and alcohol and giving to a under age stranger) so of course they would want sex one way or another. I think at some point in some extreme cases the victim can be at fault just as much as the perpetrator.
July 11, 2008 at 1:43 pm
MOST crimes are criminal on criminal crimes. The innocent person stories, that rightfully get our ire up, are the exception.
With that said, this girl may well have offered sex for the crack, and changed her mind/story later. Once she got her hit, why should she put out? Or, she didn’t want to go home and tell mommy her latest pregnancy is a result of trading her body for drugs - so concocted a rape story.
July 11, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Abbeyroad69…
“MOST crimes are criminal on criminal crimes. The innocent person stories, that rightfully get our ire up, are the exception.”
That is totally correct and just forgot to add about how most victims knew the perpetrator before the crime.
The media and the gun lobby like to keep us all in a state of fear.
Your scenario certainly is possible but I was looking to keep the discussion only to the known facts.
July 12, 2008 at 7:53 pm
MJ, I would have to say rape is never the woman’s fault even if she puts herself in a position where it could happen. It’s not like she’s thinking to herself, “Hey, if I go with these guys to party maybe I’ll get raped! Woohoo!”.
Raping a person always starts with the rapist’s mind. The rapist has the problem, otherwise, every woman/girl who wears a miniskirt is “asking for it” and we know that’s not true.
July 12, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Kayinmaine…
“…she’s thinking to herself, “Hey, if I go with these guys to party maybe I’ll get raped!”
The problem was she was not thinking and it seemed like it was not a situation where she “could” have been raped but more like it was really the only outcome.
“…every woman/girl who wears a miniskirt is “asking for it” and we know that’s not true.”
from the post…
“I am not talking about a situation where a woman who wears a short shirt and had a couple up of drinks who runs into the wrong guy and some one then says she deserved it.”
I totally agree with your statement there.
I really can’t disagree with anything you said but for some reason I had a hard time being sympathetic with the girl from the story in this case. That was the main reason for this post.
July 13, 2008 at 10:25 am
“I really can’t disagree with anything you said but for some reason I had a hard time being sympathetic with the girl from the story in this case. That was the main reason for this post.” With that said if you were on the jury or otherwise involved in the case would you lean towards still finding rape occurred and that the rapists were guilty ?
July 13, 2008 at 4:20 pm
In2thefray…
“With that said if you were on the jury or otherwise involved in the case would you lean towards still finding rape occurred and that the rapists were guilty?”
I have said in the post and in the comments that the guys are scum bags and should be prosecuted. The last sentence of the post mentioned I was not looking for legal arguments but how people look at the case (and the girl) which is different.
July 13, 2008 at 4:22 pm
In2thefray…
Don’t you think your comment is a bit silly?
The fact that the girl was raped was never being questioned here, what was being questioned was whether she deserved it or not.
July 13, 2008 at 4:58 pm
BuffaloGal…
The point of the post was not whether the girl deserved it or not but rather if she should have expected it.
July 13, 2008 at 5:03 pm
[formerly BuffaloGal]
“The point of the post was not whether the girl deserved it or not but rather if she should have expected it.”
Sorry MJ, bad choice of words on my part. I meant what you just said. =)
July 13, 2008 at 9:57 pm
I apologize for my speculation in this post. However, the speculation is justified. Drug users habitually lie. This is a known from law enforcement to addiction recovery groups. Consequently, the story told in the news merely reflects the statements the girl gave to police. It is highly likely that what she told police is a lie.
However, I agree that no one deserves to be raped. IF the story is exactly as reported, then I would say the POS men should be tried. My sympathy for the girl though is much less than is for “date rape” victims, or the completely innocent victim. An outrageous case of the innocent victim has occurred recently in my area (http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/apr/28/police-link-suspects-dna-library-rape-prior-rape/), and I have for more sympathy for her than for a drug-addicted girl who knowingly put herself in harm’s way.
July 13, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Abbeyroad69…
Like I pointed out in a earlier comment we do not know if the girl was in fact a drug abuser. This could have been her first time in using crack. We can speculate and hypothesize as much as we like but that is outside the scope of the discussion I was looking for from this post.
July 14, 2008 at 10:16 am
The question, I think goes beyond rape. I would say most victims contribute in some way to their victimization. A case in point: when I was in college, my father was a junior high school administrator in a rough neighborhood. One day, he parked further from the school than he usually did, and on his way to his car at the end of the day, he got mugged. Did he deserve to get mugged? Of course not. Did I want to beat the crap out of his assailants? Of course. But once he got home, and washed the blood off his face from where they’d struck him, he said, “I had a bad feeling about parking so far from the school this morning.” From that point on, he left home extra early so he was guaranteed a parking spot close to the school. He never got mugged again.
There are violent people out there (and remember, rape is a crime of violence, not sex) and we all must take reasonable precautions to avoid them. If we lapse (and heaven knows, the victim in your post lapsed big time), we don’t deserve what happens to us but we sure have contributed to it.
To put it more succinctly, nothing exists in a vacuum.
July 14, 2008 at 10:45 am
Rutherfordl…
I can’t really disagree with your point but the story about your father was a bad example. Sorry, parking a little to far away from your destination really does compare to the bad judgment exhibited by the girl in the story. Your father could have parked in front of the school and been mugged or parked far away everyday and possibly never had been mugged ever. Your father’s actions only had a small effect on his misfortune. The girl on the other hand, her actions pretty much guaranteed the outcome(or that was the point of discussion looking for from my post)in that case.
July 14, 2008 at 10:54 am
MJ, clearly two very different cases. The girl’s contribution to her misfortune by far outweighed my father’s contribution in his case. My only point was that even in the most innocent of victimizations (and my father was certainly an innocent victim … nothing “wrong” per se with parking far from your job vs close to it) there is contribution, however small, from the victim.
I think your post raises the very valid distinction between blaming the victim and acknowledging the victim’s role in her victimization. Heck, the 17 year old violated the very first thing most of us teach our children … “don’t talk to strangers.”
July 18, 2008 at 10:43 am
MJ,
There’s a deeper issue here that you really didn’t touch on.
Before we start blaming victims or perpetrators, why don’t we look at how these people got to the place where they were - in that car.
As a culture, we socialize young girls into accelerating their sexual development pre-maturely ad nauseum. This is propagated in ‘not so subtle ways’. Take the Disney channel for instance. Miley Cyrus posed semi-nude for Vanity Fair recently, and she is idolized by millions of teenage girls as a result of her hit show, Hannah Montana.
She is fifteen by the way.
The entire show and indeed the Disney Channel itself is predicated on little more than soft porn that focues on teen age dating and sex - and how cool it is, and how fun it is, and how no one ever gets pregnant, or raped. No reality T.V. here.
ABC Family is no better.
The point is, our young girls are brainwashed into thinking it is okay to dress in that short skirt, joy ride with guys and use substances that are illegal with no expectation of consequnces. Young guys are taught to ‘expect’ sex at will. It’s all part of growing up right?
The problem is, often when a young girl finds herself in an adult situation, and doesn’t know how to handle the male animal at that crucial moment, or how to avoid this type of scenario in the first place, she gets desparate, and yells rape. Young women have been taught to default to his as well. I’ve got news for young women out there, “no means no,” only when you can back it up in the back seat, when two men are on top of you. I know this sounds harsh, but the reality and consequnces are just as harsh.
I’m sure the ‘Disney Channel’ has no answer for all of this.
Until we reform our attitudes, and parents wake up to the notion that television and entertainment culture in this country are slowly erroding our children’s moral safety net,these types of things will continue to happen. Our perception of child rearing and underage sex, and everything we think we know about it or how to address it, is wrong. Parents need to focus less on being their teenage son or daughters friend, and more of a moral authority. It’s not important that your kids think your cool, it’s important that they are safe and use the good judgement that we are charged with instilling in them. this begins with keeping tighter controls on dating, T.V., dress, unsupervised activities, etc.
Who do I blame? I blame Americans and what we’ve allowed ourselves to turn into as a culture.
July 18, 2008 at 1:04 pm
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July 20, 2008 at 9:38 am
I was shocked when I read your question, but now I guess in a certain way it can be. E.g. If the victim is so drunk that they can’t speak, can barely walk or pass out and lie unconscious, then they are partly to blame because they let themselves become that vulnerable.
July 20, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Lonelysealonelysky…
I don’t think someone who had to much to drink deserves to be raped. That is not really the same as the girl in the story who went with two strangers because they had crack. Now is it?
August 12, 2008 at 11:10 am
Ok, any age, being 14 or 40, if she hanged out late at night, was drunk, had cocaine and went away with two men she did not know, i think it is her fault yes. On the other side, it doesn´t matter if she was a whore or a drug addict or simply a woman asking for a ride at night, no one, ever, even if the woman seems to be willing to have sex, no one should ever take advantage or force someone to do something that person do not want to do. The fact that there is an attractive girl somewhere late at night does not give any man permission to commit such act. No one can tell her it is her fault. If we see it from her point of view, it was her fault because that was a very stupid thing to do, yes, and we all know there´s a bunch ow complete assholes out there.
And if we see it on their point of view, it is their fault because you just don´t go out and rape teens or women or men out there… she should know better and they should go to jail.