Teen forced into car, pack-raped by trio

Stuff.co.nz and Waikato Times | Monday, 6 August 2007

Police in Morrinsville are investigating the pack rape of a teenager at the weekend. The 16-year-old girl was walking home alone along Page Street in the early hours of Saturday morning when she was approached by three men in a dark coloured station wagon.

The teenager, who had been reportedly out drinking with friends, was forced into the vehicle and raped by all three men.

Now I might be able to forgive the “early hours of Saturday morning” comment as a non-judgemental statement. But there is absolutely no excuse for saying she was out drinking with friends, particularly when the writer doesn’t appear to know whether this is true or not.

But this article in theHerald is even worse:

Teen pack-raped near home

Police say the pack rape of a teenage girl in Morrinsville should serve as a warning that women should never walk home alone in the early hours.

The 16-year-old was raped by three men early on Saturday, only 300m from her home.

…

He warned that women should not walk alone late at night or early in the morning, to keep safe.

“Always have somebody with you when you’re walking. Otherwise get somebody to pick you up and take you where you need to go. But we don’t want to be seen to be criticising [the victim's] actions, that’s not what she needs from us.”

Well guess what? By saying this you are criticising her actions, and you are implying she was at fault.

How about you follow your own advice. Never go anywhere alone at night. Never go anywhere not adequately lit. Don’t walk at night (and you can’t take taxis because many women can’t afford to do that). Don’t drink. Don’t have sex. Don’t speak to strangers. Live in constant fear. See what your quality of life is like.

More victim blaming:

Hamilton women planning a night out at central city nightspots this weekend have been warned not to be alone amid fears a serial rapist will strike again.

Police said the sex fiend man had picked up and raped three woman at weekends since April.

“He could attack again at any time,” said Hamilton CIB head Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Page.

…
He warned women to make arrangements to get home from the central city rather than walk, not to be alone or to accept rides from strangers or accompany strangers to remote places.

Not to mention the assumption that all women can make arrangements other than walking.

In 2003, a woman was brutally attacked and raped. A couple of years later a police trainee gave his fingerprints during training and they matched a fingerprint at the scene. That man is now on trial.

I think I have to give Radio NZ’s reporter points for trying (listen here). She emphasised the fact that no-one was denying that the woman had been attacked and raped.

But TV3 gets no points for this:

It is alleged the rape happened in 2003

The rape did take place in 2003, ‘it is alleged’ that this man was the attacker. Is it that hard to grasp?

The fact that a murdered woman did not heed warnings about not hitchhiking is absolutely irrevelent to her trial. It is not why she was killed. It does not make her murder alright, or lessen the responsibility of the man who killed her.

And also, I wish people would stop and think how restricted women’s lives would be (even more so than they already are) if they heeded every single safety warning given to them.

This article isn’t directly about sexual assault, but the opinions quoted are evidence of the thinking behind victim blaming: that if women wear revealing or “sexy” clothes then they are responsible for how men react, not the men themselves.

Frankly, if the driver can’t deal with distractions he shouldn’t be driving a vehicle.

“Too sexy for my bus”, German woman told

Reuters | Tuesday, 17 July 2007

A German bus driver threatened to throw a 20-year-old sales clerk off his bus in the southern town of Lindau because he said she was too sexy, a newspaper has reported. “Suddenly he stopped the bus,” the woman named Debora C. told Bild newspaper. “He opened the door and shouted at me ‘Your cleavage is distracting me every time I look into my mirror and I can’t concentrate on the traffic. If you don’t sit somewhere else, I’m going to have to throw you off the bus.’”

The woman, pictured in Bild wearing her snug-fitting summer clothes with the plunging neckline, said she moved to another seat but was humiliated by the bus driver.

A spokesman for the bus company defended the driver.

“The bus driver is allowed to do that and he did the right thing,” the spokesman said. “A bus driver cannot be distracted because it’s a danger to the safety of all the passengers.”

This article isn’t bad, the opinions stated are quoted, rather than presented as those of the article/news source/author, but I really would have liked to see this addressed more critically, and treated as evidence of widespread, sexist attitudes, rather than filed under ‘Oddstuff’ as something quirky.

I should know better than to waste time getting upset by what’s on Fox News, but here’s a report they did in response to these events.

Never mind victim blaming – this goes a couple of leaps further and portrays victims as the attackers.

I’ve got some mixed feelings about this story in The New Zealand Herald.

On the one hand, I think it’s great that they are giving a rape survivor the opportunity to tell her story (and I admire her for doing so).

On the other hand, this story does fit all the criteria a lot of society – and the media -  view as important for being sympathetic to a rape survivor:

• She did not know her attacker
• She was at home
• She did not let him into her house
• She told the police
• She has positive things to say about the police
• She left evidence for the police
• The rapist was convicted

Her story is no less important for all that, and I’m glad it was published. But I would like to see the stories of other rape survivors who don’t fit as many – or any – of those expectations of what happened to them and how they reacted printed more often (without the implication that they may be lying or at fault).

So far I’ve been focusing on reporting here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and I intend to carry on doing so, if only because I already have far more I want to write about than I have time. However, I felt this discussion of the court case and media coverage of four African-American women who defended themselves against a physical and sexual attack was worth quoting for reasons beyond the horrificness of the case.

In particular, it highlights the interplay between the media and the courts, and also examines the influence of racism and homophobia. I quote (and I would certainly recommend reading the whole thing):

Deemed a so-called “hate crime” against a straight man, every possible racist, anti-woman, anti-LGBT and anti-youth tactic was used by the entire state apparatus and media. Everything from the fact that they lived outside of New York, in the working-class majority Black city of Newark, N.J., to their gender expressions and body structures were twisted and dehumanized in the public eye and to the jury.

According to court observers, McLaughlin stated throughout the trial that he had no sympathy for these women. The jury, although they were all women, were all white. All witnesses for the district attorney were white men, except for one Black male who had several felony charges.

Court observers report that the defense attorneys had to put enormous effort into simply convincing the jury that they were “average women” who had planned to just hang out together that night. Some jurists asked why they were in the Village if they were from New Jersey. The DA brought up whether they could afford to hang out there—raising the issue of who has the right to be there in the first place.

The Daily News reporting was relentless in its racist anti-lesbian misogyny, portraying Buckle as a “filmmaker” and “sound engineer” preyed upon by a “lesbian wolf pack” (April 19) and a “gang of angry lesbians.” (April 13)

Everyone has been socialized by cultural archetypes of what it means to be a “man” or “masculine” and “woman” or “feminine.” Gender identity/expression is the way each indivdual chooses or not to express gender in their everyday lives, including how they dress, walk, talk, etc. Transgender people and other gender non-conforming people face oppression based on their gender expression/identity.

The only pictures shown in the Daily News were of the more masculine-appearing women. One of the most despiciable headlines in the Daily News, “‘I’m a man!’ lesbian growled during fight,” (April 13) was targeted against Renata Hill, who was taunted by Buckle because of her masculinity.

In ‘Jail for kidnapper outsmarted by schoolgirl ‘, Judge Murray Abbott said:

“In a social context there must be some concern that a young girl, aged 12, would be out and about on the street alone at night,”

Not relevent. Does not make what happened alright. Is not why it happened.

My concern is not that a twelve year old is out late alone, but that if a twelve year old is out at night alone, she is not safe and does not feel safe.

Some words from Christchurch police central area commander Inspector Gary Knowles on the subject of exessive drinking amongst women:

“When women are drunk like this they have no control and are extremely vulnerable.

“They easily become victims of assault or rape and have no idea what has happened.

“How many times do we report stories of women waking up in strange places with only a vague recollection of what has happened the night before? They often have no idea if it was consensual or rape.”

Lets go right back to basics:

1) Women are not raped because they drink, they are raped because men rape them and because society permits it.

2) If a woman is so drunk that she can’t remember what happened in the morning, then she was in no state to give meaningful consent in the first place.

(Also, where’s the panic about men drinking excessively and attacking women? Or just, for that matter, drinking. Or is it only a problem for women, because it’s unladylike and somehow causes men, through no fault of their own, to attack them?)