Maybe Raping Is Not That Tragic Afterwards, right?

By Poetry X
20 April, 2014
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There is a book called “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and that is the slogan that our society is giving to victims of rape. We live and reinforce a male domination culture where we worship and protect the image of the dominating male. In 2010, Rachel Bradshaw-Bean, a high school student who was part of her school band, was raped. She denounced the attack and medical examination determined the results were consistent with her allegations. However, from the school band managers to the city police, all authorities suggested the attack was her fault and actually Bradshaw-Bean was suspended under the charge of “public lewdness” [NY Daily News Dec 23-2013]. This kind of injustice became more evident in the Steubenville gang rape of Savannah Dietrich, a 16-year-old girl, where authorities and the media turned a blind eye on the event. If was not for the hacker entity Anonymous that pressured the public to ask for justice, the case had never even come to light. And if that was not enough, once the rapists were convicted, CNN instead of showing at least empathy with the rape victim, they rather lamented that the “promising star football players” got their life ruined by the conviction [Huffington Post Mar 18th 2013]. To make matters a bit worse, Deric Lostutter, one of the hackers who was part of denouncing that crime, faced 10 years behind bars, which is a much longer time than the convicted rapists were sentenced to. Lostutter would not go to prison precisely for his hacktivism denouncing the rape, but for being a hacker. The charges are actually obscure [Huffington Post Jun 7-2013].

Our state of male irresponsibility has reached so far that Washington Post Columnist Richard Cohen blamed Miley Cyrus controversial dance moves on the case of Steubenville [Washington Post Sep 2-2013]. For some reason media pundits even promote that women seek to be raped to achieve the highly priced victim status – that is the case of Fox News contributor George Will [TYT]. Take into account that 1 in 3 women will experience sexual violence in her life time, and only 3 out of 100 rapists will face at least 1 day in jail for their crime. 400,000 “rape kits” are languishing in evidence lockers across the country because local authorities can’t afford to process them. The kits, some of them dating back to the 1980s, contain DNA evidence that can convict rapists. Authorities complain that in order to take care of this rape evidence, the police will spend from $500 to $1500 per case which seems to be too expensive for them. Statistics show from the denounced rapes, only 1 out 4 lead to arrest, and from the arrested, only 1 out 4 will be convicted [New Republic Mar 9-2014].

Unfortunately in the military the situation seems to be the worst. The military continues to perpetuate a culture of systemic rape without consequences. There have been countless sexual assaults in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Reserves and in private contractors firms such as Halliburton and KBR. These attacks of sexual violence are often left unexamined, un-prosecuted and unpunished. And to make matters worse, many times, the victims are forced to continue to interact and even receive orders from the men who assaulted them. There are multiple cases of perpetrators who were promoted with full honors despite they were accused of sexual violence. In many cases, the military takes these reports very personally and they intimidate and harass the victims for daring to stain the “good name the army.” As often happens, our authorities often excuse whatever the army and contractor elites do. For example senator Saxby Chambliss stated very candidly the “hormonal level created by nature” make men to commit sexual assault [AllVoices.com Jun 4-2013]. Also, Richard Black, a republican, once told military rape is “as predictable as human nature… Think of yourself at 25,… Wouldn’t you love to have a group of 19-year-old girls under your control, day in, day out?”. On top of that Blacks is very eager proponent of de-penalizing rape when it takes place in wedlock [Mother Jones Jan 15-2014]. And even authorities in charge of preventing and punishing these assaults are themselves perpetrators of the same kind of allegations they are supposed to prevent and control. for example, Jeff Krusinski was an official designated to the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, and later he was arrested for allegedly assaulting a woman in a suburban Washington, DC parking lot.

Among the victims we have Sarah Albertson, Panayiota Bertzikis, Jamie Leigh Jones, Sally Griffiths, Suzanne Swift, Jennifer Dyer, Orlinda Marquez, Arabella Rivera, Yuriria Acuna Pineda, Medic Susana Armenta and Sofia Rodriguez. One extreme case was the one of Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, who was murdered after accusing a marine of rape. There were 2,947 reports of sexual assaults in the military in 2006, an increase of 24% from 2005. In 2010, the military received 3,292 reports of sexual assault. On March 2007 more than half of the investigations dating back to 2004 resulted in no action and when action was taken, only one third of the cases resulted in court martial. And those numbers represent just the victims who did have some courage left to try to get some justice [Abc Feb 15-2011 / Los Angeles Times Jan 30-2008]. Just as an example, right after a jury rejected the lawsuit of Jamie Lee Jones against the military contractor KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, KBR requested Jones to pay $2M in legal fees they spent on the case. Jones had accused her co-workers of drugging and gang-raping her in Iraq in 2005 [Democracy Now Aug 24-2011]. All of that is just data regarding reports, now if we revise surveys regarding this kind or conduct, the numbers are simply terrifying. There were 19,300 service members who said were sexually assaulted in 2010, and 26,000 in 2012. From 2010 to 2012 the rate of female victims of sexual assaults went from 1 in 26 to 1 in16. Consider that although 26,000 service members said they were sexually assaulted in 2012, the Pentagon received only 3,374 reports and only and 300 of those were prosecuted [RT News May 7-2013]. We must not ignore, that also men are targets of sexual harassment but at a much lower proportion.

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