She recanted it..

So I was rather furious this week...

on Tuesday we had a student report that she was raped. She said she had met a guy and hung out with him for a while then invited him back to her room where he raped her. She gave a detailed account to police (and since i read all campus police reports I got to read this one as well) and I was so angry on her behalf and ready to tear this dude limb from limb -- had he not been a non-student who we were unable to locate. Her story was so horrible and reading it I imagined the terror she must have felt and the helplessness of being unable to call out... I teared up a bit for this girl..

Now, most people have no idea what rape really is. I know that people understand it technically and say things like "well he forced himself on her" to explain what it is, but that doesn't even begin to cover what rape is. That statement actually demeans what she goes through by softening the language. The image that pops into your head when someone says that is a million times nicer than the reality of the situation. If you've never experienced it or worked with victims directly after the real experience then you cannot even fathom what someone goes through and how ugly the scene really is-- they do not only violate her body, but they murder a part of her soul. Rape murders the part of her soul that believes in happy endings and human goodness. She'll never get that back. In my book, rape is worse than murder. It's the only crime where the victim's character is called into question, you never hear a victim of robbery questioned about what s/he was wearing and whether or not they were flaunting their money around... the rape victim has to live with that the rest of her life as does her family and anyone else she ever comes in to contact with. At least with murder the victim no longer has to deal with it.

As if that isn't bad enough, she then gets raped again by anyone else she shares her experience with in our society by asking her stupid questions like "well why did you put yourself in that situation?" or "why didn't you yell for help?" or "Why did you dress like that?" as if by doing or not doing those things makes it HER fault that some bastard violated her. Why do we insist on removing the blame from the man? As if the man shouldn't be responsible for controlling his baser instincts? If a man forces a woman it is a CHOICE he makes not an accident. You don't "accidentally" rape someone. If a woman so much as HINTS at not being comfortable with sex or what you are doing, you should back the hell off.. not try to convince her or ignore her when she says things like "I don't know" and certainly if she stays stop or get the F**K off me, I don't care how worked up you are or how freaking far you've already gone.. if she says stop, STOP. No questions, no comments, just stop. It's HER body. It's HER right to decide what happens to it. It doesn't make her a tease. It doesn't make her a bitch. It doesn't make her anything but a woman who deserves the right to choose what happens to her body.

I was reading a program the other day that said "Safer sex" doesn't exist for a woman. If a man wants to have "safer sex" he puts on a condom and it's done, but other than complete abstinence, a woman NEEDS the cooperation of her partner to have safer sex because even the female condom is designed for use with a partner's help. As if being a woman doesn't suck enough, now we are of age sexually and we have to try to persuade a man, a sexually worked up man, to go along with safe sex and/or convince him to stop? thinking about it pisses me off because it's like society tell men they can behave any way they want sexually and it's OK. It's not OK, EVER. This isn't the middle ages where men just take what they want -- it really sucks that we haven't moved that far from those times when it comes to sex. Side note: Did you know that in medieval times when there were walls around villages, if a woman was raped outside the walls the men of her family were allowed to rape the women in the rapist's family in retaliation. If she was raped within the walls she was stoned to death because in theory she should have yelled out for help... have we changes that much? we no longer have visible walls around villages, but don't we still "Stone" women who are raped -- with words now instead of actual stones -- because we say she should have fought harder, dressed more conservatively, or said no louder.... ARRRGGGHH Sometimes I freaking hate this world...

Anyway, stepping off my soapbox -- I get a little worked up when it comes to rape.. I just think this is an illness in our society a disease and it pisses me off..

Back to our student who was raped.. on Friday we get a call from our Chief of police saying that this student recanted her story and was not raped at all. When in fact, she just said she was raped to keep from being caught for cheating on her boyfriend.

Now, if rape pisses me off... false reports of rape pisses me off even further because it damages women EVERYWHERE. For every false report of rape, a rapist gets off Scott free because the people who dealt with the false report are now more skeptical of rape victims. ARRRGGGG!! Which forces our judicial system to endure rape trials where defense attorneys rip apart a real victims character in order to make the jury think it was "another false report" and forget about date rape, you almost can't convict a date rapist these days.. all because of stupid little girls like this one.. DAMN IT

I recommended some restorative justice for this little girl and requested that our judicial office require her to do volunteer work with victims of sexual violence. Let her see the true story of rape and what it does to a woman and learn first hand how truly despicable her false claim is and how damaging it is to women everywhere.

Cross your fingers that they follow my suggestion... if not, I'm a member of the Coalition against Sexual Violence and we may be doing some outreach education... some one on one tutoring, if you will.. :)