Comment by btilly
4 years ago
I only kind of agree.
In this case a Chinese woman living in the USA apparently got raped in Germany 3 years ago. To involve law enforcement she would have to travel to a country where she doesn't speak the language, to make an accusation for which she has no evidence but her word, against a man who lives in another city.
What, exactly, do you imagine that the police are likely to do with her report?
I hate the court of public opinion as much or more as the next guy. But if this is a real pattern and he is as practiced as it sounds, after 10-20 women come forth then I'll be very confident that the crime is real. And there is also a chance that we can hit a critical mass where law enforcement somewhere may take an interest after all.
I agree with you that ideally this would go to the police first and they would actually act. But in the real world, she picked one of the best of the bad options available to her.
>>To involve law enforcement she would have to travel to a country where she doesn't speak the language, to make an accusation for which she has no evidence but her word, against a man who lives in another city.
Well, that's not strictly true. At least the official advice in the UK is that even if the crime happened elsewhere you should still report it locally, then the case should be forwarded to the authorities in the country where it allegedly happened.
https://www.helpforvictims.co.uk/content/Q1.htm#:~:text=You%....
No idea how/if that would work in US, but in general you should be able to report it locally.
>What, exactly, do you imagine that the police are likely to do with her report?
If it's anything like the UK (and I suspect it is), they'll likely take it seriously. For example, see the police's reaction here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/mt1kw4/withd...
If she got robbed, on the other hand, or she reported something like this ten years ago, they'd probably say "meh we are busy, here's your crime reference number now go away".
That is rather astounding. And completely opposite anything that I've ever heard, including from a woman I know who reported her rape less than 5 years ago in Australia.
Meanwhile in the USA we literally have enough untested rape kits to fill a small city. According to https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rape-kits-are-sit... at least 100,000. (Nobody is really tracking the numbers well, so it is probably more than that.)
> raped
I agree with everything else in your post except for the description of events as "rape". According to the story she wrote, they had sex when she was drunk, and she thought for months after the fact that the sex had been consensual. To me it sounds like sexual abuse / exploitation, not rape. (Unless you're making the pedantic argument that having sex with an intoxicated person is always rape, in which case 2 intoxicated persons having sex would mean that both persons rape each other.)
According to the story they had sex while drunk. But then he kept on having sex with her, including when she was saying that she didn't want him to.
It is rape to have sex with a woman who didn't want it and told you not to. She describes exactly that happening later in the conference. Yes, she tried to convince herself that it was consensual. And he tried to convince her of the same. But that is also a common pattern for rape, both her attempt to deny it and his to gaslight her.
Interestingly in surveys, the portion of women who describe having had an encounter meeting the definition of rape has held fairly steady over the decades. But the portion of women who self-describe that as rape has steadily risen. Then really jumped in 2018. Given that fact I find it interesting that he seems to target women from cultures that haven't internalized "no means no" as a standard. Cultures where it is easier for the man to do what he wants, then convince her that he didn't rape her.
> But then he kept on having sex with her, including when she was saying that she didn't want him to.
Nope, the article doesn't contain such claims.
> It is rape to have sex with a woman who didn't want it and told you not to.
Yes it is.
> She describes exactly that happening later in the conference.
No, she does not.
> Yes, she tried to convince herself that it was consensual. And he tried to convince her of the same. But that is also a common pattern for rape, both her attempt to deny it and his to gaslight her.
Two people have sex. Both people come out thinking the sex was consensual. Both people think for months that the sex was consensual. Then the woman changes her mind. Boom! Rape! Welcome to 2021. (To be perfectly clear, I am making fun of your comment, I am not making fun of OP. OP at no point referred to the events as rape, it is only you and other internet commentors who are dead set on using the "rape" label here.)
> Interestingly in surveys, the portion of women who describe having had an encounter meeting the definition of rape has held fairly steady over the decades. But the portion of women who self-describe that as rape has steadily risen. Then really jumped in 2018.
Peculiar indeed! Might it have something to do with the "definition of rape" becoming wider and wider every year? It used to mean a very specific thing, but nowadays it means a lot of things.
Sweden and Uk spent tens of millions dealing with extradition case for just getting a hearing over an accusation with similar amount of evidence.
Technically the legal system could do the same in her case.
Piss off a superpower, and you'd be ASTOUNDED at how far backwards law enforcement will bend to take any complaint about you seriously.
I would not take Julian Assange's situation as indicative of anything other than that Assange made powerful enemies.
We are not in the 80’s anymore. At least in the western world the police is far more prepared to help victims than in the past. Usually the victim is supported by a female investigator, because differently from the past, at least in bigger cities a sizable portion of the police force are women. We are creating this culture of woman fearing getting help from police by pretending things didn’t change during the last 40 years
Counterpoint: a friend of mine was violently raped a decade ago, and I went with her to the hospital the next morning to get an exam and a rape kit to make a complaint. The police both refused to process the rape kit, and threatened to press charges against her for making a false complaint for 'regretting rough sex'. And that was with full on torn genitals, with an exam, violent rape, in a major metropolitan area in the US.
We haven't come as far as you're making it out to be.
I actually regret convincing her to go to the hospital and the police as all it did was increase the amount of trauma she experienced.
Per https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rape-kits-are-sit... police in the USA TODAY have over 100,000 untested rape kits collected from women who claimed to have been raped.
You can start telling me how much things have changed after the police take rape seriously enough to actually process physical evidence of reported crimes.
Technically correct is the least useful kind of correct.
>To involve law enforcement she would have to travel to a country where she doesn't speak the language, to make an accusation for which she has no evidence but her word, against a man who lives in another city.
That's what an embassy is for... they help deal with these situation.
>And there is also a chance that we can hit a critical mass where law enforcement somewhere may take an interest after all.
Don't complain that a law enforcement agency doesn't do anything if they're never made aware of the problem.
> That's what an embassy is for... they help deal with these situation.
Have you ever worked with an embassy? I have, it's no picnic even in the best of circumstances (lost passport). It takes time to setup such an appointment and you are expecting a young college student to have the wherewithal to navigate that all while being on a budget and having their current lodging with the aggressor.
You are expecting an abused person to do everything right in a foreign county while currently staying with their abuser.
Don't blame a sexual abuse victim for not doing everything right and by the books.
At no point do I blame the victim. I really want to know where you come off thinking I'm blaming the victim. Get off your emotional ego trip. I blame this rabid social media society that makes a victim imagine they are completely helpless. You make victims feel more helpless by saying there's no one out there willing to help.
If someone is wronged, there is a process is most countries, especially western ones. They, as a victim, need to start the process in some way to make sure justice happens. None of it is secretive. No one, ever, should make anyone feel powerless to do so.
"To do everything right"? Did they go to the police? That's basic step one. Why are you making this seem so difficult? I'm really failing to understand how that's so difficult when you're an adult traveling the world. Your narrative makes future victims think it's not an option. Don't you get how incredibly harmful that is? Then, when you're traveling, your embassy is where you go if something criminal has happened to you. That's another basic to know, or in all seriousness, you shouldn't be an international traveler. This new age society is making people unable to have agency in their own lives to take any action. Yes, you're not going to John Wick problems. But holy shit, a majority of the world has a criminal justice process. Stop pushing a narrative that victims should just wallow in depression instead of pushing for justice. Making blog posts isn't the answer and will only let it happen more often.
There are plenty of stories of law enforcement ignoring, downplaying, and even harassing victims of sexual crimes who try to report it. Please do not act like the police are a high trust authority who act only in good faith - we have overwhelmingly seen the other side of that in these past years.
There are also plenty of stories of the legal system working as intended. You can create any narrative you want from selectively paying attention to data.
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I wonder if Pretty specifically chose this modus operandi (taking a woman to a third country before moving on her) to get himself a layer of legal protection. It’s a well-established practice in abuse communities after all (e.g. people traveling to Asia).
It’s also interesting that this scenario would have probably been more unlikely in the past. Before the “sexual revolution”, an educated woman would never sleep alone in the same house as an unmarried man, for fear of her “honour” being maligned. That set of cultural values had its (massive) problems, but in some scenarios it actually worked better than the current one, effectively forcing women to avoid dangerous situations.
Not all criminal investigations are solved or competently followed. However this doesn't mean you should take justice in your own hands, which is what mob justice is. This is plain disrespect for official authority and the principal of "innocent until proven otherwise". Even murderers with clear and shut cases are afforded legal council and ways to defend themselves.
Also, this could have been resolved if this was reported in timely manner, not years after. She is a victim, however her followup actions are neither correct nor proper.