60 Minutes asked the mother of accused Duke lacrosse player David Evans the other day what she would say to District Attorney Mike Nifong if he were in the room. Quoth Ms. Evans: “I would say with a smile on my face, ‘Mr. Nifong, you’ve picked on the wrong families… and you will pay every day for the rest of your life.'”
The news networks are practically slobbering all over the floor about this story. Newsweek just ran a piece on accused Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann that borders on the hagiographic. FOX News is swaggering all over it with outrageously biased headlines (“Duke Lacrosse ‘Rape’ Accuser Changes Story Again, Says Seligmann Didn’t Touch Her,” “Judge in Duke ‘Rape’ Case Orders Paternity Test for Accuser’s Baby”).
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(BTW, you can tell you’re on to something when the right-wing media starts hauling out the belittling quotation marks. She’s a “rape” accuser, much like Massachusetts legalized gay “marriage” and Al Gore made a movie about “global warming.”)
So here’s the thing: what if this exotic dancer did get assaulted that night?
Okay, okay: she’s a wacked-out druggy that hangs out on a stripper pole. She can’t keep her story straight, she seems to have slept with half of the state, and she certainly doesn’t seem to have the best motives for bringing this thing forward. After all that’s happened, she may be the least credible courtroom witness since Captain Queeg.
But does that mean she didn’t get assaulted? Does that mean she doesn’t deserve to have her case investigated? Does that mean she should be hounded at every turn by journalists? This is a person, for fuck’s sake. I don’t care how skanky the woman is; if she comes forward with a credible complaint, then our system of legal justice is supposed to be on her side.
People have jumped all over this woman’s inconsistencies and concluded that her story is wildly improbable. But is it, really?
No. Not at all. Picture this:
Coked-up erotic dancer gets hired to do a striptease/toy show at some local fraternity for a couple hundred bucks. Erotic dancer arrives, stoned out of her mind, her and the other dancer do their striptease thing. She’s so out of it she can barely walk. The whole place is just a blur of rich white boys leering at her, it’s dark, there’s lots of loud music playing. She wanders around afterwards, drinking beers that the boys are handing her, enduring the occasional ass grab and maybe grabbing an ass or two in return. She blanks out near the bathroom, a couple of the guys help her in there because they think she might puke. She falls to the floor in front of the toilet, thinking she’s going to throw up, and passes out again. The kid behind her sees grade-A exotic dancer pussy being thrust in his face and yanks down her underwear. The boys hoot and holler and take turns poking her with their fingers and miscellaneous plastic objects they find around the bathroom. After all, they’re drunk off their asses too, and man, this shit is funny. Finally she comes to and they help her to her feet. Things are hazy, she can’t tell what’s going on, but she knows that those aren’t her hands up her skirt. She feels sore in places where she shouldn’t feel sore. Suddenly one of the senior frat members opens the bathroom door, says, c’mon guys, what the fuck are you doing? Get that bitch out of here before you get us in trouble. The boys momentarily come to their senses, think, shit, he’s right. They straighten her out, put her underwear back on, and walk her back to the party. They’ve only been gone for five or six minutes. The senior frat member pulls the second exotic dancer over, says, you’d better get her out of here, she’s a mess. Thirty seconds later, they’re gone. The front door closes, the senior drags the boys into a corner and says, you didn’t fuck her, did you? That’s rape, assholes, you can go to jail for that shit. One of the boys says, are you fuckin’ crazy? We don’t want to get AIDS. We were just playin’ around. Senior: Jesus. She’s okay, right? No harm done? You didn’t hurt her or anything? Boys: no, no, I think she’s okay. It was like the fuckin’ Lincoln Tunnel down there. She probably fucked three or four guys before she even got here. Senior: You fuckin’ idiots. Fine. Just keep this quiet, no harm done. Nobody else saw you, right? We could get expelled for this shit. Three teenagers: no, no, don’t worry about it. We’re cool.
That scenario? Totally plausible. There are a thousand variations you could come up with. I’d venture a guess that this exact thing happens at least every weekend somewhere in this country. I’m sure just about anyone who’s ever attended a college fraternity party can say that they either witnessed something like this or heard about it second-hand.
And guess what? That’s called sexual assault. I don’t care if the woman was drugged to the gills. I don’t care if she’s an exotic dancer and a slut and she leered at you in a way that made you think she gave you permission to grope. I don’t care if she did fuck the whole Yale lacrosse team at another gig earlier that night. It’s sexual assault, and it deserves to be prosecuted.
Let me be frank: personally I don’t believe this woman’s story. Personally I think that she’s either not telling the truth, or she’s so muddled about the details that there’s no way any DA is going to get a prosecutable case out of it. If she is telling the truth, then I suspect she collared three boys at random because she couldn’t remember what they looked like. (Those white, upper-crust fraternity kids all look the same, don’t they?) So I’m certainly glad that Reade Seligmann, Colin Finnerty, and David Evans are all being assumed innocent until proven guilty.
But you and I don’t get to make the decision about whether this erotic dancer is telling the truth. Neither do FOX News, CNN, the Post, the Times, the bloggers, or the pundits. These decisions are for a public prosecutor and, ultimately, a judge and jury to decide. We’ve got a system in place for this, people.
Unfortunately, that system isn’t working for people like the Duke lacrosse fraternity erotic dancer. The district attorney’s office seems to be handling this case with a solid helping of ineptitude seasoned with election-year politics and a sprig of racial bias as garnish. If this woman is telling the truth — and again, that’s absolutely, utterly, completely, 100% plausible with marshmallows and a cherry on top — then DA Mike Nifong has pretty much assured that the ones responsible will never face any criminal penalties for it.
So maybe this woman is a lying sack of shit. Maybe she isn’t.
But what about the women who have really endured assaults like this? What about all the ones whose cases don’t get thrown onstage with the hungry tigers in the media circus? What about the women who slink away in embarrassment, assuming that they probably did give their rapists permission while in a drugged stupor? What about the district attorneys who listen to the victims’ stories with a skeptical ear and decide not to pursue the matter because they know they’ll never get a credible witness on the stand?
What happens to them?