I’ve totally trashed my google reputation after all that talk about blow jobs last week. What the hell. Let’s write another blog post about sex. Well, it will be a brief one.
I just wanted to point out an article and a blog post on the topic of sex and the disabled.
I don’t have to add too much to that conversation. My aunt used to teach sexuality to disabled teenagers in the Bronx. She was convinced it was a good thing for them. I’m sure she’s right.
The Times had a statistic on the number of disabled kids who have been molested. Truly horrifying.
“50 percent to 85 percent of women with mental retardation were sexually assaulted before the age of 18, and 25 percent to 50 percent of men. Of those assaulted, 49 percent had been abused 10 times or more. “
Apt. 11d 
As the Duke lacrosse case plays itself in the media — Slate appropriately called it trial-by-newspaper today — I’ve been thinking about the Glenn Ridge, New Jersey case. The events occured in 1989, so not everyone will remember them. But a group of idolized high school athletes sexually abused a mentally disabled girl in a horrifying way. Bernard Lefkowitz’s book Our Guys (Univ of California Press, 1997) does an excellent job of explaining how a group of high school athletes could do such a thing *and* have much of the community rally around them. It is worth revisiting in light of current events.
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I remember that case well, RC. I believe a baseball bat was involved. Disabled kids are so vulnerable to these attacks because some can’t talk or articulate emotion. They are susceptible to peer pressure. Some like to take their clothes off already. No one believes them. Lots of problems.
Really good parallel to the Duke case in terms of the golden boys/rapists.
I should write a post-DNA sample Duke post. I’m curious what people think about all that.
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There’s an old saying that some stories are true and some just OUGHT to be true. The Duke case is looking more and more like the second – one of the guys charged took a taxi, the cell phone records on when the taxi was called don’t match the accuser’s story terribly well, there are photos of the accuser with some of the injuries at first attributed to the claimed rape when she first arrived at the party.
So – did these guys rape this woman? It looks a lot less clear than it seemed in the first days. Is this woman another Tawana Brawley? Who the Hell knows. The DA is trying to ride this to reelection. The accuser’s friend is looking to make money from telling her story. The lacrosse players seem guilty of, at the least, being unpleasant people I’d not like to spend time with. Everybody is trying to fit this into their preexisting frames of reference.
I don’t ordinarily see Ann Coulter – she is not where I usually look for insight! but Mickey Kaus quoted her the other day:
“…However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don’t hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money.
Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men’s houses and take your clothes off for money…”
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Just to be clear: my comment was not a claim about the facts of what happened in that bathroom in North Carolina. It was about the similarity in defendants. I don’t know what happened, and I think it is way too early to make claims about what it looks like “more and more.” Perhaps the most important evidence in the case, at least on the question whether there was a rape, is the medical report detailing whatever injuries were observed at the hospital. Since that has NOT been released, I’d say we still don’t know enough to reach any conclusion, however tentative.
My post was a reference to (a) the kind of kid who plays lacrosse and thinks it’s perfectly normal to hire strippers to a party at their off-campus lacrosse house, and(b) the kind of people who, like some of their high school teachers, rushed to support them as “nice boys” who couldn’t possibly do anything like rape. (Apparently, perpetrating a hate crime against a gay man does not tarnish that “nice boy” Catholic image.)
And yes, the Glenn Ridge case involved a baseball bat; and the Duke case, even by the description of guys on the team, turned ugly when the “nice boys” urged the stripper to do something with a broomstick.
Finally, as for Mickey K’s claim that: “you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men’s houses and take your clothes off for money…” I’d say that sounds remarkably close to saying “she asked for it.” It’s also worth pointing out to Mickey that an actual rape victim severely reduces her chances of being believed if: (a) she has a sexual history, any sexual history, or (b) she was on a date or knows the person, or (c) she used drugs or alcohol, now or in the past, or (d) she dressed “provacatively,” whatever the hell that means, or (e) she subseqeuntly filed a claim for damages, or (f) she delayed in reporting…
You get the idea.
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Hmmm. Maybe I’ll put that post off until we get a little more info. Until then, Chris Lawrence has a bunch of links on the topic. Chris seems to be more convinced than I am that no crime was committed. I’m waiting for more information.
I was also offended by the Kaus quote. It may be true that strippers are too often a victim of rape, but that doesn’t mean that strippers deserve rape. We shouldn’t just wag our finger at her and say, “well, you knew what you were getting into, honey.”
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I think that Coulter was asking us to talk more frankly to older teens about the dangers of mixing alcohol and sex. I know that there have been a number of campus informational campaigns in the past, and if you google “alcohol rape” you’ll find that a lot of the material is from university websites, and for excellent reasons. “Rape is more common on college campuses with higher rates of binge drinking – and alcohol use is a central factor in most college rapes, finds a new study released by the Harvard College Alcohol Study.
Overall, one in 20 (4.7 percent) women reported being raped in college since the beginning of the school year – a period of approximately 7 months – and nearly three-quarters of those rapes (72 percent) happened when the victims were so intoxicated they were unable to consent or refuse. These were among the findings of a study of 119 schools nationwide, by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study, Saint Joseph’s University and the University of Arizona, published in the January 2004 issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol.
Most significantly, women from colleges with medium and high binge-drinking rates had more than a 1.5-fold increased chance of being raped while intoxicated than those from schools with low binge- drinking rates.”
http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/college/a/blcas040214.htm
We were discussing earlier the problem of caution and how hard it is to get teenagers to think seriously “what’s the worst thing that could happen in this situation?” I feel like this is another example of that problem, and that unfortunately, there’s only so far that intellectual knowledge will take you (wasn’t one of the Duke guys quoted at a Take Back the Night event?).
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If coulter/kaus were just trying to warn teenagers about binge drinking, that seems fine to me. But if they were saying that drunk teenage girls and strippers have to assume some of the responsibility for rape, then that’s another. From the little bit that Dave S quoted from earlier, it sounded like they were trying spread the blame around.
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I wouldn’t say I’m convinced no crime occurred… just that I’m not convinced that one did occur. My thinking is in the big bad gray zone in between those two points.
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Incidentally, the guy quoted at the TBTN event isn’t one of the accused in the case (he just sent the dopey email, which I’m afraid falls in the bounds of contemporary college student humor, or lack thereof as it turns out).
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We had a huge incident at my alma mater a number of years ago that attracted national attention (20/20). A girl from my hallway went to a frat party, passed out from drinking, and was placed by her friends in one of the guys’ rooms while they went off to another party. Later she woke up, and the guy came into his room.
That is the part of the story everyone agrees on. What happened next became the issue of the school’s disciplinary proceedings.
Lessons one can glean from that incident:
-Don’t have friends who will leave you somewhere so that they can go off and party (she could have died from an alcohol overdose)
-Don’t drink so much that you pass out — I don’t think it’s blaming the victim to say this. She was lucky that she didn’t choke on her own vomit or have other alcohol related problems.
Other than that, the lessons get murky and depend largely on what one thinks happened in that room. The guy insists that she consented to be with him and gave him her phone number the next morning. She claims that she was too drunk to give consent and didn’t remember what happened until afterwards. I wasn’t in the room with them, so I really can’t say what happened.
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There are lots of murky situations, and its hard to know what the state should do. But commentators might beware of giving license to behaviour that is, if not illegal, scummy. You find a drunk girl in your room whom you don’t know and you have sex with her; you are a shit, whether she “consents” or not. You hire a stripper for your party; again, you’re a shit. These are behaviours people should be ashamed of, no? One of my problems with self-styled “moralists” like Ann Coulter is that when it comes down to it they don’t seem to have any moral compass. Hiring strippers to your party is not something you should avoid because it exposes you to accusations of rape; its something you avoid because it’s morally wrong. No?
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There’s also a difference between foolish behavior and immoral behavior. Immoral is, as Harry points out, hiring a stripper, making racial slurs, urging the stripper to have some involvement with a broomstick, and taking advantage of drunk or mentally challenged girls.
Foolish is getting fall down drunk and having stupid friends. As parents, we have the responsibility to let kids know that they really shouldn’t be foolish or immoral, but being immoral is the far worse crime.
Being a stripper, because you need to pay for college and support a family and because there are few other job opportunities doesn’t seem to fall into the category of immoral or foolish. Nobody should be making any judgments here, even if this career path puts one in risky situations.
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Harry B,
Note there is definitely a gender asymmetry in the drunk girl case you mention. It doesn’t matter if the guy is equally or more inebriated–we still think he should have known better. (By the way, someone I know once heard a male undergraduate complaining bitterly about how “conservative” the college is, based on the fact that according to school policy, a drunk female does not consent.)
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I have Epilepsy and got put in a Home for the Handicapped in my teens, where I got sexually molested by a number of male nurses who were Gay. It was their idea of the perfect way to get their hands on young boys, and just say it’s their job.
When I had a seizure, I’d wake up and get taken back to my room to sleep it off. Then wake up stark naked with that guy giving me a blow job. I called the Police, but since it was in my room, they said “No Witness, No Case”.
I wasn’t the only kid being molested there, but there was nothing we could do about it. I tried to fight back, but they warned me that if I hurt them in any way, then they’ll use the injuries to press charges and then I’ll be the abuser! Not them!
I tried to get help through a Rape Crisis Center, but they said it’s only for Women, as in most cases, men are the abusers. So I wasn’t allowed in there. Instead, the abuse went on and on, until I attempted suicide and got moved to a Psychiatric Facility.
It didn’t change anything. The Gay caregivers just went after some younger guys who came into the building, or “fresh meat” as they call them.
Eventually, after I’d had Brain Surgery to stop my Epilepsy, I got let out on my own, but the memories are still there.
The thing I hate though, is how there’s all sorts of Rape services for Women, but nothing for men. Instead, I’m supposed to accept that you can’t change the past. Just forget about it and move on.
That’s easy for them to say as they’re not the ones who got f***ed and nothing was ever done.
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Matthew — I’m terribly sorry that this happened to you. I hope you are receiving some counseling.
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