And in the WPI case the man with whom she walked to the roof deck with was a security guard at the event hired for protection. He attacker her instead.
Blame is a funny thing and there are different kinds of blame. Adding blame to a victim doesn’t diminish the blame of the guilty person in a criminal trial and in the above it sounds like the guilty person is in jail. In the criminal case that is being discussed in this thread her drunkenness is not a mitigating factor. But in the civil case posted in the above thread at WPI, the question is was the college negligent in not protecting a student who of their own volition consumed alcohol and perhaps did something they might not normally do and was raped and/or was the college negligent if they were the employer of the person who raped or was it reasonable to assume that students would protect themselves from situations where they were vulnerable. Civil law/torte law with it’s due care seems to address blame specifically. Will be interesting to see if the university is deemed to have any negligence. I think it adds value to my understanding to understand that blaming the victim is a different kind of blaming than blaming as negligence in a civil or torte case. The concept of “victim blaming” can take different forms.
There is some interesting information here…
Do you think that part of the problem is that boys/young men do not understand how traumatizing rape is for women? That it is not just sex gone a little wrong - it is being terrified, it is being in the control of a person with evil intent, it is being “soiled”, potentially made pregnant or diseased, an all-out assault on one’s mind as well as one’s body? I think if more young men could truly understand this part of it, it would happen a lot less. Does anyone know of attempts to educate boys/young men in this manner?
You are incorrect momofthree in #386- the suggested minimum is 2 to 3 years of incarceration, according to Dauber’s letter. I don’t believe probation is considered incarceration. I could be wrong, but not sure the basis for your understanding that probation counts as jail time.
It’s in the thread - can’t remember which poster cited and spelled it out, but I know that is the same in Michigan that jail + probation to meet the minimum sentencing guildelines. I do not believe I am incorrect. There’s over 400 posts now so I don’t have time to go back and find the exact post.
Gertrude, most men will never know the fear and terror of being raped. They’re bigger and stronger than women, which gives them the advantage no matter what. And it is culturally acceptable to blame the victim or say that the guy didn’t know what he was doing and the poor precious angel shouldn’t be punished for the rest of his life.
I went to dinner with my in-laws recently and this came up. They have 3 sons. They both said unequivocally that if any of their sons raped a woman- and there is no doubt in their mind that that’s what this is- they wouldn’t spend a dime to defend them.
Of course, what people say and what people do are often two different things but I trust them on this one. They are no non-sense people.
I don’t know, because I haven’t read the probation report. Has anybody? It may well have information that was not presented in court. However, we do know that the sentence delivered was the one recommended in the report–the judge did not deviate from the recommendation, although he certainly could have done so.
In my experience, judges take the probation report very seriously.
I’ve just devoted quite a lot of time to reading this thread all the way through and following all of the links, reading the entire police report, accounts of other cases, etc.
What can anyone say? A couple of things strike me:
A) Four other young men came upon this partially naked, unconscious young woman that night. Their instinctive reaction was to help her. Including the two who had been drinking, one of whom called 911. Think about what they could have done. If they were like the beasts in the restaurant case, the Steubenville football players, the football players at Hobart and William Smith, the men in a Rhode Island bar, they could have piled on and gang-raped her. Thank doG that they proved that such disgusting impulses are not universal. Or even, one hopes, the norm.
B) So much emphasis on the fact that he had no prior brushes with the law. Imagine if he were a young black man, especially one from a poor neighborhood. Imagine how much less likely that he would never have been accused or charged with anything, never taken into custody. How much more likely that his youthful experimentation with drugs and alcohol would have resulted in a record.
I am sickened.
Regarding his sentence, I think that given his complete lack of remorse directed toward the victim and the similar attitudes documented by his family and friends, he needs real jail time to come to a realization that what he did was not normal behavior. That it was actually a vile crime. While I am no fan of incarceration, in this case I think that three years in prison followed by a period of probation, say 5 years, would be appropriate to make sure that he had learned his lesson. I don’t think he belongs on a sex offender registry. I think they seem to be grossly misused. There has to be a path back for people like this.
There also has to be a path back for the victims. I would like to see us devoting the same amount of public $$ to helping them that we do to trying and incarcerating the criminals. Instead, they probably fall prey to the lack of mental health coverage endemic in our nation.
@momofthreeboys, From post 403…
The prosecuters asked for 6 years in state prison. The prosecuters did not ask for probation.
@mom2and…post 127…and a couple of posts around that one. I am not convinced that the judge didn’t follow the sentencing guidelines.
From @dstark’s link -
The judge saw this and still considered him “no danger”? What an idiot.
And I have to add - just as Rape does not equal Promiscuity, Probation does NOT EQUAL Jail time!
I haven’t researched the specifics and I don’t practice personal injury law, but it is likely the victim could file a personal injury/ tort suit against Brock for damages based on actual injury (including pain and suffering and emotional distress), plus punitive damages. It is likely that the felony conviction would be given collateral estoppel effect, meaning that the court would accept as proven that the act occured, and thus the victim would not have the trauma of reproving the sexual assault. However, the victim would have to testify to prove her damages, which would still be traumatic. Any damages would be offset by any award of restitution in the criminal case. (I don’t know if the sentence included an order of restitution).
There would likely be some ugly parts of the case. The defense may try to argue that she didn’t exercise reasonable care that night, and so the damages should be reduced. (Since I don’t practice in this area, I don’t know if that is a viable theory or not). If this were a viable theory, it would open the door to all sorts of ugly questioning.
By far the biggest impediment to a civil suit is that any judgment against Brock would not be collectible. He has no money. I doubt he has insurance, but even if he did, intentional torts are not covered by insurance and punitive damages cannot be insured against. No contingency lawyer would take this case, and it would be pointless for her to spend money out of pocket to get an uncollectible judgment.
A plaintiff’s lawyer evaluating this situation would be looking for other deep pockets to sue, such as Stanford or perhaps the fraternity. I don’t know enough about the facts here to know if there is any basis for a non-frivolous claim (let alone a viable claim) against either institution. But suing either of those would be a horrible ordeal since collateral estoppel would NOT apply (so she’d have to re-prove the violation), and comparative fault as between her and the university and/or the fraternity would almost certainly apply (since it would be a negligence claim against one of those defendants), and therefore her own behavior, sadly, would end up being on trial. In other words, if she were to claim that Stanford should have done something to prevent this, it would be fair game for Stanford to say she should have done more to protect herself. (Given the bad PR that would generate, however, they might not make that argument.) The defense would also likely argue that damages should be reduced because most of the responsibilty lies with Brock, not the school or fraternity, and therefore she may not have a very big damages award even if there were a viable claim. (I dont know when the underlying acts occured; the statute of limitations may have already run against these institutional defendants, in any event).
But just sitting here as a non-personal injury lawyer who knows nothing about the facts, I don’t know whether she would even have a basis for a claim against Stanford or the fraternity. I would not advise my own daughter to pursue such a claim against an institutional defendant in this case even if some legally viable claim were available, because litigation itself is traumatic.
@notelling,
I appreciate your post.
Thanks.
From the link in post 403
I don’t think many posters were attacking the family for supporting their son, and I think the public has a right to be outraged, not at the family supporting the child, but the way they are doing it. If my son got into trouble, I would do everything I could to defend him, but if he was found guilty I would not do what the father did and try and weasel out of the situation, or more, make the victim look like the guilty party. The dad’s letter concentrated on what he saw as the damage to his son, how it is so unfair that ‘20 minutes of sex’ are going to impinge the rest of his life, how he didn’t want to eat, and not only didn’t acknowledge the pain the victim had, actually went out of his way to de facto call her a slut.
Put this into historical context, how many times in the past did powerful families use their money and influence to make sure that their family members who committed crimes, some pretty horrible, never came to justice? While the scale of that is well outside what happened here (the family is not that well off or powerful), would you defend a family who used their wealth and power to evade justice? I think what people are reacting to is the family couldn’t seem to spare any sympathy for the victim, they make it seem like their son was the victim…and again, I don’t understand why the judge is not brought up on ethical charges, when he allowed the defense lawyer to question how the girl was dressed, it shows he is caught somewhere back in the 1970’s, when chief defense in rape cases was basically shaming the victim or showing how ‘she wanted it’. The family and the judge seem to be saying the same thing, that in this case, it was her fault, not mr exalted Stanford student and swimmer. I don’t know the family, for all I know privately they are good people who are ashamed at what happened, saddened and so forth, but what they come off as publicly is as a privileged family shocked that their scion, this perfection of athletics and scholarship, could even be thought to have done something horrible.
As far as getting 3 years probabation, that is not the same thing as serving the time, and it is likely that he will not even serve the 6 months. I can understand a judge not imposing the maximum if it is a first offense, but I also think that he sent the message that this was not that big a deal. I do think with the sex offenders list is a very blunt instrument and needs to be reformed (I don’t think sex in a public place warrants being put on here, and I also think that something like an incident like this might be something down the road, if the person has shown themselves to be examplary otherwise, that there should be the potential to pull them off it.
I can’t see how either Stanford or the fraternity could be considered liable for this. She was of age to drink legally. The vodka was served to her by her friend, not a fraternity member. The rapist was not a fraternity member. The assault did not take place in their house, and possibly not on their property at all. I doubt that anyone could prove that a fraternity member should reasonably have prevented it, since she apparently left the party under her own steam.
Stanford seems to have reacted appropriately.
I agree with notelling that there would be no point in her suing anyone, unless the perp has a big trust fund we haven’t heard of.
The only point I can see is to keep his name in the news. I could imagine someone deciding to go that route, if she felt the sentence was too lenient. Obviously it wouldn’t be about money. It would be about publicizing how she was wronged. About not being silenced.
eta: my parents once sued where there was no hope of collection, just because they felt morally outraged, and saw it as a way to achieve justice. It was nowhere near as serious a case as this.
eta: I am talking about suing the rapist, not the university or the fraternity
Wouldn’t these types of crimes be what the sex offender registry is for, rather than the kinds of minor (non-sex-related) crimes that some states have thrown into the crimes that put people on the sex offender registry?