<p>Glad ACCP publicly condemned the attack on the poor victim. Ugly!</p>
<p>From the article jonri linked above:</p>
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</p>
<p>I had to post this, because so much outrage for this woman.
[Injured</a> woman raped in Highline emergency room; worker charged - seattlepi.com](<a href=“Injured woman raped in Highline emergency room; worker charged”>Injured woman raped in Highline emergency room; worker charged)</p>
<p>Wow! How traumatic for the victim! Ick!</p>
<p>Re:recovery for women & girls who have been sexually assaulted.
It takes decades.
My family has accused me of being angry when I am not. Of a tone in my voice or a look on my face. This has caused a great many conflicts over the years, because I truly did not think I was angry & I tried to carefully modulate my speech so I wouldnt be misinterpreted, to little avail.</p>
<p>Again this Easter Sunday, both my youngest daughter & my husband accused me of being angry when I did not even feel irritated. 
But because I already had my heart broken by my oldest daughters estrangement, I was desperate to see myself from their perspective in hopes we could be closer, so instead of biting my tongue or sulking, I sat and cried with my husband to try and understand their perspective, & I finally had a breakthrough.</p>
<p>The beliefs of our rape culture is so embedded in our psyche that it took me until now to admit to my husband and* to myself,* that the first time I had sex, I was raped. It happened 40 years ago on Easter Sunday. I was 15. :mad:
I buried it because he was my “boyfriend” and I didn’t want to believe that he would hurt me. Ive been absolutely furious about it, and about the way that I then was targeted afterwards for years. This suppressed rage only hurt myself, not my attacker, but I didnt dare let it out because I blamed myself. </p>
<p>If I could go 40 years blaming myself for that ( & to answer the question- neither of us were under the influence of any drugs or alcohol at the time as far as I knew), what are young girls who are brutally assaulted not only by their peers, but in the media by adults going to have to cope with? How long will they feel like they are worthless, that they deserved it? :(</p>
<p>What they deserve is to be treated fairly, in the media and in the courts & to be awarded enough money to cover the medical treatment that they may need for the rest of their lives.</p>
<p>Wow! Hugs to you emeraldkity. I find it so amazing that there are those of us who only now, 30-40 years later, are coming forward with this type of experience. It is so strange and unsettling to look back, and realize that a “bad experience” was actually rape. I am so sorry you are going through this and that it has impacted you so much. I hope you will consider counseling. It’s an awful thing to carry around with you year after year. I truly hope this marks a turning point for you.</p>
<p>So sorry emeraldkitty. </p>
<p>It is depressing to think that the issues of Steubenville were important yesterday, but forgotten about today, now that the event is no longer in the news.</p>
<p>I think the massive amounts of victim-blaming not only on the media but throughout the internet is outrageous. So many “man, the boys lost their lives because of a mistake!” but not a hint of “what about the poor girl? how did this affect her?”</p>
<p>Sometimes I can’t even believe I’m alive.</p>
<p>Redpoint, that’s why I wanted to bump this because I was thinking about the girl and how hard it is going to be for her to have anything like a healthy life. I didn’t report my rapes because 40 years ago I did not think I could go through having to talk about it in court.
Unbelievable that we still blame the victim. Don’t we want them to get justice?
Unless we turn into vigilantes, we need the court system to punish and possibly rehabilitate the attackers.</p>
<p>Sorry emeraldkity for what you went though. Hope you can begin to heal.</p>
<p>Hard to believe that victim-blaming could sink even lower. </p>
<p>In the Torrington, CT assault incident (17 year old football players with 13 year old girls), the 13 year old is being criticized w comments like:
[Is</a> Torrington another Steubenville?](<a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/torrington-steubenville-rape-assault-victim-twitter-163530296.html]Is”>Is Torrington another Steubenville?)</p>
<p>The coach allowed one of the players to continue playing football despite the kid facing felony robbery charges from an earlier incident.</p>
<p>^^^^
A couple details that the commenters are missing.
An 18 yr old is an ADULT and a 13 yr old is barely a teenager, closer to a child. A 13 yr old cannot consent to sex with an adult.
:p</p>
<p>It is pretty hard to ignore that many of the publicized cases of sexual assault involve athletes and the schools they are associated with attempt to shelter them from any repercussions.
In my school district 5 years ago, a developmentally delayed student was raped in a school bathroom ( by football players)and although it was reported to the principal and the district, the suspension of the students involved was delayed until the end of the year.
The girls family made the police report, the school did not.
The principal was not reprimanded, in fact he stayed at the school until he was given a promotion into district administration.
Yuck.</p>
<p>I would love to see football players on youtube using this opportunity to speak out against sexual assault, in support of victims, as people have spoken out in the It gets better project in support of GBLT youth or taking a stand against bullying.</p>
<p>Lets be like this girl.
<a href=“http://www.wwaytv3.com/2013/04/01/11-year-old-youtube-sensation-fighting-back-against-bullies[/url]”>http://www.wwaytv3.com/2013/04/01/11-year-old-youtube-sensation-fighting-back-against-bullies</a>
Lets prove that we don’t consider athletes to be above the law.</p>
<p>Until words like feminism and women’s studies cease being marginalized as the property of fanatics, nothing is going to change. “Women’s issues” have to be considered humanity’s issues.</p>
<p>There is still a lot of the attitude that if a woman or girl is raped, she must have been asking for it, that somehow rape is about a woman ‘seducing’ the person who did it, rather then being what it is really about, hate and rage. The kids in Steubenville who did this weren’t doing it for sex, they were doing it to humiliate the girl, show their disrespect and disdain towards her. I found it ironic the comments I heard online, when the ex head of the NAACP in Steubenville basically blamed the girl, and these people were calling him all sorts of vile names (primarily because he was black), and I pointed out that what he said is pretty much what the whole town of Steubenville is saying. I don’t hold out much hope with a grand jury, but several coaches and probably several cops should be fired over what happened, if allegations they covered it up are true. When I hear people tell me how small town America values are so strong, that people who live there are loving and caring and so forth, I wonder if people know what is under the surface? That the same town that prides itself on having so many people going to church and such, also has a dark side where they will side with some morons who could do something like this because they were football players…and this happens all the time (btw, I am not saying that small town people are evil, I am saying it is absolute rubbish that small town america is always this idyllic place…it is if you don’t end up on the wrong side of it). One thing in Steubenville is interesting, where are all the clergy and religious figures, supposedly the moral beacons, on this? I did a lot of reading in the aftermath of the verdicts, and the only thing I heard from clergy was talking about young people’s lives ruined…no condemnation of those who would cover this up, no condemnation of the values that somehow a football player is some sort of demi god that needs to be protected…they should be screaming bloody murder, and all I saw was silence. </p>
<p>I live in Northern NJ, and something similar happened in Glen Ridge, NJ, where some jocks from the football team sexually assaulted a young woman who was mentally challenged (I think she had an IQ of 64)…the kids who did this did all kinds of foul things to her, and it was the same thing, there as an attempt to cover it up by the coach and the cops (fortunately the DA got wind of it and forced the cops hands), and people were villifying the young woman, who apparently idolized the boys who did this, saying she asked for it, you name it (she had the mental age of an 8 year old, maybe…). Same kind of town, small town, blue collar, everyone went to church, you name it…this was 24 years ago, things haven’t changed much I guess. </p>
<p>The other side of it is that people pooh pooh the damage this kind of thing does to the victims, people laugh it off, say “oh, they will get over it”, as if it is nothing. I have seen what this does, and it isn’t so easy, it haunts people. I know couples where they struggled for years to have a normal sex life, because one of them was a victim of rape , it impacts so many things, the trauma and shock can be there for a long long time. One person I know was raped because she was transgender, and it took a bright, vibrant person and turned them into a shell of a person…it doesn’t end, and it isn’t ‘you pull yourself up’…and the therapy for it can be more wrenching and horrible than people can imagine. The girl who was the victim sounds like she had problems before this happened, but after it is going to be hell, I hope she gets help. </p>
<p>As a society, we need to get away from the thinking that sexual assault has anything to do with sex, it is like saying that a guy beating up his wife was really ‘playing’ with her, or that the victims ‘asked for it’ somehow and we have to clean out the nasty undertow that is aimed especially at women, that they are temptresses and that men are somehow snared by them into doing these horrible things (on the other hand, when the gutters need cleaning and other things need doing, my wife is pretty good at that <em>smile</em>).</p>
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<p>COULD NOT HAVE SAID IT ANY BETTER.</p>
<p>Oh my god the topic of sexual assault, women’s rights, feminism anything just pushes my buttons. This topic pushes my buttons. I’m a former rape victim and now a college journalism major who writes for my school newspaper every now and then. I always report about things I care about such as things above. I seriously have such a passion for these that I go to activist events and then report about it to get the word out. I actually even wrote an opinion column on this as I was just outraged when I found out about the victim-blaming throughout forums, news comments, blogs, even Facebook.</p>
<p>Anonymous e-mails reply to my column said stuff like:
“The guys need to learn how to keep their D in their pants”
^ I’m shocked as to people think that rape is caused by someone who cannot control their sex drive. As @musicprnt said, people really need to get away from thinking rape = sex. It also has a lot to do with power and control over the victim. Like the Steubenville kids were on the top of the food chain at their school, I’m sure they liked the power and control they had that came with their entitlement. I’m sure they felt something like this couldn’t harm their reputation but instead make them better, maybe “cooler” even?</p>
<p>“Maybe if the girl didnt drink underage and so much this wouldn’t happen”
^ I’m shocked at this because I go to a party school… like as if underage drinking and being super drunk doesn’t happen on an almost daily basis!!!</p>
<p>By reading through this thread, I can’t believe how many other stories like this are covered up. And this is what drove me to become a journalist. I may be a very biased one, a journalist who is against victim-blaming, pro-women’s rights, pro-feminism, and just all of this “liberal” crap, but I’m hoping that my articles just bring awareness to people who can make a difference.</p>
<p>I did an article on Take Back the Night and I was able to get a few girls who were former rape victim themselves speak to me and we got them some help through our women’s help centre. I wish things like these were covered in media, like how/where resources for rape and sexual assault is available (as I’ve seen things for sex ed, STDs, HIVs have been reported in our local news).</p>
<p>Yep, exactly. It was like that idiot congressman who said a rape victim couldn’t get pregnant, and ipso facto, if they get pregnant, they weren’t raped (implying, what, the woman asked for it, really must have wanted it?). Religion hasn’t helped a great deal with that, when it comes to matters of sexuality a lot of them are locked up in this mode of thinking that rape is about lust, blaming sexual liberalization for rape and so forth (shouldn’t surprise us, the Catholic Church has tried blaming the priest abuse scandal on the sexual revolution, that lax morals led to this…until it became clear that the abuse was happening a long, long time before the 1960’s)…and it leaves out that rape rates are often highest in the most sexually repressed countries. </p>
<p>I have heard the same thing you are talking about, including hearing that the only reason rape charges are being brought is ‘feminists’ have declared war on men and all the other drivel, how so many of these cases are retribution and so forth…which leaves out a very substantial fact, a lot of rapes aren’t reported at all because women after it happens are so shook up, scared and afraid and yes, ashamed, that they don’t report it. Arguing that they would do it for revenge belies the fact that women won’t report real rapes, so the idea that they would lightly do it in revenge in any kind of nuimbers boggles the mind (yes, it does happen, but not to the extent some believe). It wasn’t all that many years ago that in this country a husband could not be charged with raping his wife, and it was the same attitude as ‘boys will be boys’, with marriage it was that the husband had the right to sex, no matter how it was obtained, and it is not to their credit that religious organizations fought criminalizing rape in marriage <em>sigh</em>, some conservatives to this day want to get that out of the law…</p>
<p>I also find it sad that they blame the girl for underage drinking and getting drunk, yet some defend the boys by saying they were drinking and that is why they did this…so on the one hand, they are saying the girl in effect asked for it by drinking, and on the other hand are saying the boys weren’t responsible because they had been drinking…talk about a double standard!</p>
<p>^Great point about the drinking “double standard” ! (So many aspects to this case/issue are complex & vexing.)</p>
<p>a similar case in Canada, with a tragic ending:</p>
<p>[Who</a> failed Rehtaeh Parsons? | The Chronicle Herald](<a href=“http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1122345-who-failed-rehtaeh-parsons]Who”>http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1122345-who-failed-rehtaeh-parsons)</p>
<p>What really kills me about this is the fact that FEMALE classmates joined in persecuting her AND the Steubenville girl. What is wrong with them? Will the do literally ANYTHING to curry favor with boys? It would appear so.</p>