Tom1944, yeah…
Before I started reading the book, I thought living in the country…college town close by sounded appealing…
You know, when we talk about blaming the victim, this is what we are talking about. And it’s disgusting, so stop it. There’s no doubt what happened in this case, because he confessed to raping her while she was asleep.
Here’s a little clue: If you wake up to discover that a person who outweighs you by 100 pounds is raping you, you are now dealing with a violent criminal. It might not be the best idea to make him mad by fighting back. You might be better off by playing dead, then running like hell as soon as he leaves and going as fast as you can to the hospital for a rape examination, which is what she did.
I had just ONE scary encounter while in college, and I’m still shocked at how I reacted. I met a “nice guy” one evening at the Student Union towards the end of final exams, when a lot of students had gone home. He offered to walk me back to the dorm. So I said sure. On the way, he told me he was about to go to medical school. When we were about a block away, in a dark area, he tried to start kissing me, hard. I froze! I didn’t know what to do. Thank God, some people walked by and he stopped. As he slunk away, I said, “Good luck in medical school!” What the heck? Why in the world did I say that?? So I will NEVER judge what a woman does in a situation like this. When you’re paralyzed with fear, you don’t act rationally.
MaineLonghorn, how you reacted is talked about in the book. Has been studied. How you reacted is very common.
Northwesty is fooling himself if he thinks telling a daughter how to behave in a tough situation is going to translate into how she behaves. Nobody knows how a person is going to behave during a rape. The brain does its own thing.
Sometimes we freeze and don’t act rationally, and people who have never been in that kind of trauma, but who are sure they’d do something different and everything would have been dandy, are just fooling themselves. But in this particular case, I don’t even see that the victim acted irrationally. That football player could have crushed her like a bug if she tried to resist. She wasn’t going to get away until he was done, probably. Yelling and fighting back might well have made things worse for her, and they were already pretty darn bad.
I was referring to the incident with the quarterback. Girl was sober and awake. Male roommate was within a few feet away in the next room. If you make some noise, the sex never happens. If you make some noise, you also create evidence that can be used to prosecute.
If the sex happens and there’s no evidence, well then we all know what happens.
A lot of these college incidents occur with witnesses and interveners within easy earshot. Since there’s usually no weapon, yelling for help is the safe and obvious and effective thing to do. Which is what my daughters hear from me.
Y’know, when one’s conversation about that rape case at Montana with the football player goes:
You mean the quarterback who was found responsible for raping the woman, but eventually got off after the fourth appeal? No, no that one.
Oh, you mean the four football players who allegedly gang-raped that girl who they didn’t know, but weren’t prosecuted because they claimed it was consensual in 2010? No, not that one.
Oh, you mean the three other football players who allegedly drugged and raped two women, but didn’t get prosecuted in 2011? No, not them.
Oh, you mean the other football player who was thrown out of Montana for raping the woman in 2011? No, not him.
Oh, was it fullback Beau Donaldson, who got a 30 year sentence after confessing to raping his childhood friend in 2011? Yes, that’s it!
When you have to play Twenty Questions to figure out which 2010-2104 University of Montana football rape case you’re talking about, that football team has a problem with recruiting rapists.
CF,
So, which cases meet the clear and convincing stand, which cases meet the preponderance of evidence standard?
We’re only hearing one side so we don’t know.
I’ve gotta say, though, I’m skeptical about the cases where the guys didn’t know the woman, but they say she wanted to have sex with all of them. Guys keep claiming that. I know, I know, sometimes women agree to that kind of thing, but when it’s four football players and one small women, it’s easy for me to believe they forced her. And the guy who left blood all over the woman, his hands, her shorts, the mattress, the mattress pad, the sheets and the walls? And then stole her pants? That should have gone to trial.
Also, Kristin Pabst is evil.
Okay. I’m trying to get it downloaded to read.
Whoa, cool your jets, there, Cardinal. Ms Pabst is like lots of people you will meet in the future. They have different opinions, sometimes very different. They do things a different way…You may think they’re even criminal, but they aren’t really indictable. And, they have a lot of followers, who think exactly like they do.
It’s pretty much the reason politics exists.
She let rapists go unprosecuted, let them off so they could go off and rape more women, so her conviction stats would look good. That’s doing things a different way, but rapists don’t need a friend in the prosecutor’s office.
Well, I guess another way to look at it is she didn’t prosecute cases she didn’t think could be won. In theory, that allowed the prosecutor’s office to put their resources into other things. There are two sides to every issue. You can disagree, but there isn’t much moral ground to call her evil.
A good solution might be to devote your life to helping improve rape prosecutions.
She went to a college hearing for an accused rapist and lied about what his victim had said to the police. The interrogations are recorded. She could have told the truth, but she lied. She’s a liar.
If a prosecutor wins all their cases, they’re not trying enough cases. If you won’t try cases you have a 75% chance of winning, you’re letting too many criminals go free.
I forget. Was Pabst indicted for the “lie”?
I see that you and Prosecutor Pabst disagree on theory.
It’s not illegal to lie at a college proceeding so that a raping football player will escape punishment, so she couldn’t be indicted. Anyway, who was going to indict her, if it were illegal? Herself?
We do disagree on theory. My theory is, she shouldn’t lie. Her theory is, she should lie.
I thought Pabst was the worst person in the book, but wait! There’s more!
I offer to you Missoula County Attorney Fred Van Valkenberg, who is also reluctant to prosecute rape, including this one (this is a Department of Justice report, quoted in the book):
Let’s review: the woman says she was drugged and raped. The police find video of the accused slipping something in her drink. They find that he recently had refilled a prescription for Xanax, a drug commonly used in date rape. The suspect doesn’t deny drugging her, and says “If I were trying to make her relax it would be Xanax.”
The Missoula County Attorney Office, headed by that disgusting pile of excrement Fred Van Valkenberg, declines to prosecute. And that wasn’t the only case they refused to prosecute, even with an eyewitness or a confession.
Kristin Pabst formerly worked for Van Valkenberg. Pabst was later elected to succeed her boss.
That is just awful. Can they be sued in civil court or can only the justice department deal with them?
Sued? Justice Department? Didn’t she just win an election for County Attorney?