Connections
Perhaps this…
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, one of the most right-wing courts in the country, sanctioned a former high school cheerleader because she brought a lawsuit claiming that she shouldn’t be required to cheer for her alleged rapist:
… leads to this:
A 14-year-old girl who was taunted by classmates after she accused an older student of rape has committed suicide, Detroit media reported.
Seriously, what message are we sending to our girls? Also… parents, you had better be monitoring your kids Facebook, Buzz and Twitter accounts. I’m lucky that my daughter shares these accounts with me. That said, I’m shocked at what I read. The daily abuse thrown out there is quite stunning. Lucky again that my daughter hasn’t been a target. Still, I can’t help but feel it’s only a matter of time.
BTW, since the 14 year old girl hung herself all charges against the boy have been dropped. No witness means they can’t proceed. That’s quite a message. It’s also a very big incentive to bully.
Note: I am not weighing in on guilt or innocence. I’m discussing tactics, as well as how the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling sends a chilling message to girls – Shut up and cheer.
Tags: sexism
Careful… there are also men who committed suicide or tried to after being falsely accused of rape. It sucks all around.
Men (or less frequently women) get the raw deal because their mug shot is on the front page when they are accused, while the accuser’s name is protected, but when they are cleared the story is buried, too late to get your life back.
Still, that Fifth Circuit case has some really interesting twists that ought to make folks ask some questions.
1) The male student was arrested, the case was presented before a grand jury, and it refused to indict, resulting in the dismissal of all charges and his return to school and extracurricular activities. This isn’t even a case of “innocent until proven guilty” while charges are pending — it is a case of innocent with no charges even pending.
2) The female student in question wanted to disrupt the regular cheers to avoid cheering for this one student, thereby resulting in the expression of official disapproval of a student with no charges pending against him. Had the school done this, they would have faced a lawsuit for violation of HIS civil rights — and a lawsuit much more likely to succeed than hers ever was.
3) In addition, there was a racial angle to the case, which involved a white girl accusing a black boy. The potential for creating a racial division in the community was serious (Silsbee is less than an hour from Jasper, site of the James Byrd dragging). What were the racial implications of white school administrators allowing a white student to level such a charge in public in her official capacity? I think that answer is obvious.
4) A later development that makes me very uncomfortable is that the victim’s parents got a special prosecutor appointed and a new grand jury empaneled, in part because the grand jury had a disproportionate number of black members. The new grand jury, which handed down an indictment after the school year was over, was all white except for a single member.
5) The male student in question did, eventually plead guilty to reduced charges — but not until some 9 months after the victim was kicked off the cheer squad over her refusal to cheer. The school officials could not know that would happen when they acted.
6) Do we want to assume that all rape charges are true, especially if they are against athletes? Do we want to assume they are all true when they have a racial component to them? Before you say yes, say “Duke Lacrosse” several times.
It is easy to find what happened in the Silsbee case distasteful, but I can’t take issue with the choice made by the school. And to connect what happened there with the Detroit case (where a victim who did not want to testify was being dragged into court against her will at her mother’s insistence) is a real stretch.
Charlie rebuts the apologists:
http://www.boston.com/sports/columnists/pierce/2010/11/wowser.html