August 28, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:Asking for trouble
I just read the New Yorker's account of the Duke Rape case:
Just after 1:30 A.M. on Tuesday, March 14th, a Durham police sergeant named John Shelton, responding to a 911 dispatch, pulled into the parking lot of a Kroger supermarket, about a mile from the Duke campus, where, according to his report, he encountered a black woman slumped in the passenger seat of a dark-colored Honda. “She’s just passed out drunk,” Shelton concluded. He popped open a capsule of ammonia, waved it under the woman’s nose, and tried pulling her from the car. The woman, rousing, grabbed hold of the car’s emergency brake, but she lost her grip and tumbled out into the parking lot. The Honda’s driver said that she had offered the woman a ride home, because she had seemed incapable of making it on her own. The subject had no identification. She was wearing a see-through red garment (with no underwear) and one white high-heeled shoe.Shelton conferred with Officer Willie Barfield, who had just arrived. Without an address, the men couldn’t take the woman home, and Shelton considered her to be too intoxicated for a twenty-four-hour lockup. He decided on a county facility called Durham Center Access, a sort of halfway house/emergency room that helped indigents through substance-abuse and psychological crises. At the Center, Barfield and another officer stood by as a staff nurse went through the standard screening process with the distressed woman, assessing her for risk of suicide, danger to others, substance abuse, and victimization.
The nurse asked the woman if anything had happened to her.
“Yes.”
Had she been raped?
“Yes.”
Now, I'm no expert, but it seems to me to be lunatic to ask a severely intoxicated woman these sorts of questions. People impaired by chemical substances are very suggestible. Someone who is very drunk and has just been pulled into a scary institutional place by the cops should not have such possibilities suggested to them; they should be asked to describe how they got into that state. Otherwise, you have the possibility that someone who is not thinking straight (and may erroneously fear arrest) will put on their bad idea jeans and falsely tell you that they were raped. I've said stupider things under the influence. Heck, sometimes when I'm not really paying attention to the person I'm talking to, and they ask me if I've seen a movie or read a book, I belatedly wake up to the realization that I have just agreeably said "yes" when the correct answer is "no".
And faced with the choice of saying "I'm sorry, I have no idea why I just told you I'd read Look Homeward, Angel." or continuing the lie, I generally bullshit my way through a brief conversation about the book in question, while desperately hunting for a way to change the subject. I'm not saying I do this all the time, mind you, but it has happened. I can only imagine what I'd decide to do if I woke up the next day and found all these nice people being awfully kind to me because I'd told them I was raped.
Now, I'm not saying that this is what happened. The Duke rape case, to be sure, seems incredibly weak to me, and I think it rather troubling that it is the accuser, rather than the accused, who keeps changing her story in response to emerging new evidence. But I haven't really followed it closely enough to produce an opinion beyond that. I'm only saying that the Durham Center Access methodology seems guaranteed to produce false charges of rape, whatever the truth of these particular charges. And if they are false, it seems to me that the center may bear a good part of the blame.
Posted by Jane Galt at August 28, 2006 1:39 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksAssume arguendo that if the person says yes to "Have you been raped?" question, you (the law enforcement officer) will then request consent to perform an intrusive physical exam to collect foresnic evidence of the alleged rape, but if not, not. That would seem to be a reason to ask the question (although, to be clear, I'm just speculating here).
Apparently, you don't have to be intoxicated to lie about rape.
Two women just did it in my hometown recently, one aged 30 and the other around 14 IIRC. Both claimed rape on the same night in public areas of a middle-class neighborhood, and together the two produced detailed descriptions of their three alleged attackers. The Wanted+Reward poster circulated the town (an outer-suburb agricultural/bedroom community of about 30,000) but nothing more turned up.
Then, after about four months of this, they finally confessed that it was a ruse.
The correct question to ask would be "what happened to you?", not "have you been raped?". Asking leading questions is never a good idea -- unless your goal is obtaining something other than the truth, anyway.
Yes, a very leading question, but - if you're too intoxicated to be taken to the drunk tank, are you really going to be capable of answering questions that aren't yes/no?
Disclosure: I've thought almost since the begining this was a false claim. My suspicion was, to get herself out of the drunk tank into a nice hospital bed. Interesting to learn she wasn't in a condition to make those decisions herself at the time.
So Nifong was just running with a fake accusation the cops and the county created for him in the first place. Fascinating. Is there anybody in this with clean hands?
Life can be so cruel. One of my most cherished memories is of the time I met my favorite celebrity at a New York drinking establishment. It was just a chance meeting, some sort of "bloggers bash" or some such was going on. We really connected. We talked about important things, like literature -- she had been an English major before returning to school to get a degree you can do something with -- and I'd spent some time boning up on high-brow books so we'd have something to talk about (in case we happened to bump into each other). I remember looking up into her deep eyes. I'm 6 foot. She's somewhat taller. I called her by name. She told me to call her Megan. I thought that was weird, but I played along. She had a far away look as she responded to my questions about "My Life", a book that was popular at the time. I thought, "Wow! She's deep!" The conversation only lasted a minute or two. The crowd of others kept pressing in, intruding, finally breaking us apart. It was too brief a moment, but I'll always cherish that oneness I felt with her. It was as if we were momentary soul mates.
Now I learn some people fake such things. Too, too, cruel. I don't know what to think.
I don't see how to encourage women to report actual rapes without also generating some false reports. I think there is an unavoidable tradeoff here. I think the real culprit in the Duke case is the DA who should have declined to prosecute.
I second James B. Shearer's comment. According to the post, it was a nurse asking the question. A nurse's job is to find out what, if anything, is wrong so it can be treated. Seems reasonable that such direct questions may be the best way to do that.
I don't think proper evidentiary technique in questioning possible complainants should be a nurse's primary concern.
When a stripper passed out in Durham.
I guess it happened years ago. I started having sex at a very early age. I’m not sure why, I just wanted to. When I was still in high school, I was in competition with myself to see how many boys I could have sex with in a week. I became quite self educated in the subtle differences there are in each boys genitalia.
Guys who looked like they were packing huge equipment sometimes where packing “happy meal” toys, while guys you would least expect would be packing man-size equipment that would make any girl’s mouth water and pusy sweat.
One day I had sex with three boys in the bathroom of my boyfriend’s house, and I immediately got a reputation f being easy. That reputation was a double edged sword. On the positive side, I got more guys than ever, but on the negative side everyone knew. Even in this age of “equal rights” girls still suppose to not like having sex. Strangely, feminist are the ones perpetuating this myth. A feminist friend of mine told me if I claimed I was raped, I could redeem myself and reputation. I could blame my avid hunger for sex on “being abused at an early age”. She even suggested that I claim I was raped by my father. My reputation would be instantly vindicated as I enjoyed all the powers and benefits of being a “victim”.
Years later when I was being dishonorable discharged from the Navy for having sex with over half the men and few of the women in my squad, I claimed I was raped, but since many of my sexcapades were video taped, I didn’t want to risk being caught in a lie because I couldn’t remember which guys and gals video taped me and which ones didn’t, so I made a claim in 1996 that I was raped by three boys when I was in high school.
It was tough living the lie, and I wasn’t interested in being in the Navy anymore. A friend told me I could make tons of money by marrying a man, having his child, then leaving him forcing him to pay child support which can take up to 60% of his net pay. If I had children from three different guys, I could collect over one thousand dollars of tax free child support each month for 18 years, but that plan fell through because I married a loser who found out I gave birth to another man’s child while married to him. My ex-husband tried to gain custody of my child, but I didn’t want to pay child support to him, so in 1998 I claimed that he kidnapped me and tried to kill me.
I’ve been a stripper/prostitute/escort for awhile now, and I’ve been taking a few classes at UCNC in hopes to recruit a few girls of my own to pimp out. One night in 2002 I was having a particular good night, so I partied a little too hard, gave a public lap dance to a cab driver, when he wouldn’t have sex with me in exchange for cab fare, I stole his cab, and when the cops tried to stop me, I tried to kill them. I’m still on probation for that little incident.
Earlier this year in 2006, I was working my ass off – literally! I had sex with a “client”, then with my boyfriend, then with a battery vaginal sex toy, then with two guys in exchange for a ride to the lacrosse party. The boys were pissed because I arrived so wasted. I had my routine party drugs that evening and I was feeling grrrrrreate! I stumbled all over the place, and after five minutes I wanted to leave. After why not? I already was paid. My stripper friend, “K”, was arguing with the boys over us taking the money without providing a show. She called them racial slurs and they responded in kind, but to get them back, she called 911 and lied claiming that we were only driving by and racial slurs were being yelled at us. We laughed and laughed that the 911 –people could be so stupid.
I was so wasted that I forgot my money and phone at the boys’ house, but the $400.00 “K” didn’t want to slpit her take with me, so she called the cops to have me arrested. I drank the last of my booze and took the last of my party drugs so the cops wouldn’t atke it. By the time the cops arrived I was feeling “fffffffine!” And that’s when it hit me! I was being arrested for … oh I forgot, but to get out of it I claimed rape. That always works. I was surprised they believed me. My story was wild and a fantastic fantasy, but I had no evidence to back it up. I only had a little scratch on my knee from when I fell when I was totally wasted, and a little scrape on my ankle. The doctor and the nurse checked my pusy. I really enjoyed that. I’m thinking of having pap smears every week. I love laying there naked with my legs up and cold metal probes are inserted into my vagina. I must have had four orgasms just waiting there.
The local DA, he’s such a loser, wanted so badly to get elected that he cherry picked every piece of evidence to make a case. All he cared about was making national news. He said it was better than sex, and I would agree. In college, the DA should have spent less time with his head in books, and more time learning how to please a woman. You’d figure a white man with such a small penis would make up the difference with some kind of technique.
It’s amazing how feminist groups and racist groups are fast to jump on cases like this. I figure I can make bucks on the movie right alone. I thin it’s a laugh how news anchors like Nancy and Wendy twist and stretch any evidence or story to make sure people believe a rape actually occurred, but when someone points out that the evidence proves the rape didn’t really exist, both Nancy and Wendy claim that others are twisting and stretching the evidence. Talk about the kettle calling the pot black. Nancy and Wendy are my heroes. They have no integrity and that’s probably how they got where they are. Girls like Nancy, Wendy, and me should stick together. Using victimhood as a weapon and tool for personal gains will get us rich! I kinda feel sorry for those boys though, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
This is only my personal fictional story.
"Have you been raped?" That's the way we start services here at church of the feminist! Drinking may be like fasting in old traditions. "You got something against fasting, mister? Step on over here and fit your wrists in these handcuffs."
New Yorker reporter Peter Boyer offers an exceptionally gentle version of Duke President Brodhead's conduct in the Lacrosse Rape case. For a reasoned but stinging critique, see K.C. Johnson's web-log post 'Dissembling'.
While Boyer takes a pass, Johnson also discusses the disgraceful conduct of much of the Duke faculty in rushing to public judgement and discarding due process, exemplified by the statements of 'The Group of 88' [Duke Professors].
Posted by: michael on August 29, 2006 7:19 AM
"Have you been raped?" That's the way we start services here at church of the feminist!"
To answer your question: Like the Duke lacrosse stripper with the extensive criminal record and history of lying about being raped and kidnapped... nope.
God bless you. The church and feminist loves sheep like you. You don't think for yourself and you're blindly lead.
Krystal, the pleasure of meeting a deacon in the church is all mine.
Madame Krystal - your publisher called. It seems you're a few thousand words short. Please visit a Hollywood hypnotist to "recover" a few more incidents as soon as possible. Thanks.
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