It Takes a Vil age
It happens so often that I, at least, cannot keep track of it.
A woman is only believed if and when other women come
forward to say the man or men raped them, too. The oddness
of this should be transparent: if I'm robbed and my neighbor
isn’t, I’m still robbed - there is no legal or social agreement
that in order for me, the victim of a robbery, to be believed,
the burglar has to have robbed my neighbors. As writer Chris
Matthews said, “There are banks that Willy Sut on didn’t rob. ”
I remember an early, ter ible case in which a woman with a
history of mental upheaval due to her father’s incestuous rape
of her was raped by her psychiatrist. She had no credibility,
as they say, and the jury was doing a full-tilt boogie toward
vindicating the accused.
No one noticed a famous character actor who came to the
trial every day. The actor sat quietly and used her formidable
skil to help herself disappear. As the case was heading to the
jury, which was going to acquit, the actor came forward:
exactly the same thing had happened to her - father-daughter
incest and rape by this same psychiatrist. The actor testified
and the media printed pictures of her. Because of the actor’s
familiarity to a large audience and the obvious ter or she felt
in exposing herself, the jury did not find for the rapist. How
do I know that the ter or was real? I talked with her.
In that case what no one seemed to understand was why the
victim, raped twice now by persons who were supposed to
protect and care for her, raped twice now by figures of power
and authority, was unstable - of course she was. Since she had
no credibility precisely because of the ef ects of the two rapes
on her, she needed rescue by the actor. Once the actor testified,
there were other women prepared to testify, and it was because
of the other women waiting in the wings that the defense
collapsed. In fact, the psychiatrist knew by virtue of his learning and expertise that incested women were staggeringly vulnerable and easy to shame; he bet his reputation and
professional life that shame would shut them up no mat er
how egregious his sexual abuse of them.
It takes a vil age of women to nail a rapist. Some rapists of
children have molested or assaulted hundreds of children before
they are caught for their first offense. Rapists of adult women
are high-brow and low-brow, white trash and black trash,
cunning and brutal, smart and stupid; some are high achievers;
some are rich; some are famous. Since the woman is always
on trial - this time to be evaluated on her credibility - there
