almost always needs to be more than one of her to attest to
the abuser’s predatory patterns.
This was one of the great roles that rape crisis centers played:
pat erns would emerge; women who could not bring themselves to go to the law could provide a lot of data on active rapists; even without appearing in court, the knowledge that
there were other victims might give a prosecutor some bal s
in bringing a case and trying to get a conviction for the one
woman, by definition not credible enough. In the early days,
it was still thought that women could not argue court cases,
so there were virtually no female prosecutors.
Each time the women’s movement achieves success in providing a way for a woman to speak out, in court or in the media, the prorape constituency lobbies against her: against her
credibility. It’s as if we’re going to have a vote on it, the new
reality TV: are we for her or against her? Is she a liar or - let’s
be kind - merely disturbed? In the United States it is increasingly common to have the lawyers defending the accused rapist on television talk shows. The victim is slimed; the jury pool is
contaminated; what happens to the woman after the trial is
lost; she’s gone, disappeared, as if her larynx had been ripped
out of her throat and even her shadow had been rent.
The credibility issue is gender specific: it’s amazing how
with al the rapes there are so few rapists. If one follows the
misogynistic reporting on rape, one has to conclude that maybe
there are five guys. The worst thing about a legal system that
puts the worth of the accused above the worth of the victim
is that the creep almost always looks clean: somebody’s father,
somebody’s brother, somebody’s son. Don’t you care? we used
to ask; she’s somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister. The
answer was unequivocal: no, we don’t give a fuck. Worse was
the saccharine sweetness of those who pretended to care about
somebody’s mother, somebody’s sister. I’ve heard at least a
dozen criminal defense lawyers say, “I have a sister; I have a
daughter; I have a wife.” The rapists they defend use the same
locution. They want us to believe that the problem is that this
one woman wasn’t raped and the accused didn’t do it. Even
though criminal defense lawyers will admit that they rarely
have innocent clients, each time the public takes the sucker
punch: I have a sister; he has a sister; see his pretty suit; look
at how wel groomed he is. Her, she’s a mess. Wel , yes, she’s
been raped; it kind of messes you up. Oh, now we’re playing
victim, are we? Advice to young women: try not to be his first,
because then there aren’t others to confirm your story. You
can’t earn credibility; you can’t buy it; you can’t fake it; and
you’re a fucking fool if you think you have any.
