Date Rape: Blame vs. Judgment

In the last two decades or so, American society has become aware of a phenomenon now known popularly as date rape, but perhaps more accurately as acquaintance rape or acquaintance sexual assault.

It is a crime wherein the victim is forced, coerced or somehow compelled to play a role in sex-related acts against the victim's will and, at times, without the victim's knowledge.

A common scenario is for the victim, typically a woman, to be at some kind of social event with the perpetrator, typically a man that she knows, but one that she perhaps does not know very well. The perpetrator or assailant somehow gets the victim to perform sex acts. Sometimes this is violently, but very often this is done through intimidation or some means that falls short of physical violence, although often the threat of physical violence, though perhaps not explicit, is present.

Another common scenario is for the victim to be drugged, such that the victim is unable to make sound decisions. At times the victim is incoherent and perhaps only semi-conscious. Under such circumstances, the victim may have agreed to the act, and it is not uncommon for more than one assailant to assault the victim.

There are many variations on this theme. The key element is that as the assault begins, the assailant and the victim are not total strangers; they may have met a few hours previously, they may have known each other for years, but they have some acquaintance, hence the term acquaintance rape. Since a common scenario is for the victim to be assaulted while on a date with the assailant, the crime is commonly known as date rape.

It is not my intention to go into the legalities and illegalities surrounding this crime; for further information, I have added a new panel in the sidebar with a great many links. My intention for this post is to focus in on the issue of judgment.

For perhaps as long as there have been men and women, there has been the crime of rape. While American society only now has a name for it, I'm confident acquaintance rape has been around just as long.

One phenomenon typical to sexual assaults of any kind, as long as they have been occurring, is the effort to justify the crime. This typically involves blaming the victim. In the case of date rape, the crime often gets brushed aside by excuses like:

1) Things just got a little out of control.

2) She said 'no', but she meant 'yes'.

3) If she didn't want to do it, why did she accompany him to [wherever the crime occurred]?

4) If she wasn't looking for that kind of action, why was she dressed like that? Why was she hanging out at that place or with that person?

Etc.

Again, such comments are efforts to justify an act that should not have happened. They are efforts to blame the victim for the crime.

Make no mistake about it: a sexual assault is a sexual assault. For a sexual act to not be a sexual assault, there must be consent, and for there to be consent, it is implicitly understood that the one consenting be able to give consent.

Legally, this is not the case with people under a certain age, the "age of consent" -- although the person may have said "yes", it is accepted by society that the person is too young for that decision to be an informed one. There are similar laws regarding people who have some kind of mental handicap. There are also similar laws regarding people who have ingested drugs or alcohol; although the person may have consented, the effects of the drugs or alcohol cast doubts on the legitimacy of the consent, and so the sex act is a crime in many jurisdictions.

The victim is not the one to blame.

Typically, however, in addition to anger (which is legitimate and understandable), the victim also feels a sense of guilt. It is this that I wish to address.

Although the victim is not to blame, that does not mean that the victim made no mistakes; that does not mean that there is nothing that the victim could have done differently to avoid the attack. This may be more often the case in acquaintance rape situations than in situations where the assailant and the victims are total strangers.

Let me explain this by making an analogy.

You are driving your car down the highway. The speed limit is 60 MPH. It is daytime, the weather is excellent, you are well-rested, your vehicle is free of mechanical errors, and there are few other cars on the road. You are driving at 58 MPH.

Are you breaking the law?

An oncoming car, which has been staying in its lane, at the last moment crosses the road into your lane and there is a collision. Later it is determined the other driver was intoxicated.

The other driver is to blame. That driver should not have been driving while intoxicated. Since there was no indication to you of a problem until the last moment, is there anything you could have done better?

In short, were you using good judgment?


Now we consider a different set of circumstances. It is now late at night, after midnight. You are very tired. Since it is nighttime, visibility is not what it is in the daytime. There has been a slight intermittent drizzle, which has left the road slippery. Furthermore, the drizzle worsens visibility. You are driving a little slower, at 50 MPH.

Are you breaking the law?

Ahead of you there is an oncoming vehicle. Because visibility is bad, and because you are tired, you don't notice that it is swerving around the road. As it approaches you, it crosses the road and collides with you in your lane. Later it is determined the other driver was intoxicated.

The other driver here broke the law by driving while intoxicated. As a result of that, the other driver crossed into your lane -- another violation of the law -- and collided with you. The accident is that other driver's fault.

Were you using good judgment? Or, had you made some decisions that limited your ability to avoid or react to the drunk driver?

In many rape trials, the victim is on trial as much as the accused. In defending her (or his) reputation, the victim is essentially raped again by the judicial system.

Many accusations against the victim in such circumstances center not around whether the victim broke any laws, but rather around whether the victim was using good judgment. I suspect that it is often the case that the victim looks back on the event and realizes that good judgment was not used; I further suspect that this may at times be a source of the "guilt" that the victim feels.

In the links on the sidebar there can be found information on how to prevent date rape. Many of the suggestions there are simply what I call using good judgment.

Again, make no mistake about it: the perpetrator who is committing the assault is the one breaking the law; the perpetrator is to blame.

My point is this: let's not make the perpetrator's crime any easier to commit than we have to; let's not limit our abilities to either avoid or at least react to the assault.

Let's use good judgment.

(Many thanks to a friend of mine, a former Wisconsin State Trooper and former judge, who originally explained this phenomenon to me years ago with a similar analogy.)