Rape victims on trial

Posted at 12:46 PM on May 18, 2011 by Bob Collins (14 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Media

The alleged rape of a woman in New York by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, is giving news organizations fits by rekindling an old debate that once seemed settled: Should alleged rape victims be named? And how much should the news audience know about her?

The New York Times danced close to the name by identifying her race, her neighborhood and, apparently, her character.

That earned this rebuke from The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg:

I don't understand reporting like this. What is the point? Does it matter that she is friendly? Does it matter that she is a good person? Does it matter that she has never been a problem? Of course not. Rape is rape. The character of the victim is irrelevant. There's one caveat to this idea: If reporters had discovered in the woman's past a pattern of making false accusations in criminal matters, well, then there's a plausible argument that information about her character should be reported. Otherwise, her mood, relative-friendliness or unfriendliness, shopping habits, dietary needs -- all completely immaterial.

One more thing: Reporters should think twice about visiting the neighborhood of an alleged rape victim in order to ask questions about her life and character. The unintended consequence of such a visit is to publicize, in the place where she lives, her plight, and raise possibly-destructive questions about her situation. Newspapers withhold the names of alleged rape victims for a reason: to protect their privacy. But when reporters ask family, friends and neighbors superfluous questions about the alleged rape victim, they have outed her in the place that matters most.

French media has named the alleged victim.

On CBS this morning, the woman's attorney, Jeffrey Shapiro, said the woman will tell her story when the time is right:

But it's clear that this story is going to be much more than a single criminal case; it's going to be all about how all alleged rape victims are treated in the court of public opinion.

On that score, commentator Ben Stein went off the rails yesterday in his defense of the IMF official, arguing that he couldn't have raped anyone because that's not what economists do.

In life, events tend to follow patterns. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals, for example. Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes? Can anyone tell me of any heads of nonprofit international economic entities who have ever been charged and convicted of violent sexual crimes? Is it likely that just by chance this hotel maid found the only one in this category? Maybe Mr. Strauss-Kahn is guilty but if so, he is one of a kind, and criminals are not usually one of a kind.

For a glimpse at the strife the case is causing in journalism circles, check out a live chat hosted by the Poynter Institute.

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Comments (14)

Wonder what Ben Stein would be saying if it was his daughter who had been raped? This is exactly why so many rapes and assaults go unreported.

And it seems, according to NPR yesterday, that at least one other woman has come forward saying Strauss-Kahn had assaulted her too.

Posted by Kassie | May 18, 2011 12:54 PM

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OMG! Ben Stein is even more of a wacko than I thought!

Also: why does the victim need a lawyer?

Posted by Jamie | May 18, 2011 2:04 PM

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Perhaps good ol' boy Ben would be more comfortable with the term plunder as IMF economists have certainly done that in the past.

Posted by Sam | May 18, 2011 2:20 PM

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Jamie: The victim needs a lawyer, because it has not been proven she was a victim.

Kassie: It is not yet established that anyone has been raped.

It seems like Kassie and Jamie have convicted this guy already.

Just to be clear, all allegations of rape should be taken seriously. Personally, I loathe Ben Stein and Strauss-Kahn surely seems like the sort of guy that might pull something like this. All the same, Strauss-Kahn still has civil rights. It is possible the woman is lying. Wait until the trial is over.

Posted by John P. | May 18, 2011 2:21 PM

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I'm all for treating the victim with more compassion than the alleged assaulter, especially given it's highly unlikely she's falsely reporting her rape:

False Allegations of Sexual Assault: An Analysis of Ten Years of Reported Cases (Dec. 2010)
http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/16/12/1318.abstract

(I realize it's a small sample, but the authors make a good argument that their research is generalizable to the rest of the population.)

Posted by Allie | May 18, 2011 2:32 PM

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One of the great misconceptions of the Constitution is the belief that people are afforded the belief that he/she is innocent until proven guilty outside the court. There is no such right conveyed in the Constitution and no burden on public opinion to recognize such a right.

The only right is that the judicial system affords is due process and -- also via the 5th amendment -- a burden of proof on the government to prove guilt.

By the way, that terminology is one of the flaws of the language as innocence and being judged "not guilty" are not the same thing.

In the meantime, people are not violating anyone's civil right by exercising the "if it quacks like a duck" option.

Posted by Bob Collins | May 18, 2011 2:32 PM

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Without making any comment about the alleged rapist or rapee, it's being pointed out on some blogs that there is a recent trend in rape/sex crime allegations against individuals working to achieve any kind of meaningful financial reform.

I have no clue if Strauss-Kahn was working on IMF reform, but it's worth noting that of all the charges you can make against a man, rape is the one charge that will lead the left to abandon you in droves without any serious examination of the evidence.

Eliot Spitzer was threatening the financial industry, and suddenly we had his credit card transactions with a brothel on the front page of the NYTimes. Scott Ritter said no WMDs in Iraq, suddenly we learned he's a pervert. In neither case did the truthful allegation impeach the work of either man, but in both cases their work was ignored after the allegations were made.

Justice will be done in this case, I'm sure, but in the meantime some of this outrage appears to be orchestrated. I would recommend waiting on this one until more is known.

And no, I do not mean to imply that rape is not a serious crime, but I will say that we seem to have reached the point where the "allegation" of rape is seen as being the exact same thing as a conviction.

Posted by Mark Gisleson | May 18, 2011 3:23 PM

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Well Bob, there's been some talk I've read about how the so-called "perp walk" affects public perception of the accused, and having served on a jury where I was asked about any prior opinions I had of the defendant, such perceptions do matter in the courtroom. I don't think the media is to blame for covering a perp walk, but I do see how it can be abused by the authorities.

BTW, don't worry about responding to this right away - I've heard the media has now converged on the home of the Terminator's love child and coverage should be commencing shortly...

Posted by David Wilford | May 18, 2011 3:37 PM

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//such perceptions do matter in the courtroom.

But that's why they ask you the question. My guess is in New York if they try hard enough, they'll find 12 people who haven't got a clue about this case no matter how much publicity it gets.

Back in my boyhood days, when I was a general assignment reporter covering courts, it used to depress me no end how uninformed potential jurors were about the news.

But, don't worry, something will happen to Lady Gaga, and they'll forget all about this alleged rape stuff.

Posted by Bob Collins | May 18, 2011 4:18 PM

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Mark, I don't know anything about Scott Ritter, but Eliot Spitzer's credit card transactions with a brothel could not have made news if he hadn't been conducting that "business".

Speaking of which, if DSK could spring for a $3K/night hotel stay, why didn't he just hire a sex worker to go with it? Shoulda, woulda, coulda...

And Ben Stein sounds absolutely crackers.

Posted by Heather | May 18, 2011 4:34 PM

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Mark, I think you're confusing Elliot Spitzer the attorney general with Elliot Spitzer the governor. It's kind of hard to pay attention to the "work he was doing" at the time these charges became public, given the fact that he quit as governor of New York and there wasn't any work he was doing.

But, yeah, I see your point. There's no way to fight a rape conviction in the court of public opinion. It's one reason why men should consider spending more time with their own spouses.

Posted by Bob Collins | May 18, 2011 4:38 PM

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At one time in my life I started counting all the women I knew who had been raped (relatives, friends, acquaintances). There were a LOT. I know a lot of stories, and almost none of them involve successfully pressing charges, let alone getting a conviction. So, when the NYPD hauls this guy off a plane? I just assume that there was some pretty convincing physical evidence for the cops to take that kind of swift action: signs of violence. I am willing to bet $500 that the details that emerge (because this poor woman has already been dragged through the mud in more than one language) will be sad and awful. Elliot Spitzer was not accused of rape, by the way.

Posted by Joanna | May 18, 2011 5:02 PM

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Joanna, therein lays the rub. Yes, it's ridiculously hard to bring rape charges against powerful men. Yet that's what happened. More incredibly, it was a hotel employee who brought the charges. Hotels are insanely NONcooperative when employees take legal action against guests. And you yourself point out that he could have easily paid for sexual services so why rape?

I can see all sides on this issue. Thirty years ago an acquaintance who sold her body for a living was brutally raped by a "customer." She called the cops and they laughed at her. It wasn't a joke. Rape never is.

Which is why DSK deserves a trial before we hang him.

Posted by Mark Gisleson | May 18, 2011 5:53 PM

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Randall Munroe of XKCD (a great web comic, btw) wrote a short post called Answering Ben Stein's Question.

He notes at least one economist and links to another person's Tumblr post that blows Stein's theory out of the water.

I eagerly await Ben Stein's next column to point out that particular point was not intended to be factual.

Posted by Greg W | May 19, 2011 7:55 AM

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