There’s a new article up on Salon.com today by Roy Black, the lawyer “best known for his successful defense of William Kennedy Smith on rape charges” entitled “Why we should protect those accused of rape“, in which the author attempts to argue the case for anonymity for defendants in rape cases.
The standfirst gives a pretty big clue as to the tone the rest of the piece is going to take – ‘DSK, Kobe, Assange, Flatley: Did they deserve to be smeared before a verdict? A legendary trial attorney argues no ‘
And here are just a few choice quotes:
On DSK:
“We did all we could to make a public spectacle of him. Dragged him off his Paris flight; interrogated him all night to look suitably haggard; paraded him, handcuffed between two beefy cops, through a scrum of tabloid cameras; then plastered the seedy photographs worldwide. He was hounded out of his apartment; shuttled from place to place like nuclear waste; an electronic nanny clamped on his ankle and suffered the ignominy of paying $200,000 a month for his own prison guards.
We are relentless at public shaming and humiliation.”
Seriously, just let that last sentence sink in for a minute, and then remember: he’s talking here about men accused of rape, not about the victims and survivors of rape and other crimes of sexual violence….
Black goes on:
“This type of abuse is routinely suffered by lesser-known rape defendants. They are terrorized by the media circus, and turned into carnival freaks. Unruly crowds rally in front of their home. They are followed, spat on, chased through the streets, forced to move, lose their sanity and some even commit suicide to end the abuse. They are the new victims of modern technology: Google, Twitter, Facebook and cable news.”
And how about this:
“We grant the accuser name suppression due to the stigma attached to rape but, after a gradual, and justifiable shift in our collective consciousness, there now is a far greater stigma for men accused of rape.“
And this:
“For decades, there has been a unique, growing disparity between the way we treat accused rapists and their accusers.“
Unique? Really? What, to treat the victims of a crime differently from how we treat those accused of perpetrating a crime? I don’t think so.
This arrant nonsense is of course then followed by the usual victim blaming blah:
“The protections against false accusations have been whittled away one by one to make it easier to charge and easier to convict, with the unintended consequence of making it easier to make a false accusation.”
which is then followed by a bit of a moan about the fact that it’s apparently getting easier for people to be able to file rape charges, even if there’s no “corroborating evidence” and no “Evidence of a clear element of force or the threat of force.”
Which as far as I’m concerned is just as it should be. Not all rape is accompanied by physical violence, so to suggest as this eminent lawyer seems to be doing that rape is only rape if these conditions apply is completely ridiculous.
Black concludes by citing Britain as an example, where he claims attempts at introducing anonymity for rape defendants were abandoned last year “because of vigorous objection from feminists, who worry that women are less likely to accuse if the suspect is not named”.
Which isn’t how I remember it at all. In fact I know that’s not what happened or what our objection was to the plan. Here’s Crispin Blunt explaining the government’s u turn: “Evidence is lacking in a number of key areas – in particular whether the inability to publicise a person’s identity will prevent further witnesses to a known offence from coming forward, or further unknown offences by the same person from coming to light.”
Nope, there’s nothing there about women being less likely to report if men are not named, simply an acknowledgement that when men are named further victims are more likely to step forward. Oh, and if I remember rightly there were also (entirely valid) arguments about how granting anonymity for rape defendants implied they were a special case and further stigmatised the survivors of rape and other sex crimes.
But Roy Black wouldn’t know anything about that, because Roy Black isn’t interested in the survivors of rape and sexual violence: he’s just interested in the poor men accused of rape – the alleged “new victims” of a cruel and unjust world.
You really couldn’t make this shit up if you tried.
hat-tip to @rayfilar of Political Correctness Gone Mad who tweeted the link to this article earlier today.
Too Much To Say For Myself 
Surely the problem is that we treat the accusers in rape cases differently to accusers in other sorts of crime, not the accused. In all other crimes, by the time things get to court, everybody is pretty sure that a crime was committed – only the identity (and in some special and very serious cases, the intent) of the perpetrator are in question.
Nobody ever questions if a company’s funds were embezzled in an embezzlement case – it’s only in question whether the defendant did the embezzling. Nobody It’s only accusers in rape trials who are put in the dock to prove that a crime has been committed against them.
I’m all for treating rape cases the same as any other crime; I just don’t think this guy would like the consequences.
Spot on Marina, and yes, I suspect he’d hate the consequences.
You know, we do treat accusers and accused differently in rape cases. The accused has the advantage of having their sexual and their criminal histories blocked from admission into court. The accuser does not have this luxury. So if the accuser had a one night stand 20 years ago, that can be used to try to break down their credibility. It is horrible.
Please take a mintue to view my blog if you have not seen it. http://www.victimnomore.wordpress.com. I have started this blog to share my experiences and the aftermath. I am a survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Yawn more MRA propaganda claiming men accused of rape and/or male sexual violence against women are all ‘innocent victims’ because remember everyone – rape is a very rare occurrence and only mythical deviant male monsters with horns on their heads rape and/or subject women to male sexual violence.
I wonder what is the sex/identity of those ‘people’ filing rape charges against innocent men (sic), because normally ‘people’ is code word for men but in this instance it is women. Still never mind rape continues to be narrowly defined from the male perspective which means men continue to be entitled to use coercion and/or threats of physical violence in order to gain sexual access to women and it is called ‘normal male heterosexual expression’ not male sexual coercion of a woman/women.
We can ignore fact as this male MRA does in his article for Salon, that the law was created by men for men which is why the male defendant(s) are never the ones on trial but their female victims. Male defendants are not commonly subjected to having their character discredited or their sexual proclivities minutely examined by prosecution counsel.
Men charged with rape are the unlucky ones because most male rapists are never even charged let alone convicted of their sexual crimes against women. That is why rape and male sexual violence against women and girls continues to be the easiest crime to commit with the least likelihood of the male perpetrators being convicted.
Women survivors of men’s sexual violence are the ones who have to endure the aftermath of what these men have done to them and it is still women who are the ones stigmatised and subjected to male hatred and contempt. Oh but we can ignore that fact because only men are human and any woman who dares to charge a male with raping her is automatically presumed to be an innate liar. Men never lie do they?
I agree with all of what you have to say Cath. I don’t think people like Assange should be given anonymity. And it is quite disgusting that he is defended by the likes of Khan and Pilger in the way they have been doing.
Recently I saw a documentary about the Norfolk 4 (USA). It was essentially about how a policeman ‘tortured’ four men into confessing that they had raped and killed a woman. The four men were innocent and they have been given a partial pardon after serving lengthy periods in jail. However, they still have to register as sex offenders and when they move into a neighbourhood all their neighbours have to be told about them. If one neighbour objects they can’t move. It’s a documentary well worth looking at as it relates to this issue.
Thanks for the hat-tip Cath. It took me three tries before I could read that article to the end.
Not sure about this but I think the first paragraph has now been rewritten? I seem to remember it saying ‘all have been subject to a false rape allegation’ yesterday. Does anyone remember?
I don’t remember it saying that Ray, if it had I would have included it as one of the quotes. It could have been changed before I looked at it though….
thanks for writing this cath.
it is just so endless isn’t it? victim blaming, rape apologists, conspiracy theories…i wrote about DSK on my blog and a furious commenter kept informing me that i didn’t understand how the ‘world works’ and how the accusations were a ‘smokescreen’ for his political enemies…unfortunately the way the world works at the mo is that women aren’t believed, they are discredited, they are painted as liars and the perpetrators are portrayed as victims.
Innocent before proven guilty means that the accuser is innocent of ‘false accusation’ too. that’s what gets missed.
Today it was revealed that she never said anything about making money out of him. She said that he was rich and powerful, which he is.
I am sick of rape culture, i am sick of this endless cycle of blaming women, treating women as liars…
And don’t even get me started on Assange!
I think a lot of what he says is reasonable enough. It’s only controversial because of the nasty anti-feminist accused vs. accusers spin that surrounds the topic.
If we run through the points. (1) Perp walks and unnecessary refusal or restrictive bail. I notice Cath didn’t defend this, because it is unnecessarily harmful to people yet to be convicted and doesn’t help victims – all that’s really being argued for is a decent criminal justice system. (2) Assault and harm through vigilantism. Again – if people have a decent case that they may suffer serious harm through publicity, they should be able to apply for protective anonymity. I don’t think it should be blanket, but I don’t think anyone would really oppose a measured response – no-one’s actually favour of the law not protecting people from vigilantism.
“Nope, there’s nothing there about women being less likely to report if men are not named, simply an acknowledgement that when men are named further victims are more likely to step forward.”
I don’t really believe this. If you take the black cab rapes people said naming was vital. But would more people come forward if it said on the news that joe bloggs is accused of a series of rapes in taxis than if they said an anonymous defendant is accused of a series of rapes in taxis. I think general descriptions would alert people just as well. It’d actually probably strengthen the case, as people would volunteer a specific name without being prompting from the media.
@sianushka
“Innocent before proven guilty means that the accuser is innocent of ‘false accusation’ too. that’s what gets missed.”
Totally agree with this. Often the accused is checked for integrity, any previous mishap automatically means that they are liars and therefore their accusation is false.
Without them you’d be out of a job! 🙂
And Marina I second your comment is spot on. Rape is a crime that is treated differently. Why? What are the accused ashamed of?
I didn’t know writing a blog was a job GS5.
I think James has some good points, but the fact is this kind of treatment isn’t somehow unique to rape defendants. The Mail have just paid substantial damages to Christopher Jefferies for libel, but when Rebecca Leighton was arrested (but had not yet been charged) with the murder of patients at Stepping Hill hospital, they ran a completely bullshit story about her ‘party lifestyle’, based on her facebook page. Oh she goes out and gets drunk, she must be a murderer then…
Leighton has now been charged, but actually I think this is a good example of where it hasn’t been proved that a crime has been committed before the case gets to court. The prosecution needs to prove that the patients in question were indeed killed (as opposed to dying of natural causes) and that the defendant killed them, to obtain a conviction. Until then Leighton must be regarded as innocent – even if the Fail don’t seem to grasp that.
Frankly I think there’s a lot of hype and bullshit on both sides of the argument. The idea that the head of the IMF could be arrested quietly is a bit unrealistic, so the claim that he is somehow the victim of some kind of unique persecution is nonsense. It’s just the media doing what the media do.
And rape is somewhat different from other kinds of crime in that in most cases, what differentiates a crime from a legal act is the question of consent, which can only be tested in court. It’s very rare, given the availabilty of DNA testing that there isn’t evidence of the physical act that may comprise rape, it’s usually an argument about consent. So it’s inevitable that we cannot be sure a crime has been committed before the trial, there’d be no point in having a trial otherwise. Rape is different in that the identity of the accused, or the fact that intercourse took place, isn’t usually disputed.
BUT think of the case of the man found locked in a sports bag – there were questions asked about whether he had been killed or not, or even been locked in there by someone else, as far as I know, it’s still an open enquiry. Vincent Tabak has admitted the manslaughter of Joanna Yeates, but denies murder. I presume that when he goes on trial, some kind of defence will be presented.
I tend to agree with James, that naming the accused in things like the black cab rapes won’t lead to more people coming forward, what would to is appeals for people to come forward – because the circumstances were quite unusual – being drugged by a taxi driver doesn’t happen that often.
However suppose the same man commits “date rape” several times. Chances are a lot of those incidents aren’t likely to even be reported. Basically in a single case like this is one person’s word against the others, so you can see why a jury may be reluctant to convict – and a victim would be unlikely to report. But what if the same man was accused several times by women who don’t know each other? Frankly it’s more likely that he is a rapist, and more likely that a jury would convict if presented with evidence of multiple offences. Naming may sometimes be useful.
Correction – Rebecca Leighton has not been charged with murder, but with criminal damage with intent to endanger life.
“Yawn more MRA propaganda”
Jennifer, you say yawn, feminists are yawning, and the propaganda campaign is being won absolutely and completely by the MRA. Men have control of the media and the MRA have successfully cast rape defendants as ordinary men not rapists, inspiring instinctive sympathy from both men and women. Most women cannot face walking into a police station and making a rape charge when it is true, how many would dream of doing so when it is not? Yet women think others do so in large numbers because the media tells them so.
Cath, your employer is among the most guilty of all. The Guardian are the ones who should be ensuring women are heard and they are not. You are heard. Let me I ask you again. What are you doing about it, apart from providing the platform for MRA propaganda?
Interesting blog. You may like to take a look at my piece on the same subject: http://dasteepsspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/10/rape-and-anonymity.html