Some years ago 2 French
teen girls were raped on numerous occasions by an accused 14 different men.
These men were taken to court and trialed but only 4 out of the 14 were
convicted of the charges of sexual assault, the rest of the men were acquitted.
In France there was outrage about the outcome of the case, not just that there
were only four convictions but that the men who were convicted they received
very light sentence. The main concern amongst feminists groups in France is
that the light sentences the men received will send the wrong type of message
both to victims and their rapists. To the victims, a man receiving only one
year for such an egregious crime sends the message that it isn’t worth filing a
complaint for sexual assault. The perpetrators then get the very wrong
impression that rape is okay because even if you are convicted you will get a
light sentence.
Reading this article I
was reminded of Law and Order SVU, which I had been watching the previous
night. Those familiar with the show know that the case deals mostly with sexual
assault cases. The French victims of rape had difficulty proving their case
against the defendants because of lack of evidence and hesitancy to speak out against
the assaults. This reminded me of something that one of the characters of SVU
said, that women have to prove they were raped, you never have to ask a victim
of burglary if they asked for it. This is one of the things that upsets me
about rape complaints. Victims just can’t get taken on their word that a sexual
assault happened. The have to go through invasive questioning and tests that
are often embarrassing and difficult to go through. I understand the necessity
for some of these methods but there is also the problem of credibility.
Sometimes the victims own credibility is a part of the trial. I think the court
system just perpetuates the cycle of victimization. Ultimately I think the
system needs work because often time it fails in aiding victims or in some
cases preventing crimes from happening.
One very specific
example that stands out in my mind is in the case of Jaycee Dugard who at 11
years old had much of her life stolen. The man convicted for her abduction and
repeated sexual assault is Phillip Girrado. Girrado should not have been out in
the general public in the first place because he had been dealt a sentence of 5
years to life for the kidnap and rape of a South Lake Tahoe woman. Girrado was
released from prison after serving only 7 months of his sentence. Even if
Girrado had served the minimum 5 years of his sentence and had been released he
was wrongly classified as only needing low monitoring as part of his probation.
Lax probation inspections continued to allow Girrado to hold Jaycee Dugard in
captivity. There were numerous occasions under which Girrado’s activities
should have been considered suspicious or a violation of his probation but
because of his low level of monitoring he was able to get away with his crime
for so long.
No comments:
Post a Comment