For the past two weeks, I’ve kept a close watch on what my community is calling the #VandyTrial. (You can read a detailed account from The Tennessean. Editor’s note: There is graphic and unsettling information throughout the news reports.) It’s a case against four former Vanderbilt football players accused of a plethora of charges in relation to the rape of another former Vanderbilt student. Two of those four men were convicted Tuesday on all the charges brought against them (two charges were lowered, but also received guilty verdicts).
As I’ve watched this trial unfold and read the news reports leading up to it, I’ve cried several times and I’ve dropped my head to pray many times. There are numerous things wrong with this story. The rape, for starters, was atrocious. The victim was unconscious and one of the now-convicted men was her boyfriend at the time. I can’t fathom the “how” in this scenario. It seems more like an episode of Law & Order SVU than it does a reality.
It gets worse. There were four men involved in some way in this story. Four who allegedly participated or watched. Football is a spectator sport, and it seems to these men, so is violently sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. How many people could’ve stopped this from happening? How many people serving them drinks could have said, “That’s enough.”? How many people interacting with them at the bar could have seen the drinking was getting out-of-hand? How many people who saw them carrying an unconscious woman into a dorm? How many people who saw the victim lying in the hallway unconscious? How many who never considered, “This is wrong. Maybe I should stop it.”
It breaks my heart in a tremendous way—the kind that leaves you weeping in your car alone after you’ve heard the verdicts. I can’t describe the emotion I’ve felt watching this trial, and I cannot begin to comprehend or understand how this victim must have felt as this unfolded. Without knowing her personally, she is one of the bravest and strongest women I will ever know of and someone I will hold in the highest regard.
I’ve heard multiple people argue about her lifestyle or her actions the night of the crime. I don’t care what she was wearing. I don’t care what she had to drink. I don’t care what her sexual history looked like. This was not OK. It is never OK. I repeat, NEVER.
I made some incredibly poor decisions in college. I drank too much. I didn’t always choose the right friends or the right crowds with whom to spend my time. In this case, the victim was with people she trusted, and people she saw on a daily basis. And the unimaginable still happened. Perhaps that’s the undercurrent of the emotion I’ve felt following this trial; perhaps part of me recognizes the reality of what could have been in my life and the lives of so many other women I knew in college.
Blaming the victim in any capacity should be an abhorred practice and one we, as a society, should end immediately. There is no argument for this type of behavior and to suggest otherwise is nothing short of ludicrous.
The culture surrounding rape has to change. It keeps victims quiet. It keeps sinister criminals on the street. It causes shame, guilt and remorse for victims when there should be justice, advocacy and healing instead.
- What were you wearing…
- You were drinking; what did you expect…
- Why did you put yourself in that situation…
- Maybe if you weren’t so promiscuous…
According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, or RAINN, 1 in 6 women have been involved in an attempted or completed rape. That’s 17 percent of the female population in America. That’s someone you know. What about the statistic RAINN offers that 97 of every 100 rapists never see jail time?
A local columnist for The Tennessean wrote, “Justice is harsh because we sometimes need to be reminded how harsh the crimes are to those who are victimized.” And another local journalist cut a caller off when he began to suggest some responsibility on the victim because of her drinking the night of the crime.
We have to stop shaming and blaming victims for rape and sexual crimes. Instead of teaching women how to not get raped, let’s educate men on not raping. Let’s remind society that no really does mean no, and not some challenge to make it a yes. Let’s protect victims and stand up for them. Let’s stop digging into their past sexual history as a justification for a violent crime. There is never an excuse, never a justification, never a rationalization, never a defense of rape. Never.