breasts. The jury, which had eight women on it, acquit ed -
they thought that he needed help. He. Needed. Help.
In the old days - or, to use the beautiful black expression,
“back in the day” - it was presumed that the woman was
sexually provocative or was trying to destroy the man with a
phony charge of rape. Now in the United States the question
is repeated ad nauseam: is she credible? For this question to
have any meaning, one would have to believe that rapists
pick their victims based on the victims' credibility. “Oh, she’s
credible; I'l rape her. ” Or, “No, she’s not credible; I’l wait
until a credible one comes by. ”
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The raped woman stil stands accused in the media, especial y if she has named the rapist. For one woman to say "I was raped" is easier than for one woman, Juanita Broderick,
to say “I was raped by William Jefferson Clinton. " Ms.
Broderick told us that she was raped and by whom; no one
has held him accountable in any way that matters.
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It Takes a Vil age
It happens so often that I, at least, cannot keep track of it.
A woman is only believed if and when other women come
forward to say the man or men raped them, too. The oddness
of this should be transparent: if I'm robbed and my neighbor
isn’t, I’m still robbed - there is no legal or social agreement
that in order for me, the victim of a robbery, to be believed,
the burglar has to have robbed my neighbors. As writer Chris
Matthews said, “There are banks that Willy Sut on didn’t rob. ”
I remember an early, ter ible case in which a woman with a
history of mental upheaval due to her father’s incestuous rape
of her was raped by her psychiatrist. She had no credibility,
as they say, and the jury was doing a full-tilt boogie toward
vindicating the accused.
No one noticed a famous character actor who came to the
trial every day. The actor sat quietly and used her formidable
skil to help herself disappear. As the case was heading to the
jury, which was going to acquit, the actor came forward:
exactly the same thing had happened to her - father-daughter
incest and rape by this same psychiatrist. The actor testified
and the media printed pictures of her. Because of the actor’s
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familiarity to a large audience and the obvious ter or she felt
in exposing herself, the jury did not find for the rapist. How
do I know that the ter or was real? I talked with her.
In that case what no one seemed to understand was why the
victim, raped twice now by persons who were supposed to
protect and care for her, raped twice now by figures of power
and authority, was unstable - of course she was. Since she had
no credibility precisely because of the ef ects of the two rapes
on her, she needed rescue by the actor. Once the actor testified,
there were other women prepared to testify, and it was because
of the other women waiting in the wings that the defense
collapsed. In fact, the psychiatrist knew by virtue of his learning and expertise that incested women were staggeringly vulnerable and easy to shame; he bet his reputation and
professional life that shame would shut them up no mat er
how egregious his sexual abuse of them.
It takes a vil age of women to nail a rapist. Some rapists of
children have molested or assaulted hundreds of children before
they are caught for their first offense. Rapists of adult women
are high-brow and low-brow, white trash and black trash,
cunning and brutal, smart and stupid; some are high achievers;
some are rich; some are famous. Since the woman is always
on trial - this time to be evaluated on her credibility - there
almost always needs to be more than one of her to attest to
the abuser’s predatory patterns.
This was one of the great roles that rape crisis centers played:
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pat erns would emerge; women who could not bring themselves to go to the law could provide a lot of data on active rapists; even without appearing in court, the knowledge that
there were other victims might give a prosecutor some bal s
in bringing a case and trying to get a conviction for the one
woman, by definition not credible enough. In the early days,
it was still thought that women could not argue court cases,
so there were virtually no female prosecutors.
Each time the women’s movement achieves success in providing a way for a woman to speak out, in court or in the media, the prorape constituency lobbies against her: against her
credibility. It’s as if we’re going to have a vote on it, the new
reality TV: are we for her or against her? Is she a liar or - let’s
be kind - merely disturbed? In the United States it is increasingly common to have the lawyers defending the accused rapist on television talk shows. The victim is slimed; the jury pool is
contaminated; what happens to the woman after the trial is
lost; she’s gone, disappeared, as if her larynx had been ripped
out of her throat and even her shadow had been rent.
The credibility issue is gender specific: it’s amazing how
with al the rapes there are so few rapists. If one follows the
misogynistic reporting on rape, one has to conclude that maybe
there are five guys. The worst thing about a legal system that
puts the worth of the accused above the worth of the victim
is that the creep almost always looks clean: somebody’s father,
somebody’s brother, somebody’s son. Don’t you care? we used
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to ask; she’s somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister. The
answer was unequivocaclass="underline" no, we don’t give a fuck. Worse was
the saccharine sweetness of those who pretended to care about
somebody’s mother, somebody’s sister. I’ve heard at least a
dozen criminal defense lawyers say, “I have a sister; I have a
daughter; I have a wife.” The rapists they defend use the same
locution. They want us to believe that the problem is that this
one woman wasn’t raped and the accused didn’t do it. Even
though criminal defense lawyers will admit that they rarely
have innocent clients, each time the public takes the sucker
punch: I have a sister; he has a sister; see his pretty suit; look
at how wel groomed he is. Her, she’s a mess. Wel , yes, she’s
been raped; it kind of messes you up. Oh, now we’re playing
victim, are we? Advice to young women: try not to be his first,
because then there aren’t others to confirm your story. You
can’t earn credibility; you can’t buy it; you can’t fake it; and
you’re a fucking fool if you think you have any.
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s husband is so good at sliming
the women he’s abused - and he has had so much help - that
it might take two vil ages.