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THE DUKE LACROSSE CASE
Cheers can't drown out painful truths
Public brawl over rape allegations reminds us of the price women sometimes must pay for being heard
By Anne K. Ream
Published June 17, 2007
Supporters of the Duke University lacrosse team are in a celebratory mood. The team excelled in last month's NCAA tournament. And just last week, the prosecutor who filed rape charges against three of the team's players was himself put on trial, accused of ethics violations in pursuing a case fraught with problems.
The young men who narrowly lost to rival Johns Hopkins in the NCAA championship game are indeed gifted and resilient athletes. But praising the players as "outstanding" and "upstanding" young men, as the Duke Lacrosse Booster Club did in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times, is a reminder of just how low the bar has fallen when it comes to acceptable male behavior. Legal vindication is not moral vindication, no matter how hard a PR campaign works to make it so.
We may never know everything that occurred on the night of March 13, 2006, when the Duke lacrosse players threw a team party at an off-campus house. But what we do know is troubling enough.
Photos taken at the party show two young women, hired to perform by the players, dancing at the center of a group of largely drunken and leering men. The North Carolina attorney general's report details how one of the lacrosse players held up a broomstick during the night's events, suggesting that the women use it as a "sex toy." Another player sent a chilling group e-mail just hours after the party, musing about bringing in more "strippers" and cutting off their skin while ejaculating. Witnesses reported hearing racial slurs lobbed by partygoers.
To be fair, individual acts do not implicate the entire lacrosse team. Misogyny is not illegal. And none of these ugly events constitutes a criminal act. But they stand as a testimony all their own, a window into a world where "good" men engage in troubling -- and sometimes troubled -- behavior.
The statement that "boys will be boys" has become an all-purpose justification for male behavior that is boorish, bad and at times even brutal. The degradation of women has been normalized for so long that it seems we have ceased to see what is right before our eyes.
Yet the words and images that came from the residence of the captains of the Duke lacrosse team demand to be addressed, as does the prosecutor's possibly criminal mishandling of the case. They speak volumes about the climate in the players' house. So what does our silence in the face of these truths say about us?
We talk endlessly, exhaustingly, about "moral values." But we talk little of valuing women, particularly when they are young, poor and black, as were the women hired by the Duke lacrosse players.
Nowhere was this more apparent than at the news conference two months ago when North Carolina Atty. Gen. Roy Cooper dismissed all charges against the players, taking the opportunity to muse about the mental stability of the young woman at the heart of the case. Later that week, when the mother of one of the lacrosse players appeared on "Good Morning America" and insinuated that the accuser ought to lose her children, she left little doubt about who was being tried in the court of public opinion.
Every public rape case exists in two spaces: In the practical, "law and order" world, where it works its way through an imperfect system; and in the public imagination, where it exists symbolically, a Rorschach test of our values and beliefs. It is not only the specifics, but also the symbolism, of the Duke case that remain troubling. Both serve to remind those who come forward with rape charges that they may pay a steep and very public price for the chance to be heard. Millions of rape victims, most of whom never report the crime -- much less see legal justice -- must have watched silently as this case unfolded, thinking about how they might have fared under such scrutiny. That the accuser gave conflicting statements to the police is not unusual. A victim's statements, particularly in the wake of a traumatic attack, can be confused and inconsistent. Memory is resolutely imperfect over time and under the duress of repeated questioning.
Our cultural response to rape leaves its victims in the cruelest of double binds: They must choose between coming forward, which carries the risk of being blamed, and remaining silent, which carries the risk of isolation. It is a silence that damages more than the victim. It strikes a blow to our public safety as well, because unreported sexual violence allows perpetrators to violate again.
The myth of the "false report" of rape must be replaced by this truth: It is underreporting, not false reporting, that poses the greatest risk to our families and our communities.
It is silence that is the enemy of change.
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Anne K. Ream is a Chicago-based writer and founder of The Voices and Faces Project, voicesandfaces. org, a national documentary initiative.
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Cheers can't drown out painful truths
Public brawl over rape allegations reminds us of the price women sometimes must pay for being heard
By Anne K. Ream
Published June 17, 2007
Supporters of the Duke University lacrosse team are in a celebratory mood. The team excelled in last month's NCAA tournament. And just last week, the prosecutor who filed rape charges against three of the team's players was himself put on trial, accused of ethics violations in pursuing a case fraught with problems.
The young men who narrowly lost to rival Johns Hopkins in the NCAA championship game are indeed gifted and resilient athletes. But praising the players as "outstanding" and "upstanding" young men, as the Duke Lacrosse Booster Club did in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times, is a reminder of just how low the bar has fallen when it comes to acceptable male behavior. Legal vindication is not moral vindication, no matter how hard a PR campaign works to make it so.
We may never know everything that occurred on the night of March 13, 2006, when the Duke lacrosse players threw a team party at an off-campus house. But what we do know is troubling enough.
Photos taken at the party show two young women, hired to perform by the players, dancing at the center of a group of largely drunken and leering men. The North Carolina attorney general's report details how one of the lacrosse players held up a broomstick during the night's events, suggesting that the women use it as a "sex toy." Another player sent a chilling group e-mail just hours after the party, musing about bringing in more "strippers" and cutting off their skin while ejaculating. Witnesses reported hearing racial slurs lobbed by partygoers.
To be fair, individual acts do not implicate the entire lacrosse team. Misogyny is not illegal. And none of these ugly events constitutes a criminal act. But they stand as a testimony all their own, a window into a world where "good" men engage in troubling -- and sometimes troubled -- behavior.
The statement that "boys will be boys" has become an all-purpose justification for male behavior that is boorish, bad and at times even brutal. The degradation of women has been normalized for so long that it seems we have ceased to see what is right before our eyes.
Yet the words and images that came from the residence of the captains of the Duke lacrosse team demand to be addressed, as does the prosecutor's possibly criminal mishandling of the case. They speak volumes about the climate in the players' house. So what does our silence in the face of these truths say about us?
We talk endlessly, exhaustingly, about "moral values." But we talk little of valuing women, particularly when they are young, poor and black, as were the women hired by the Duke lacrosse players.
Nowhere was this more apparent than at the news conference two months ago when North Carolina Atty. Gen. Roy Cooper dismissed all charges against the players, taking the opportunity to muse about the mental stability of the young woman at the heart of the case. Later that week, when the mother of one of the lacrosse players appeared on "Good Morning America" and insinuated that the accuser ought to lose her children, she left little doubt about who was being tried in the court of public opinion.
Every public rape case exists in two spaces: In the practical, "law and order" world, where it works its way through an imperfect system; and in the public imagination, where it exists symbolically, a Rorschach test of our values and beliefs. It is not only the specifics, but also the symbolism, of the Duke case that remain troubling. Both serve to remind those who come forward with rape charges that they may pay a steep and very public price for the chance to be heard. Millions of rape victims, most of whom never report the crime -- much less see legal justice -- must have watched silently as this case unfolded, thinking about how they might have fared under such scrutiny. That the accuser gave conflicting statements to the police is not unusual. A victim's statements, particularly in the wake of a traumatic attack, can be confused and inconsistent. Memory is resolutely imperfect over time and under the duress of repeated questioning.
Our cultural response to rape leaves its victims in the cruelest of double binds: They must choose between coming forward, which carries the risk of being blamed, and remaining silent, which carries the risk of isolation. It is a silence that damages more than the victim. It strikes a blow to our public safety as well, because unreported sexual violence allows perpetrators to violate again.
The myth of the "false report" of rape must be replaced by this truth: It is underreporting, not false reporting, that poses the greatest risk to our families and our communities.
It is silence that is the enemy of change.
----------
Anne K. Ream is a Chicago-based writer and founder of The Voices and Faces Project, voicesandfaces. org, a national documentary initiative.
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
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IOW: you said it better than I could've!
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I just really have a problem with the continued railroading of these students. Rape is rape and should never be treated lightly. And clearly these kids were drunken jackasses. But they didn't commit a crime. Had they not been falsely accused of a crime and railroaded based on no evidence whatsoever, why would we still be talking about them?
I'm not excusing their behavior. What I'm saying is they didn't commit a crime, why are we still talking as if they did?
The article speaks of valuing women. Shouldn't we value all people based on their actions? If we're going to devalue these kids based on their misogyny, shouldn't we devalue this woman for lying and accusing them of a crime that never happened? Doesn't she by her actions devalue the horrible rapes that do occcur every day?
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After everything that went on here I certainly don't think that anyone who wasn't involved directly in the case - seeing all the evidence, hearing all the testimony first hand, etc. - can be sure of anything at this point. I'm not trying to offend you, but I just don't think that any of us out here in the public can say with certainty that nothing happened.
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So back to my original questions: Why this case? Why are we still talking about it? What does it really have to teach us?
I feel like I missed the liberal train on this somehow.
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Racial Slurs
I know of no credible evidence that shows that there racial slurs were made against the rape accuser. The only credible evidence appears to be a racial retort to the other stripper in response to a racial slur that she made. Still racial slurs are a long way from rape, sexual assault, and kidnapping. And racial slurs do little to alter the objective physical evidence such as DNA, cell phone records, time imprinted video recordings, time imprinted pictures, bank ATM camera's, credit card transactions, complete lack of injuries supporting claim as documented by official media reports and pictures. Then there are forty plus eye witness's party attendees that with unchanging, unchanging, and exacting details of that night. The only other eye witness was the 2nd stripper, and she denied that there was any type of assault in her 1st statement and in her last public statement. She never confirmed that there was an assault, and only changed her story in between after being interviewed by the DA's investigor responsible for having 2 recent cases thrown out for illegal witness tampering.
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Re: Racial Slurs
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Re: Racial Slurs
Still, I don't see what "slurs" has to do with the overwhelming evidence that shows that was a story made out of whole cloth by the accuser. If a woman called a man a sexist ahole, a definite slur in my book, how would that be relevant in not knowing whether he raped her or not that same night? Should police not pursue rape allegations if there is credible evidence that the woman issued slurs against the suspects? Or is this a double standard that only applies to men?
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Re: Racial Slurs
do we know each other?
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Re: Racial Slurs
I don't believe that we've met. I'm new to this site.
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at the risk of seeming self important
What is your stake here?
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Re: at the risk of seeming self important
1. I want to uncover the truth and help others uncover the truth in the Duke Lacrosse case. I have spent hundreds of hours reading, researching, and discussing this case with others. While I know a lot of facts, I am still finding new facts that I was not aware of. I am also finding a great deal of misconceptions about what happened that are based on unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo that has been passed as fact. This case does have some complex aspects and does appear to have been an actual conspiracy to convict three innocent young men. As a result of the conspiracy, a lot of lies were passed to the media as fact and were reported as fact. Many of these lies are only now coming to light as evidence from the case and various trials are made public through the Freedom of Information Act.
2. I want to see justice served to the 3 young men falsely accused, to the real victims of sexual assault, to the general public, and to those who commited unjust acts in this case. I believe that justice can only be served by attempting to view the facts of the case outside the context of any underlying social, political, or personal agendas other than seeking the truth wherever that may lead. One of the greatest injustices was how the reputations of the Duke Lacrosse players were viciously and falsely maligned through the media. I also feel that those who refuse to aknowlege that this was was a complete fraud from the get go in a belief that it will help future victims of sexual assault by doing so is a great injustice. In fact I think that it actually hurts those future victims, because it is like the little boy who cried wolf. It erodes the credibility of these people and the causes they attempt to represent. This is especially true with people as prominent as Ms. Ream.
3. I beleive that our justice system in the US is the best in the world, but has it's flaws. One of the most serious flaws in my opinion is that the justice system too often abuses innocent citizens. Our system is based upon the principle that it is better for many guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be unjustly punished. We have numerous checks and balances to help circumvent this happening. One of the most important is the principle of innocent until proven guilty. However in the Duke case many of these checks and balances were undermined, circumvented, or just failed to be not work sufficiently. In the end, it was a very close call for that the young men did not wind up falsely convicted. That is a lengthy story, and I will relate it you wish. I beleive that the fact that this case became a public "witch hunt" with the players presumed guilty until proven innocnet contributed highly to the abuses in the case. Many appear to have taken this case and used it to promote their own agendas by promoting the guilty until proven innocent mentality. In fact, it appears that some still are either conciously or subconsciously doing so. Many article such as Ms. Ream's have been written based upon "facts" which when fully researched prove not to be true at all. To what I can personally contribute to correcting those lies and pointing out how our justice system should work as well as some of the flaws in it that need correcting.
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Why is it not okay, now that all the hoopla is over and done with, to look at the context in which those events occurred and ask whether or not that context says something important about our society?
In particular, why is it okay for men -- but not for women -- to participate in the kind of "mob rule" environment in which situations like that one are prone to occur? If we can say that those women shouldn't have been there doing what they did, why can't we say the same thing about the members of the lacrosse team?
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Who said either of those things? I didn't. What both parties were doing was legal as far as I know. Maybe not smart on either side.
I'm using "railroading" in the sense that my opinion is that there's a continued damnation of the team despite the fact that they were exonerated.
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When I was an undergraduate, the social rules were that boys were supposed to constantly desire and ask for sex and the girls were supposed to always maintain their "virtue" and refuse to engage in pre-marital sex. The rules have changed now. Young women in their teens and twenties are more demanding and more promiscuous than many of their male peers. They blatantly and shamelessly chase young men for sex, sometimes more aggressively than the men, often forcing the young men into sex acts they really weren't ready for.
Women today have many choices. There is no longer an underclass forced into prostitution and exploitation. Many women—including financially well-off women—are choosing to be sex workers, sometimes for money and sometimes for free. I therefore find those who claim the Duke accuser was being devalued and degraded are clinging to archaic social mores no longer practiced by many, many young women, and are themselves being somewhat disingenuous.
Of course, as I've oft mentioned in my blog commentary about this case, the real tragedy is the damage it does to the confidence of real victims of sexual assault in reporting and prosecuting the crime, and the number of real victims who suffer in silence is appallingly and unacceptably high.
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The Actual Text of the Ad praising the Duke Players
Here's something you haven't seen much of lately: Congratulatory praise for a team that has been the focus of one of the most unfair, unforgiving and unfortunate media spectacles in our nation's history. But it's never too late to give a little credit where more than a little credit is due. Against all odds this year's Duke Men's Lacrosse Blue Devils banded together as a team, kept their focus on the field and went 17-3 for the season. They won the ACC Championship and earned their place in the NCAA National Championship game. off the field, they scored pretty well, to: A team GPA of 3.4 and a 100% graduation rate for the fourth year in a row. Not to mention, over 570 community-service hours logged on behalf of worthy organizations like the Ronald Mc Donald House. On behalf of former Duke University athletes and friends and supporters of the Duke Men's Lacrosse Program, we salute this outstanding-not to mention, upstanding-group of young men and their families for standing tall during extraordinarily difficult circumstances over the past 15 months.
Congratulations Duke Men's Lacrosse Team and their families.
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Re: The Actual Text of the Ad praising the Duke Players
BTW the 3 players who planned and hosted the party on March 13th, were not on this years lacrosse team. They graduated last year. However, before they did so they apologized for their poor judgement in hosting an party with illegal underage drinking and for hiring strippers to attend. The two young men whoe were falsely accused and who did not take place in planning or hosting the party have likewise publicly apologized on several occasions for their poor judgement in attending such a party. There has been no news of additional parties with illegal underage drinking or strippers or any Lacrosse player participating in underage drinking or going to strip clubs. They have been under and intensive media spot light for well over a year, and if would have been hard to hide any slip up of dubious moral nature.
The young men were victims of numerous crimes. They had groups of angry women marching near their residences holding up signs with slogans such as "Castrate". They received death threats and other threats of violence. They had their civil rights violated. They were victimized with grade retaliation by many of their professors. They were slandered and demonized all across the national press and even internationally. Their families saw their life savings exhausted paying for their defense with no promise of seeing it recouped. They lost a year of their careers that they never can regain. They still receive threats, even after being declared innocent.