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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.
----------
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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From:
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?
From:
Re: Racial Slurs
do we know each other?
From:
Re: Racial Slurs
I don't believe that we've met. I'm new to this site.
From:
at the risk of seeming self important
What is your stake here?
From:
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.