If someone is left alone with an intoxicated 15 year old girl, I don't think it takes rose-colored glasses to expect that they wouldn't rape her.

The fact that many people, especially many men, don't seem to understand what a horrible crime rape is, that seems like a big part of the problem. If you're never really forced to face the reality of rape happening to you, if you never try to empathize with the victims, it's much easier to say "Oh, well, she was asking for it." It's much easier to commit the act yourself, because you've minimized its horror in your mind.

I hate to advocate anything like this but I think the only thing that would fix people's attitudes about rape is to be forced to watch self-confessed rapists to get publicly tortured and murdered, in order to create an effective social sanction against the wrong sorts of behavior, and do it in a permanent way that makes men understand what happens to a filthy rapist scum. If I was that girl's father I would hunt one of the animals down and do absolutely horrible things to him. There is no real justice in this society so you must make your own justice.

Rape is about power. Ultimately you need to rob the powerful of their power and keep yourself from thinking and acting like an abuse victim. Everyone one of us has a right, to survival, self-defense and REVENGE!

It has always been this way, and will continute to be.
So if you live in your ivory tower and believe in the innate goodness of people, you had better wake up , before you are the victiml

Incredible.

after writing this i just realized that if the DA does not decide to press charges for underage drinking because of the rape, it will probably be because they think she has gone thru enough trauma and there is no need to exacerbate the situation. said another way, isnt the rape punishment enough? if they dont press charges, they are indirectly saying that the rape was punishment (albiet cruel and unusual), implying that the girl deserved it.

However, maybe this event had little to do with gender and respect for women. Maybe it had more to do with race. Maybe the attackers saw the victim mostly as a white person upon which to vent their hatred of whites. Likewise, maybe all of the people who walked by without care for the girl did so because they had no affinity with nor sympathy for a white person.

Maybe the lesson here isn't how women should behave, or how boys should behave, but how minority groups (including whites among predominately black and latino persons) should be wary of those who aren't their kind -- because it's all too for majority gangs to treat minorities as sub-humans unworthy of the most basic consideration and respect.

Of course, unlike the other moral instructions people are retrofitting to this event, one of race consciousness and caution isn't a particularly trendy sermon to preach. So people instead will preach the sermons that will get them gold stars pasted on the foreheads by either their right-wing cohorts or their women's studies professors.

Like I said in a previous post - if this was your friend, cousin, sister, niece or daughter, all you people blaming her for what happened would be feeling very differently right now.

Next time you're at a bar and you're flirting with a girl or you're out having fun with your friends, I hope some crazy girl doesn't come and stick some tree branch up YOUR *ss!!! Maybe then YOU'LL know what pain this girl has suffered.

Get a clue people!

Women--most women also know, that even if a female child does EVERYTHING "right"--she could still be raped by the custodian, her own father, the boy she thought was her friend, the neighbor, the security guard, her cousin, her father's co-worker, the teacher, her friend's older brother...the list goes on. This is the world we live in. It is so awful, we can hardly stand it. Bu you can't put your daughters in a locked box. Don't you want them to live full rich lives?

Someone earlier in these comments said it best--the CRIMINALS are taking advantage of our lack of outrag--until we have a zero tolerance policy about RAPE--the CRIMINALS will use ANY EXCUSE to rape, until ultimately, it comes down to--

You were born a woman, so I raped you. And nothing would have stopped me. Nothing.

I was going to walk to the pharmacy to get some cold creme. Why walk? My car is not working. Why cold cream--I can't take a showed without it--my skin is too dry. Wny this time of day? I was working all day. If I get raped, will you all blame me? Trust me--I do not want to get raped--but I need to live my life.
***

What is frustating is knowing that some of these individuals will get away with it. I worry that this will embolden them to do something like it again.
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As far as the bystanders--please someone in power realize that they were accomplices--all the prosecutors and experts seem to be saying it is too hard to get the bystanders--but if they were blocking the view of the authorities; videotaping; perhaps with their talking or Ipods, perhaps they obscured her screams--is that not being an acocmplice? An accomplice makes the crime possible, no? It will be hard though, but the police can sometimes get these idiots to turn against each other, so maybe they will say, "Yea, well so-and-so was standing around the whole time! He was the look out."

It's tricky--if I see a car being stolen, and do nto actively try to stop it--am I an accomplice? No. But if I, with a group of others STAND IN A CIRCLE AROUND THE CAR WHILE IT IS EBING STOLEN SO THAT OTHERS CAN'T SEE--sounds like an accomplice to me.

Those of you blaming her, need to look at the faces and hearts of those young men. Look deeply and you will see the real problem.

This girl went to her prom dressed in a purple satin prom dress with a sparkley necklace. Think of her pleasure at looking so pretty, her excitement about the dance. Then think of her lying curled and brutalized in the dirt after hours of being tortured - that is what rape is, a form of torture. That's why it's used in Iranian prisons. Torture is what really happened.

Sick, sick. What a shame and horror.

And to think that her dad was running around looking for her while this was going on.

Those of you who assume she inebriated herself are showing your bias towards blaming the victim. We don't know.

I would like to know why it is that women are so devalued in this society that they are told that they are "asking for it" if they wear a certain type of clothing. Men can't control their criminal aggressive urges if they see too much cleavage? Women should anticipate being assaulted if they dare to walk out in the streets alone? Men can't control their criminal aggressions if they see a lone female on the street so WE have to change our lives? Women can't drink too much
for fear that someone will rape or assault her if she is incapacitated? Men can't control their criminal aggressive urges so WE have to change our lives to accommodate THEM?

I find that all very interesting. We live in a culture of the invisible Chador. In Islamic countries, women must be covered and remain indoors lest men be unable to control themselves. In this country women don't wear the Chador on the outside but on the inside. We are still allowed outside, but if we come to harm it must be our fault for letting the veil slip.

And the lessons go 'round and 'round. "Don't drink, you might get raped! Don't flirt, you might get raped! Don't make eye contact, you might get raped! Don't go outside, you might get raped! Don't forget to lock the doors, you might get raped! You didn't lock the windows too? Oh, you're just asking for it now."

It's so simple to see that the ones who put the fault on the victim would have been easily raped themselves. As if they know better, please. It's so easy to insinuate and say what she did wrong but anyone can make a mistake. We don't know much about the situation, and they could have easily been acquaintances of the poor girl.

I wish they knew how unintelligent they sounded. Morons.

That's not making excuses? It sounds like making excuses.

As if NONE of the people who have said HORRIBLE things on this blog have ever made a mistake?!?!
Ya, she drank to much, big deal. Most of us do at some point or another. IT'S LEGAL. NO, she wasn't legal age to be drinking it, but it's not an illegal substance.

NO WOMAN DESERVES TO BE RAPED-FOR ANY REASON.
It's a DISGUSTING form of male domination and it repulses me that anyone would condone the rapists' complete lack of MORAL decency because of her HER drinking. For shame.

Kitty Genovese psychology/Bystander effect is one of a hoard of reasons we are a shameful species.

That poor poor girl. She will live with this for the rest of her life. This could take her over and ruin her life. I truly hope she has the strength and courage to carry on.

As for the person who said that those who believe "she was asking for it" have a just-world delusion: It is quite the opposite. It is the opposite of delusional to believe and say that women should look out for themselves and be smart because rapists will always be out there. It is, on the other hand, delusional to imply that women should be able to just do whatever they want and not worry about getting raped--it confuses what is right with what is.

By the way, this is several orders of magnitude worse than the bang-your-drunk-date scenario, so maybe you are confused or something.