Last week the New York Times reported that an 11-year-old girl was gang-raped in a Texas town. It also reported a bunch of people saying she dressed like an adult and that the rapists would have to live with this for the rest of their lives. It forgot to say that the girl might have some displeasure with the whole situation too. People were disgusted. The Public Editor (as they call him) said they had a point. But…
My assessment is that the outrage is understandable. The story dealt with a hideous crime but addressed concerns about the ruined lives of the perpetrators without acknowledging the obvious: concern for the victim.
Yes; good; but…..
The Associated Press handled the story more deftly, I think. Its piece on the crime also noted the community view that the girl dressed provocatively and even the view of some that the girl may have been culpable somehow. But the AP also quoted someone in the community saying: “She’s 11 years old. It shouldn’t have happened. That’s a child. Somebody should have said, ‘What we are doing is wrong.’”
Um…..so if it’s not a child it’s ok? If the raped girl or woman is 17 or 25 or 40 or 70 it’s ok?
It’s weird the way people think about rape. Still, after all this time, when we’ve gone over it and gone over it. Nobody thinks of murder or assault or robbery that way, but rape is still sort of kind of the raped woman’s fault.
Comments
30 responses to “She’s 11 years old. It shouldn’t have happened.”
I cannot begin to express my fury at the entire situation. Blaming the victim is perhaps the most disgusting societal impulse I can imagine; at least, the most disgusting that’s embraced by so many fucking stupid people.
Rape is not an appropriate response for, or to anything. At all. Ever. No one deserves it. It cannot *be* deserved. When will these fucking troglodytes comprehend that?
Boy. The Times stopped just short of saying she was asking for it. What is wrong with these people? And those poor boys who will have to live with this for the rest of their lives. Sheesh. It’s sick that it happened and it is sick that it was reported this way.
Right. Thing is, if she hadn’t been 11, it probably wouldn’t have made the national news at all. It is depressing to the extreme that we still have so far to go before such attack on any person of any age would be met with unqualified outrage and intolerance. Sexual assaults on children and senior citizens are already in this category, but the subtext of reporting sexual violence against women (and men) of reproductive age is that they probably coulda/shoulda/woulda fought harder, or made better choices in attire or friends or occupations, etc. etc. People are pissed off now because these biases trickled too far below the cutoff age. They should be pissed that these biases exist at all.
What do we have to do to advance to the point as a society where “It shouldn’t have happened” needs no preface?
The New York Times reported a crime
Deep in the heart of Texas
It blamed a small child as things got wild
Deep in the heart of Texas
AP reported it, chomping at the bit
Deep the heart of Texas
Rape is mighty keen if she’s eighteen
Deep in the heart of Texas
They say but she dressed like a slut
Deep in the heart of Texas
The men there roll with no self control
Deep in the heart of Texas
On this intercourse we need balanced discourse
Deep in the heart of Texas
And we all care about the rapists’ fair
What the fuck man Texas?
Rape is disgusting, vile odious. The age (or sex or sexuality or anything else) of the victim doesn’t matter, it’s an horrendous crime and I have no sympathy what so ever for the perpetrators. Live with it for the rest of their lives will they, wtf do they think the victim will do? Words fail me.
The line that was most striking to me in the original piece was:
“They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s.”
I can’t imagine the motivation behind including this sentence. Firstly, and least importantly, it’s fairly implausible that the rapists (any, much less all of them), actually mistook an 11-year-old for being 20, so it’s not as if this was just a case of “Whoops! Accidental pedophilia!” Secondly, this is a clear case of blaming the victim (or at least her family through her appearance). I could grow a beard at age 11 and that was just a funny curiosity. But if an 11-year-old girl looks older than her age, for whatever reason? Apparently that makes her complicit in her own rape.
But most importantly, if she had been in her 20’s, how would that make her kidnappers and rapists anything less than sociopathically depraved? I understand that we have good reasons to be concerned about children in particular, but honestly, I don’t think that the kidnapping and gang rape of an adult woman would somehow just not be that much of a concern. I don’t think that we can breathe a sigh of relief just because someone is a rapist rather than a pedophile rapist. (Though as I said before it’s not even relevant in this case, because she’s 11 and obviously still a child.)
On a more abstract side note, this whole “balance” thing is kind of disturbing. It’s not even just a matter of giving platforms for bullshit; sometimes, as in this story, it’s 90% or more bullshit with hardly any “balance” from a saner position. Credulous stories about woo are frustrating. Stories that interview hate leaders without serious representation from civil rights advocates are kind of scary (I see this a lot in my “other job” as a militant gay.) A story about gang rape that mostly pities the perpetrators? Appallingly unethical.
It really is unbelievably disgusting when an 11-year old girl is raped, and the first thing that comes to mind is, “Well, she dressed like an adult!” as if it’s okay to rape an adult. Is there any other crime where the very first response of the media, and most people, is to leap on the behavior of the victim?
“Churches have held prayer services for the victim.”
Well that’s that problem fixed then. Everything’s okay now.
Had a gang of men and boys attacked an eleven-year-old girl with sticks that would be terrible. Bit since they attacked her with dicks instead – well that’s not so bad is it? And those poor boys will have to live with this for the rest of their lives! And that poor girl?
She dressed provocatively! That’s an oldie; never thought I’d see that line of rapology applied to an 11 year old. What are some other “classic” rape apologist lines for the next NYT story?
Yes. And have you heard of the term “innocent victim”, especially relating to rape of the young. As if older rape victims are not innocent. This kind of thinking is embedded in our culture and language.
I believe two things about situations like these. First, there should never be an article that is even, by the most marginal degree, sympathetic to that kind of behavior. Second, anyone who blames the victim for rape should serve, in jail, with the longest-serving rapist.
Yes. It wouldn’t matter if the person who had been raped was a freaking prostitute! Rape is never deserved and never OK. Rapists are completely at fault.
When are news organizations going to start showing the tiniest shred of personal responsibility for the contemptible points of view they often choose to display?
I was under the impression that a lot of people do engage in blaming murder victims and assault victims as well. Not so much robbery, though.
I was prompted to google James C. McKinley, Jr., the author, to get some idea of him because of his mindless approach to an allegedly most despicable heinous crime on a child, that he inappropriately referred to as a mere attack, Nowhere in this story is the following made clear:— That an 11-year-old child cannot consent to sex. Even if she had not been “told she would be beaten if she did not comply,” this would have been rape.— That the victim also has to “live with this for the rest of her life.” The boys chose to do the things they will have to live with. She did not.— That the men involved were not “drawn into this,” but made the conscious choice to rape a child.— That our compassion and care should be directed first and foremost towards the victim rather than the boys, the school, the community, or anyone else.
@svlad It can be the case if the murder or assault victim is “from the wrong side of the tracks” to use an old cliche. As if poverty, skin color, job, or even living location make someone more deserving, or at least more expected to be assaulted and/or murdered. Blame the victims strategies often serve to undercut the humanity of the victim, usually to serve some ideological agenda or at the very list to comfort the little people who can only comprehend the world through their comforting and blinkered stereotypes
As to this case, the disgusting just oozes out of every crack.
“from the wrong side of the tracks”
“He took her to a house on Travis Street”… However, we are shown not one, but two photo’s of the ‘caravan’ only, where the alleged rape of the child continued at the hands of the alleged monsters. Thus reinforcing an overemphasis on the impoverished environment where the assault occurred. Perhaps subtly too alluding to ‘trailer trash’ (American terminology) image. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.
The sad part is a lot of people think they’re on the right side for saying things like ‘this never should have happened to an eleven year old girl.’ I suppose the only thing worse would have been if she had been a he. That might even warrant ‘unimaginable.’ At least there wouldn’t be any victim blaming.
I was even more struck by the sentence immediately before that, which said she had visited friends in the area a lot. Uh……….yes, and? Children do visit friends! So what!
There is this contradiction in america where a large subculture sexualizes little girls by entering them in toddler beauty pageants, then criticizes young girl victims as “dressing older than their ages” or dressing too sexy.
BALANCE? The story lacked BALANCE? What a horrific thing to say. It’s rape; there’s no balance required.
Julian, you’re sadly correct, I think. It’s only clearly “bad” because she’s eleven; if she were a he then it would be unnatural and horrible. But people think of rape of women and girls, particularly once they’re past puberty, as somehow fitting.
The things that are considered “provocative” by our culture when a rape victim does them are just bizarre. Note that even actual provocation would not excuse rape, but in the aftermath of a rape, people consider the blandest actions to be provocative. She visited friends! Oh noes!
Or: she got into the car alone with him (because he’s a co-worker who offered a ride home, but that part is left out), or she was alone in his apartment with him (because he’s her friend), or…
How exactly does one provoke rape? I can’t even wrap my mind around that. Or do the papers mean something else by provacotive?
“The boys chose to do the things they will have to live with”. Yes, that’s it exactly – they chose to do something they knew was wrong but decided to treat it all as just a lark. This “boys will be boys” bullshit smears all of us including those of us who woudn’t do such a thing.
Julian: “How exactly does one provoke rape?”. Apparently by being female. You can’t get more provocative than that!
Amazingly, if the same people, in the same place, looked at dirty pictures of the Simpsons (cartoon characters who aren’t even real people), the perpetrators would be locked up for life and registered as sex offenders forever to boot, and most likely killed by well-meaning vigilantes if they ever made parole.
And of course if they stole something, Texas, the enlightened state that it is, would be calling for the chair.
The American West: where “property rights” trump peoples’ lives, and where thought crimes are deemed a hundred times more dangerous than the most heinous actual assaults. There’s not one part of this whole situation that ISN’T dangerously, insanely backward.
What is wrong is that they are stupid. If it is possible to be criminally stupid, and I rather think it is, they are criminally stupid. Here in Britain, during the summer months it’s not uncommon to see some man or other walking about the streets wearing nothing except a pair of shorts; is he asking for it? Of course not: he’s a man!
Reminds me of things you hear about Iraq or Afghanistan. She smiled at a man. She used her mobile phone a lot. Women’s refuges are being run as brothels. Death by suspicion. WHY suspicion? I don’t know whether to weep or rage.
You’re probably onto something, but it’s not just class, but race as well. The victim was Hispanic and the suspects are black. Maybe the Times was trying to play the “racial tensions” angle without actually mentioning race, hence the creepy focus on the “community” at the expense of the victim.
She’s a sentient being. It shouldn’t have happened.
Thanks for the link, Windy. I was absolutely bowled over by the insightful Embeezie F. Baybay’s second comment in the link. “The blame the victim approach is borne of the sexism that still permeates our society”… etc So there was possibly more than one underlying tension in the background that the paper was scratching at, in what looked like, a desperate way. The crying woman in the video is such a sad, sad sight to behold.
Crikey, have just stumbled upon a frightfully disturbing link within Windy’s story-line link. There are mobile images of the alleged perpetrators. I had to suddenly dash out of site. It’s hauntingly nightmarish stuff. i’ve got the shivers just thinking about what the poor child must have endured at the hands of those who gang-raped her.