This story could be a checklist for why sexual assaults so often go unreported.
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The “vindictive woman” accusation. How she was “enthusiastic at the time” and is now just meanly making things up.
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The victim-blaming. “Why would you go with him if you were afraid?”
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The dismissal. “How could a man in a position of authority (and armed authority at that) possibly be intimidating enough to make you do something you didn’t want to do?”
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The institutional discouragement. “I don’t dispute it happened, but nobody else will believe you over him/you’ll be tagged as a troublemaker if you say anything.”
Shit like this is what everyone making a sexual assault claim weighs before saying anything. Forget “equal” cabinets or pretty sayings like “because it’s 2016”. Until courts and law enforcement stop discouraging and shaming victims*, until we recognise that the default setting on sexual assault cases is “make it go away”, we’ve still got a long, hard fight.
*Using the term victims, because it’s all too easy with chants of “I believe the women” to lose sight of the fact that anyone can be sexually assaulted, and I don’t want to dismiss anyone who has had it happen. I know it, too, is a loaded term but pretty much all of them are.