Roman Polanski was arrested Switzerland last month. Some people believe that he should still be institutionally punished for the crimes he was convicted of, while other people do not.  Fair enough.

Sexual assault cases are tricky.  I guess all law is technically tricky, but sexual assault cases are extremely challenging.  The issue of sexual assault deals with taboo; the way the law approaches it is rife with old-fashioned myths about the roles of women, their expected behaviour, and their power relations with men.

The thing about being raped, that gets so easily overlooked, is that it destroys people.  Yes, you will get a harsher sentence for murdering someone, but a dead person doesn’t have to live the rest of his or her life with feelings of self-loathing, guilt, loneliness, and being misunderstood.  I am not saying that rape is “better or worse” than murder, but I’m trying to put this into perspective for people who look at violent crimes as though they can rationally be graded in severity.

Now that Roman Polanski has been arrested, the victim of the crime is being harassed incessantly by the media. According to reports, more than 500 requests for interviews/comments have been made since the arrest. That’s more than 15 calls per day.  Those numbers, of course, don’t include e-mails, random appearances at the victim’s workplace or home.  I’ll bet everybody who shares the victim’s name has been contacted by several interns from media companies, who have been requested by their employers to track her down on Facebook and see if she has something to say.

This type of harassment can cause the victim to experience something called “revictimization”.  If you don’t know what that is, google it and come back later.

So you know what a really difficult part of being raped is?  This may be surprising, but it’s not the sex itself; a lot of people look at rape as a “sex” thing, but it’s about control.  The worst part about being raped, at least from my personal experience as a rape victim, is the loss of control.  Some people find this notion wishy-washy, but you really do lose fucking control over yourself. It’s no fun.

Do you know what it’s like to no longer feel like you have control over your body? Over what you do with it, and what goes in it, and who you let into your life?  Do you know what it’s like to go from being a teenage girl, to an asexual creature who looks at every man like he is a threat, and is repulsed by being touched in the most harmless manner?  And then do you know what it’s like to live in a world that blames the victim for being subject to what I just described?  To not be able to talk about it with friends, because it makes them uncomfortable, because the issue is so taboo?

And do you know what it’s like to have to repeat your story over and over again to cops, to attorneys — in front of the person who did it to you? And you repeat the “story” so many times that it no longer feels like your story was even yours to begin with.  So not only did you lose control over your physical being, but the recollections of your past — an abstract part of self that only you once knew — are taken away as well, and left to other people to decide what they mean?

So imagine that.  So which experience is worse? The act itself? The aftermath and the way society approaches the issue? Or the knowledge that unless something drastic changes in the policy and perception, the act and society’s approach will forever be a see-saw of revictimization?

Does this mean victims shouldn’t go to court, because they should know better that they’ll experience further harm?  No.  It shouldn’t be like that.  More victims of crime WOULD go to court if there wasn’t such a risk of being told they were liars, sluts, deserving, and useless.

In an article on CNN.com, the victim (in an interview well before the arrest) discusses how she was treated by the press after the rape, and after the trial.  It’s tragic.

And so the victim wants the case to be thrown out.  Why? Because it’s causing her further harm.  Because the media is causing her harm, and the state is causing her harm.  Not Roman Polanski; society.  You.  Everyone who keeps clicking on those stories and googling her name, and encouraging the press to sacrifice this woman to the crops, like in that South Park episode.  The Attorney General says the charges can’t be dropped for legal reasons, but that’s bullshit.  Since when did criminal courts care about rape victims?

As the victim said, in her interview with CNN:

“The one thing that bothers me is that what happened to me in 1977 happens to girls every day, yet people are interested in me because Mr. Polanski is a celebrity.”

And if you couldn’t figure out why the subject of this post was in that particular order when you started reading, maybe you will have a better idea.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 6:03 pm and is filed under BRAIN EXPLODES NOW., Is it actually taboo?, Mass media is wack, Quite possibly angst, Signs of the apocalypse, Trial crap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.