http://news.yahoo.com/vanderbilt-gang-rape-defense-points-campus-culture-122225996.html
In the early morning hours of June 23, 2013, a group of excessively
inebriated college football players attending Vanderbilt University had non-consensual
sex with an unconscious, inebriated young woman. Our legal system defines this as rape. And that’s what it is. But the defendants, several of whom are now
standing trial, are attempting to blame the culture at Vanderbilt for forcing
them to drink excessively and commit non-consensual sexual acts upon an
unconscious young woman. They are
blaming a culture which forced bystanders to ignore what was happening to an
innocent victim of a group of sexually opportunistic predators. This passing the buck of culpability is as old
as the phrase, “The Devil made me do it.”
There seems to be plenty of blame to go around, but few are actually
ready to accept that blame. Yes, there
is a culture of drunken debauchery that permeates many universities, and has
for some time, in which inebriated sex is considered the norm. However, to claim that the influence of excessive
amounts of alcohol—such as the amount defendant Corey Batey claims to have been
under, perhaps 14 to 22 drinks in one night—necessarily exonerates or exculpates
such an individual of any personal accountability for wrongdoing while
inebriated is nonsense. In our current
legal system, a drunk driver is still held accountable for the deaths he or she
causes while driving under the influence of alcohol. One cannot place blame upon the alcohol,
exculpating the driver because he would not have done such a heinous thing if he
were in his right mind. Until we live in
a world, or benefit from a legal system, that can determine the exact level of
malice one might have had prior to the consumption of alcohol, or one in which
we can entirely place the blame of one’s actions upon a bottle of booze and
send it to jail instead of the one consuming it, we must still hold the
individual accountable for his or her crimes.
In this case, it is the individual rapist who must be held accountable,
regardless of whether he was excessively inebriated and had no control over his
crimes. Several of them in this case had
enough control over their faculties to operate their cell phones and record evidence
of the act for posterity—or perhaps bragging rights.
The same goes for any situation in which some seek to blame
a drug or a device or a thing for one’s actions. Many have attempted to hold firearms
manufacturers responsible for the crimes of the few mentally unstable or
criminally inclined individuals who seize hold of them and use them to kill
innocent people, even children—such as at Sandyhook—claiming that the manufacturers
have made these weapons far too easily available to a market that should not
have access to these, thereby endangering the rest of society. This is part of a larger trend in which our
helplessness against the unfairness or vicissitudes of life causes us to seek
to blame larger structures instead of holding individuals accountable or
recognizing that some tragedies are unavoidable and we are helpless in
reversing or undoing them. Or when the
perpetrator is no longer available for punishment, as in the case of Adam
Lanza, we seek the next nearest target for our blame and anger.
Yes, there is a culture of omerta in many situations
and organizations, in which no one wishes to get involved and stop a crime that
they see happening. Yes, there is a
culture in which college students are encouraged to drink to excess and to have
sexual relations with ever increasing numbers of people, as if one’s sexual
organs were nothing more than toys. And
yes, there is a culture in which people no longer bother to speak up when they
see something wrong, preferring to walk away or let someone else handle it, or
worse yet, that it’s not their place to speak up and impose their will on someone
else—even that of a rapist. But a culture
that exonerates mob mentality, and which seeks to shift blame away from the
individual and onto society, does not invest sufficient value in the capabilities
of human beings. Without our individual
consciences, we are nothing more than animals—and animals cannot be brought to
trial. Animals cannot be trusted to go
to college, nor can they be trusted to operate a government, or safeguard the
planet.
Corey Batey or Brandon Vandenburg (the present defendants),
or any in their position, might claim that they simply were too drunk to know
what they were doing, and that they have no recollection of what they were
doing, nor did they have any control over what they were doing. Well, unfortunately for them, they were the
entities living inside the bodies of drunken young men who failed to stop
themselves from acting upon their basest, most animalistic urges to copulate
with the nearest available female (willing or not). And there must be accountability. On one
hand, allowing herself to become so drunk that she was unable to ensure her own
safety in a strange environment was not the wisest of choices for a young woman—much
like exiting one’s vehicle in a wild animal park—but on the other hand, she
most certainly did not bargain for this kind of treatment merely on account of
becoming so inebriated that she passed out in a room that was not her own. She did not ask to be raped. If Batey or Vandenburg were not merely
rapists, but murderers as well, who subsequently slit her throat after defiling
her unconscious body, would critics still claim that the fault were her own for
putting herself in that situation? I
think not. And defilement is what this
is; not a sex act, but an act of violence.
There is a difference. The choice
to be sexually assaulted was not her own.
Her lapse of judgment in engaging in excessive drinking is an entirely
separate matter, hardly relevant to the matter of criminal culpability in a
case of rape.
I am reminded of an old college song called “Let Her Sleep Under
the Bar, Boys,” in which the narrator playfully disparages the sexual recklessness
of college men, and reminds the listener that for the sake and honor of all of
their mothers and sisters, and women everywhere, not to molest or be unkind to the
inebriated woman in their midst, urging the hearer to protect her and let her
sleep it off in a safe place where no one will accost her. We often consider the old days of all-male
colleges as being less sensitive to women, and more rife with a culture of
rape. But I believe this song expresses
a particular respect for women that has been lost to us today, even amidst our
culture of professed liberation and enlightenment about gender roles. Vanderbilt and other schools like it could
take a lesson from this song from the days of yore. Leave her alone and show her the respect that
is owed to your mother or sister.
