USA: Harmful Oklahoma Court Ruling

Rupande Mehta, New Jersey, USA SSH Blog Correspondent

It was a good and bad week for victims of sexual assault and rape. While former House Speaker Hastert was being sentenced to 15 months (yup, only 15 months after the judge declared him a “serial child molester”) for molesting young boys when he coached as a wrestler, the Oklahoma court shocked everyone with the declaration that state law does not criminalize oral sex with a victim who is completely unconscious.

Right, why didn’t we think of that? An unconscious person is completely capable of giving consent so why prosecute someone who took advantage of the VERY fact that the victim was unconscious and orally sodomized her?

I have to be brutally honest here: some days the fight to make folks understand what constitutes violation of a person’s body seems so hopeless. On days like these, I feel I am transported to the hell holes of Pakistan, India and other countries where rape and other forms of violence against women is a daily fact of life. My mind cannot accept the fact that a verdict of that magnitude was issued by a court in the United States. It seems like the work of moron village elders and other local leaders, who need five witnesses to prove a rape, not that of a judicial body in the United States.

I can’t even comprehend the idiocy of this court. And I don’t even know where to begin.

This is not the court’s fault…not ONLY their fault. This is a system-wide issue that takes pride in victim-blaming. Every day we hear about assault, rape and other forms of violence like street harassment, but the question that takes center stage is “what was she doing” instead of “why did he abuse”?

We as a society have culturally evolved to the point where violence is acceptable if we can shift the onus on the victim. We look for loopholes in her story – why was she there? Who did she go with? What was she wearing? Or as John Kasich famously said, don’t drink at parties so you don’t get raped. I can’t wait for his 16 –year-old twin girls to get to college and avoid parties because their father warned them they could get raped.

We live in a society that victim blames and no one is a better example of this than our judicial system. We let lawyers question victims about abuse in a manner that befits no living being in this world. We sit back and enjoy every tiny detail re-lived by the victim over and over again and then turn around and tell her that her story has holes in it because she cannot remember every single ghastliness that happened to her. We sit back and let lawyers badger victims, not considering their emotional abuse and high levels of trauma that prevent them from being consistent in their narration. We live in a society where it is acceptable to yell and scream at people who have been abused but not okay for someone to falter in their responses. We have made our society into a mockery of human values devoid of empathy, understanding and respect of one’s experiences; instead delving into painful details where even accurate chronicles result into justice failing them at the end of the day.

Our focus is on the victim and what they did or didn’t do right. Did you say no? Did you scream? Why not? If not, how can we believe you were being raped? Or in this Oklahoma case, you were passed out so you could not have said no. But what about her not saying yes either?

This level of victim blaming is nauseating. Besides a severe gap between ideas of rape and consent and appropriate laws, there is a lack of basic understanding of what consent is. And asinine rulings such as the Oklahoma case further propagate a society where such behavior becomes the norm.

We are all responsible for this hideous culture – a social order where women are constantly assessed on how well they defended themselves against harm, how deftly they handled a street harassment situation or whether they made a big deal of the assault at the time it was happening. As far as the abuser is concerned, we are waiting to give them a free pass or sympathize and excuse him the moment a woman cannot fill all holes in her story.

Consent is simple: Yes means yes and No means no. If a person is too drunk, they CANNOT give consent. Consequently, if they are passed out; the question of consent does not even arise. This is a very simple concept but many of us, including the learned individuals on the Oklahoma court, cannot grasp it. Whichever way we look at it, it is time to change the way the rules are written; ones which do not look to place the blame on the victim but on the one who committed the crime. It is time the law takes into account emotional abuse, trauma and, of course, the unequivocal definition of consent.

Rupande grew up in Mumbai, India, and now resides in the U.S. She has an MBA and is currently working towards her MPA, looking to specialize in Non Profit Management. You can find her writing on her blog at Rupande-mehta.tumblr.com or follow her on Twitter @rupandemehta.