True, a victim will face the emotional hurdle and trauma. The system is unfeeling.
People these days mostly avoid confrontation. Going to the police is confrontation by proxy, and when it takes convincing to get them to take action, a beaten down victim has quite a battle to face.
The world is unpleasant, it will always be so, it will always be full of suffering. We strive to do our best as a people to improve our lot in life, but that doesn't mean lowering your defenses. Always advocate peace, always prepare for war. Many rely on the system or 'it won't happen to me' mentality as to why they don't or won't protect themselves. You shouldn't have to train in self defense but you must. You shouldn't have to be aware of the situation, but you must. You shouldn't have to note the exit signs in an enclosed structure, but you must. You shouldn't have to cover your drink but you must. You shouldn't have to blend in so as to not draw attention from a threat, but you must. Our world is dangerous, we like to think it isn't, and it's so much easier to tell ourselves that we're a victim and deserve sympathy than to ask ourselves what we could have done to prevent this and defend ourselves. We want someone else to do it for us. A higher up, police, lawyers... do it yourself, defend yourself and your friends.
With the police, the entire process for reporting many of these issues revolves around convincing them to do their job. Or rather, convincing them that your problem is important enough, or else an easy enough case to make, that they should devote time to it rather than other crimes in the area.
And then you say "Going to the police is confrontation by proxy"? That sentence, at least in any civilized part of the world, is complete nonsense. The reason why we have police, ideally, is to reduce the number of confrontations by making the cost of both crime and of escalating violence swift and clear. The job of courts and the police is to prevent vigilantism, as well as to protect people. It does more to prevent additional violence both because most criminals (who aren't the best in society) know that you don't try and take on the police and because it keeps the people being hurt by crime from lashing out and escalating.
And then you go on this victim blaming "you must train on self defense" nonsense? If you live in a war zone, or a really rough neighborhood and you can't count on the police, you might have a point. But for most people crime happens rarely, and nearly all of the time there's no way to prepare for it unless that's all you do with your time. Maybe that's how you want to live, but for me and most other people, that's alot of mental and emotional energy to spend on something that isn't likely to happen.
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Robbery doesn't really make for a good comparison here:
- Did you fear for your own physical safety (e.g. that the thief or their friends/etc might retaliate) in reporting the crime to the police?
- Did you known the thief? Did you have friends in common, or did you work together? Will you possibly see social retaliation from the thief's allies for reporting their behavior?
- Does everyone involved, including the thief and the police, agree on what defines acceptable/legal behavior, or are you going to be argue with the police and others that just because you wore a sexy dress didn't mean that you "wanted" someone to steal your phone?
The robbery experience is comparably simple for the victim and yet even for that, filing a report and being believed was difficult. Therefore, it makes it completely believable that filing a complaint for something like sexual assault would be undeniably hard for many people, in many cases.
That said, it was still comically annoying to convince the detective. I was asked if I had been drinking (yes). I was asked why did I walk home before going to the police station (because without a phone, I had to get on the Internet to look up the nearest police station). I was asked why I didn't call 911 on a pay phone (...because, it literally did not occur to me that pay phones still work...?). I was asked why I walked from Chelsea through a "lively" section of town (Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village), a place known for prostitution, when I could've taken a more direct route (because it's a nice night, and I literally get lost everytime I wander off the grid in the West Village).
To say that the detective didn't believe me is an understatement. He actually accused me of soliciting a prostitute, and that my "lost" items were a result of me getting in over my head with a savvy prostitute.
But I didn't feel terribly offended because I knew I had evidence that could place me at the time of the incident, and other hard facts, such as how the robber ended up using my Netflix account to watch "Prison Break" in the days following the robbery.
A rape victim has none of that assurance. Even if the rape kit comes through, unless the rape is stranger rape, the rape kit does not contain hard facts about consent or intent. All those questions that were asked of me are going to be asked of the victim...except with far more difficult insinuations. After I told my roommate of my interrogation by the cops, she proceeded to tell me of her friends' similar stories...such as how a (female) cop was insistent on asking the victim why she would ever invite her friend (the accused) up to her apartment for tea.
And then there's the difficulty of answering those questions after having recently suffering the physical and emotional trauma of being raped. I have no idea what that feels like; my attacker was a jerk but otherwise left me unharmed.
look at what the police asked the victim in the recent stanford rape case! it's baffling. https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-let...
women who wear feminine or even sexual clothing and make-up aren't "sluts who are asking for it". they're not asking for unprofessional flirtation or jokes, and they're certainly not asking for bullying, disrespect or aggression. i'm not talking about dress code nuance. i'm not talking about whether someone is making destructive decisions or simply different decisions. i'm specifically talking about how femininity is used as an excuse to diminish and over-reach, as an excuse for those with power to project their desires and discount the will of those without. how one person dresses or behaves doesn't justify someone else being an asshole. and yet that is exactly how we make women feel when men cross boundaries, whether it is a rude joke or a physical violence.
the only other time i can think of clothing mattering in a crime is when black people are murdered and somehow it is justified because hoodie :-O
more generally, notifying authorities about sexual harassment or rape is extremely difficult - culturally, not just logistically. because of rape culture and the normative masculinity of most people in power, eg management and police, victims face aggressive doubt. people who speak up often face serious retaliation (bullying, asked to move locations rather than asking the aggressor to move, seen as a problem, stigmatized, etc), which can be even worse - professionally and emotionally - than the incident itself.
Casually telling people to shut up and file a claim reveals deep ignorance. In the Bay Area for example, we've recently had issues with police texting each other homophobic slurs, being involved with an underage sex worker, asking "shaming" questions of a rape victim, and of course being acquitted for murdering unarmed black and brown people. These are just the news-reading ways in the last 12 months that might lead someone to have less trust in authority, to think that maybe those with power aren't on their side.
One's parents, one's friends, one's experiences in the world - they also tell some people that police are not on their side. Daughter, always find a populated, well lit place to pull over at night if a police car flags you to stop. Son, you are black, so when the police pull you over for no reason be calm, be the bigger man, white people are taught to fear you, to see you as an "angry violent black man", so be extra small, don't draw attention. Child, you were born here like your friends, but your parents don't have papers, if you come home from work one day and we are not here it is because they found us, don't draw attention.
Having "the law" on one's side is a privilege. If someone can expect to call the police and have their problems taken seriously, they have a privilege. They don't need to feel guilty -- all of us on HN have some kind of privilege, eg access to the internet and reading and writing -- but they do need to acknowledge that not everyone is the same as themselves. they're not a jerk for having access to the police. but they are ignorant for not thinking about the challenges and differences others face, and then telling people they're doing it wrong for not shutting up and choosing an "easy" solution. have some compassion. be supportive. that's what it means to acknowledge privilege.
> being involved with an underage sex worker
I've seen others argue, and I agree: there's no such thing as an "underage sex worker" or "child prostitute" -- terms that have been used for some time in the mainstream press. The correct term is "child sex trafficking victim" or the like. The point is that minors cannot legally consent to sex, so legally they must be victims, not criminals.
I don't know about the specific incident you're referring to, but if by "involved with" you mean "participating in the victimization of", I hope there were very serious consequences.
Skimming, the first conversation with law enforcement is when a deputy informs her she had been assaulted.
(None of that is meant as push back about reporting being difficult, it's just that in that case law enforcement didn't do anything baffling, they rendered assistance to someone who needed it and prosecuted the obvious crime)
How would rape problem ever get fixed if there are no cases and no time served?
It's a probiel when crime is blamed on "rape culture" rather on a concrete person. That's like accusing everybody but the perpetrator.
Making IT community resolve rape cases instead of specific authorities is counterproductive too. I doubt we're good at it.
Have you ever had a software system with a bug that only appeared in integration tests, or production environment? Every individual component satisfied its contract tolerably well, or misbehaves but in a way that isn't detectable locally, but the system as a whole has emergent misbehaviors. That's a real problem, not imagined.
See also: Tragedy of the Commons, where bad things happen even when no one individual is clearly solely responsible.
That's the problem. That's why our rights, freedoms and safety (real one, not theatrical) are taken from us, bit by bit, and we're unable to do anything.
Happens for a decade, slowly but surely, before my eyes.
We've got to spend some effort on defense, every one of us.
When you have a bug in integration tests, you shuffle your interactions while it gets fixed. When you have Tragedy of the Commons, you rework your social system until there's no more any Tragedy.
Sure, the people who experienced Appelbaum's harassing behavior could've spoken up and possibly averted the alleged rape by having him kicked out on the basis of his unpleasant behavior alone.
However, it's not easy to get someone kicked out based on allegations of behavior, especially someone as high up as him. I mean, that story of bureaucracy and shit rolling downhill is as old as civilization. And it's not all upside to have an organization where people get kicked out via accusation and internal arbitration alone.
Let's assume that some of this abusive behavior warranted official action via the courts (criminal or civil). But those who critique Violet Blue and her allies overlook an obvious problem: if you report a crime to the cops, they now have the authority to get all in your emails and other organization business. Giving Violet Blue and her friends the benefit of the doubt that they are true believers in the Tor project...I find it exceptionally easy to sympathize with how they were able to rationalize not going public about Appelbaum earlier. It's bad enough to cause emotional rift within an organization, no matter how justified...but to risk destroying an organization that you believe is saving lives and protecting freedom...yeah, that's kind of a hard thing to risk taking to court, even for black-and-white crimes.
I agree that it's hard to find black and white in accusations...but I'd argue that even the judicial system leaves more than enough gray to argue over. And because of that, I don't believe that things are ever as simple "if something is wrong, file charges" -- just like it's never as easy as "if you love someone, put a ring on it."
I'll likely have the privilege of never having to file charges for rape, but once I had to file charges as a victim of armed robbery. Even though I had plenty of evidence, in hand and forthcoming (Android location tracing)...I had a hell of a time convincing a detective that I wasn't faking a robbery for insurance purposes, just because I wasn't clear exactly what block i was on when it happened. I can't even fucking imagine what it is like convincing the system that sexual assault (or even harassment) has happened, but I imagine the friction is enough to deter people from taking necessary action until it's too late. It seems that some of these victims are able to talk themselves out of thinking that a colleague truly did wrong, and when others step up, they realize their mistake in being quiet.