More on Duke Lacrosse Rape Case

[Jon8503]

From: Rachels Tavern: http://rachelstavern.com/blog_comment.asp?bi=317&m=3&y=2006&d=1&s=

I am making it my personal mission to get the word out this terrible story. 46 members of the Duke Lacrosse team are taking DNA tests after some of the players were accused of gang raping a woman who they invited to be a dancer at a party. I also don't want people to think abou this story as a gender issue, but as incident that reveals how racism, sexism, and classism intersected to make this young woman particularly vulnerable to a sexual assault. If you read this report from ABC News you will hear very little about race. However, if you this story you get a better idea of what most likely went on. A group of young wealthy White men felt that it was ok to assault this woman, raping her and yelling racial slurs at her. This should be blowing up in the blogosphere folks. This is also one of those "if this had happen to a White woman would we have already heard about it" stories.

Here's what the local paper said happened,

The woman who says she was raped last week by three members of the Duke University lacrosse team thought she would be dancing for five men at a bachelor party, she said Friday. But when she arrived that night, she found herself surrounded by more than 40.
Just moments after she and another exotic dancer started to perform, she said, men in the house started barking racial slurs. The two women, both black, stopped dancing.

"We started to cry," she said. "We were so scared."

The women subsequently left the party, but decided to come back after one of the men apologized. When the women went back into the party, "Two males then pulled the victim into a bathroom as three men sexually assaulted her for an approximate 30-minute time period, according to the warrant," according to the student newspaper

The woman was able to get away and call the police, and she was subsequently admitted to the hosptial. When the police came to the house to investiagte, the men refused to cooperate, and now the police are testing 46 out of 47 of the men on the team ( I saw one report saying that the victim's cell phone, purse, and an acrylic fingernail were found at the house when they finally got in.). I understand that these young men are legally innocent until proven guilty, but the evidence in this case seems very strong.

On a more positive note, the student paper is reporting that about 250 students and community members have been protesting for 3 days outside of the house where the incident happened. It seems that the house has receive complaints from neighbors in the past.

The young woman is a student at North Carolina Central University (a historically Black University), and she is the mother of two. She was working for the escort service as a dancer to support her family and pay for college.

The race/class/gender dynamics of this whole case are really scary, and they reveal a great deal about out power structure inthis country. This young woman ended up in the vulnerable position of being a sex worker because she was trying to better her family and her education. The two young women left the party after the racial slurs began and they feared for their safety, but I can't help wondering if they were thinking about how they were going to pay their bills or feed their kids when they went back in, something most of these young men don't even have to think about. I wonder if these guys were thinking about how much power they had over this young women when they yelled racist slurs and when they physically and sexually assault this women? I also wonder if those guys who remained silent were more concerned about protecting their buddies than stopping this terrible assault. How much do they think this woman's life is worth?

One of the people quoted in the student paper said that the school spends so much time protecting students from the people in the community, but in this case cleary shows how the people in the community also need to be protected from the students.

I encourage people to put up the story on their blogs, and put pressure on the University to investigate the team and level some sort of disciplinary actions, and of course this legal system also needs to do its part to put these men behind bars. I think one way people in the blogosphere may be able to help, in addition to agitating for the full force of the law to come down on these men, is by setting up some sort of fund to help this young woman pay for college (if anybody knows how this can be done). (Thanks to Baft Rage for the heads up on this.)

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