Stickler Posted June 20, 2014 Share Posted June 20, 2014 (edited) Ok...I read this and it pissed me off. Didn't even get past the second paragraph, really...http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/17/college-rape-prosecutors-press-charges_n_5500432.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular Ebrahim said it wasn't his job to say whether or not he believed Reed, or tell her whether or not she had been raped. He explained that no one who had experienced a sex crime, or who had ever been accused of one, would end up sitting on the jury. So his job was to filter out cases in which 12 jurors, who "have no experience in any kind of sex crimes occurring in their life," would concur beyond a reasonable doubt that a rape had taken place. "And that is a mountain that is going to be very hard to climb in front of a jury in trying to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt," Ebrahim said. "That's the main problem here." Ok...so that means that the jury has had all sexual assault survivors screened out. So the reality is that they are seating a statistically-unrepresentative sample...in that if you took an average 12 people, chances are one of them will have been the victim of some sort of sexual assault: http://www.oneinfourusa.org/statistics.php In a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease control of 5,000 college students at over 100 colleges, 20% of women answered "yes" to the question "In your lifetime have you been forced to submit to sexual intercourse against your will?" Thus, one in five college women has been raped at some point in her lifetime. (2) In {the same study} 4% of men answered "yes" to the question "In your lifetime have you been forced to submit to sexual intercourse against your will?" (2) So that's 24% of the population...though what effect selecting a population of college students has on the validity of the sample I'm not sure. So of 12 randomly selected people, somewhere around four of them would have been victim to a sexual assault at some point. ***Because sexual violations of other people are just that freaking common***. Can we just get over the societal denial that it IS that common? Can we? PLEASE? Because denial of how horribly common sexual assault really is allows it to keep happening, and happening, and happening. It is fucked up. It makes me fucking angry. Yeah, I understand how none of them would end up on a jury. The same way I did not end up on the jury that went on to convict a 10-year-old as an adult for the shooting his dad. I was screened out right at the start. Sexual assault victims would never, ever get seated on a jury trying a sexual assault case. Even though they make up a substantial minority of the population. Even though many people who have not been sexually assaulted have a LOT of dumb preconceptions about sexual assaults...well, that may be an overgeneralization. But there's a lot of...cultural stupid about sexual crimes. A lot of it. I don't know what to do about that, other than what I'm doing, which is to complain loudly. I'm hoping if enough people realize how often sexual assault happens we'll actually believe the men, women, and children who get sexually attacked. Instead of either claiming the victim is to blame, or thinking that the victim is lying. Not that fabricating doesn't happen, it does and it's nasty. But it's also pretty unusual. Ok...I feel a little less pissed off. Just a little. No, it's still not working right. *Kicks the justice system.* Edited June 20, 2014 by Stickler Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WinterRosie Posted June 20, 2014 Share Posted June 20, 2014 This is why I want to change the world. I just haven't figured out how, yet. In the meantime I'm practicing my advocacy by being a transit advocate. Then I'll move on to more personal fish. Eventually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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