Word: raped
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...press can convince a judge that such a ban imposes an unreasonable restriction. In the U.S., 21 states and the District of Columbia have laws protecting the privacy of crime victims. In 1989 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that awarded $97,500 to a rape victim whose name was published by the Florida Star on the ground that the information had been legally obtained from police records. Florida's law, passed in 1911, is of such doubtful constitutionality that Palm Beach County state attorney David Bludworth has asked for a declaratory ruling on whether...
...crucial distinction between the two cases might be that the Central Park incident was a random, violent attack by strangers and the other could fall into the murkier category of date rape, in which the victim and her alleged assailant know each other. Susan Estrich, who teaches law at the University of Southern California, contends that reporting the name in the Palm Beach case and not in the Central Park jogger case proves "how much acquaintance rape is still not considered to be a real rape." Date-rape cases can be messy: Was it an unambivalent lack of consent...
...risk of looking silly by not mentioning a name now widely known, many news organizations nonetheless decided to adhere to their long-standing policy, which is based on the belief that naming rape victims not only subjects women to public humiliation but also discourages others from coming forward, an opinion widely shared by police, prosecutors and rape counselors. A Senate committee found that while 100,000 rapes were reported last year, up 6% from 1989, as many as 1.9 million still go unreported. The most vocal critics of the disclosure this week fear an increase in underreporting. "Just start publishing...
Ultimately, naming victims may turn less on its legality than on whether secrecy is viewed as a misguided form of protection that perpetuates the victim's sense of shame. Estrich, who was raped in 1974, wrote a book about her ordeal in 1987 in the hope of persuading other victims to come forward. But like most feminists, she vehemently opposes the "outing" of rape victims without their consent. "It serves no purpose," she says. "Has the public gotten any more information it needed? The answer is no. Has a woman been branded and humiliated, her ability to go on with...
Estrich's view is powerful because it recognizes an unpleasant reality: though the public's perceptions are rapidly changing, rape is still regarded as different from other crimes. The worst that is said about someone whose home is burglarized after the door was left unlocked is that the victim was careless. With rape the all-too-common impulse remains to impugn the victim's moral character. Courts have come to outlaw testimony about a rape victim's sexual history unless it can be shown that the evidence has a direct bearing on the assault in question, but there...