Mustering up exponentially more outrage than he can find to condemn minor crimes like gang rape, Glenn Reynolds insists that the media release the name of the troubled young woman who made a false rape accusation that was dropped when it was revealed that there was cell phone video footage of the group sex she apparently consented to.* Emily at Double X (where I now have a permanent spot on the roster!) responds by suggesting that it’s best to err on the side of caution and not release the names of any of the young people involved in this sad situation:
I’m not naming the student out of some mix of pity and sisterhood. She has been suspended from Hofstra. She’s being ripped apart on the Internet. She is having her 15 minutes as the poster girl for untrustworthy slut. And Glenn is right, I am still making excuses for her, even though false allegations are a criminal justice nightmare, because while what happened to her in the bathroom wasn’t rape, she must deeply regret it, and she probably was drunk or otherwise not thinking straight when it happened. Plus, she’s only 18. So not naming her seems like a small—if fairly meaningless—shred of compassion to offer. It’s true that the names of the men she accused became public once they were arrested. That’s a really tough one: whether to publish based merely on an arrest. It always gives me pause, but if a case goes on for a long time before trial, hard to avoid. In this case, for whatever it’s worth, I didn’t publish the guys’ names, either.
I also posted on the case, noting that I’ve been following it but haven’t said anything publicly until recently, because I had a bad feeling about these accusations. Half because I’m morbid and half because I’m fascinated by the way that crime exposes some of the usually unacknowledged undercurrents in society—-both good and bad—-I’m definitely a person who reads a lot about crime and finds it fascinating. I’m not a true crime junkie, but I’ve done my time on Crime Library. And sometimes you can just tell when a story is too pat. The accusation that ropes were involved set off alarm bells for me. That struck me as unlikely, because rapists in these situations often don’t use more force than necessary to subdue someone, and cornering one woman in a bathroom with multiple men is more than enough, especially if she’s drunk. But that’s just my two cents. I may also be full of shit, but that was my gut feeling.
What this girl did was a terrible thing, but Emily’s right: Releasing her name is the wrong move. If I could be assured that the people calling for her blood were actually interested in reducing both the truly high rape rate and the not-that-high false accusation rate,** then I might have a different opinion. But as it is, most of the men obsessed with this case can’t separate out their anger at her for making a false accusation and their disgust at her for being the kind of girl who consents to pull a train. (Amanda Hess has plenty of examples.) The consensus seems to be that women who engage in gang bangs forfeit their right to be treated like human beings deserving of respect the second they do that. I suspect many of the angry men would still deny it’s rape if the video showed her panicking and changing her mind halfway through, only to be forced, because degrading treatment and even assault are assumed in our culture still to be things that you have coming to you for being a slut.