We know from research and our own experience that sexual assault and rape are the most underreported crimes. And part of the reason they’re underreported is that victims are concerned about whether they’re going to be believed or not. That prevents a lot of folks from coming forward, as well as the trauma of the experience.
.. The most common thing you hear, and the most common thing you see in the research, is that victims don’t think they’re going to be believed or supported.
.. One of the things you see in offenders who have been studied is a sense of entitlement. That they are entitled to exercise whatever power and control they have, and that they can do what they want.
.. Rape doesn’t happen, sexual offenses don’t happen, unless they think they can get away with it. Sexual assault and rape are choices.
.. The more power and control someone has, the more devastating it is for a single victim to feel like they could come forward and report this. It’s like, who the hell is going to believe me when it’s this big, powerful person?
So when one victim comes forward, it’s not at all uncommon to see others think, “Well, they came forward; now it’s not just my word,
Rodrigo Duterte, Scorned Abroad, Remains Popular in the Philippines
Virgilio Mabag figures there is a good chance that his meth addict brother will become a casualty of President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly campaign against drugs in the Philippines.
“I told him to prepare himself to die,” Mr. Mabag said.
But Mr. Mabag, 54, who runs a neighborhood volunteer association in a sprawling Manila slum, still enthusiastically supports Mr. Duterte, saying that his policies will make the country safer and more orderly.
“I’m delighted,” said Mr. Mabag, who was wearing a Duterte T-shirt. “This is the only time I’ve seen a president like this, who says exactly what he wants to say.”
.. He has compared himself to Hitler (and later apologized), called President Obama a “son of a whore,” and joked after an Australian missionary was raped and killed that “she was so beautiful” he should have been first to rape her. He has lashed out at the pope, despite leading a nation that is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, and cursed the United Nations and the European Union.
No matter. For many Filipinos, Mr. Duterte’s passionate outbursts, however crude and impolitic, are signs of his fearlessness and willingness to act.
.. Lorraine Badoy, a dermatologist and a volunteer at a nongovernmental organization who lives in one of Manila’s gated communities, acknowledges that the president’s outbursts make her cringe. “I just wish he’d shut up sometimes,” she said.
But she says she is more enamored of his social policies than she is concerned about the casualties of the antidrug campaign. In Mr. Duterte, she said: “I see something that I have not seen in a long time in the Philippines, which is that he cares. He cares for the small guy, which is very important to me.”
.. When Mr. Duterte likened himself to Hitler, his supporters rushed to defend him on social media, arguing that the comment was precipitated by a remark by former President Benigno S. Aquino III, who compared Mr. Duterte to Hitler five months earlier.
.. Suddenly, there’s someone who is willing to do something about their problems, and the media is trying to take him down,”
,,
Migo Paladio, 24, stood in a narrow alley and watched the crowds from two wakes spill out. They were for men killed by vigilantes on the presumption that they were drug dealers.
Mr. Paladio, a technician, said they were not dealers.
What Makes the Stanford Rape Case So Unusual
Despite a two-year minimum sentence associated with the convictions, Turner was sentenced to six months in county jail and probation. In a letterTurner read to the judge, he described himself as an “inexperienced drinker and party-goer” who was “shattered by the party culture” he “briefly experienced” at college. He maintained in the statement that “in no way was I trying to rape anyone.” In a now-infamous letter to the judge, Turner’s father argued that his son should not be sent to prison for “20 minutes of action.
Judge Aaron Persky, who has touted his commitment to “the prosecution of sexually violent predators,” seemed persuaded. “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him,” Persky said.
.. “He was intoxicated, and he was a really high-achieving man. Well, that describes every rape or sexual assault at Stanford
.. “Our criminal system is widely understood to be a dual system of justice based on privileges,” Dauber said.
The Bill Clinton Question
Bill Cosby’s sexual exploitations were kinda-sorta in the public record for years and years, but they were a footnote in profiles and biographies until Hannibal Buress starting talking about Cosby-the-rapist in his comedy routines. Then suddenly, it was a story, a cascade of stories, and the whole truth or something close was out.
.. The slippage between a powerful man’s dalliances and straightforward predation is something that could happen just once. But looked at in the light of a credible rape allegation, there are all sorts of Clinton stories — the Willey and Jones cases, the rumors collected by Jones’s lawyers, the old tales of state troopers being used as procurers, the 2002 globetrotting on the jet of a billionaire who’s also a convicted statutory rapist — that could suggest a darker pattern, tending toward the Cosby-esque.