Over on Pandagon, they’re discussing the way that “innocent until proven guilty” gets used in rape cases as a gloss for “blame the victim.” This is ground we’ve covered before.
Amanda says:
The other thing I’ve learned from rape apologists lately is that while in most crimes, the presumption of innocence is a legal standard for determining if a defendent is guilty or not, but when it comes to rape, that’s not good enough. Rape and rape alone is a crime where it’s critical that we heap disdain on the victim and refuse to believe her until it’s proven in court, which should be easy to do after everyone has satiated him/herself on accusing the victim of lying.
And as I’ve said before, if you told someone your car was stolen, whether that someone is a cop or a prosecutor or a friend, the reaction would not be, “Well, were you driving in a dangerous neighborhood? Were you drinking? Did you leave it unlocked?” followed by disbelief that the car was actually stolen. That just wouldn’t be the reaction. “Asking for it” doesn’t come into the conversation about other crimes, about theft or physical assault or what have you.
A smart commentator on this post says, in regard to the presumption of innocence:
Filing a false police report and lying under oath are crimes. Young, O’Reilly, and their ilk always accuse rape victims of those crimes. Don’t rape victims have a presumption of innocence?
Of course, in our world, rape victims don’t have a presumption of innocence, either socially or in the eyes of the law. But we need to change that, and we can’t be stopped from changing that by the fact that sometimes, in rare cases, some victims (of various crimes, not just rape) are lying. Believing the victim is the decent thing to do.
