Letters to the Editor
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Space-filler...but one thing was interesting....
The author's condemnation of "pack behavior." What the hell is team sports but pack behavior? I know almost nothing about this case, luckily, but I must say that if the Duke women are going to the extent of wearing an armband proclaiming that the accused are innocent...then I tend to think they probably are. (Innocent of the charges...not "innocent" in general. Anyone who uses the term "innocent" with regard to a college student is being very quaint.) One other point: when I was an undergrad, at a school with an overwhelming hypersensitivity to sexual assault issues, there were six rapes that I recall being covered in the school newspaper. One involved a football player raping his ex-girlfriend (he was black, and this school was lily-white, but he wasn't lynched...just kicked off the team, scholarship rescinded, and sent to the pokey); one was another domestic case; and four of them--four out of six--were women who falsely reported being raped. These cases happened with eerie similarity once a year: the girl would claim she'd been raped, there'd be a campus-wide firestorm, her story would break down, she'd admit she was lying, and then the hand-wringing would begin. Same process each time. In most of these cases, the assailant didn't exist, but I can recall in one case there was an actual person accused. He went through hell for a few days, but then the girl confessed that she'd made the whole thing up. (Needless to say, she had some issues.) When these cases occurred, and were exposed as hoaxes, some campus "facilitator" would invariably be quoted in the paper saying something like, "Well, even though this incident was false, I think it does raise awareness to the systemic problem..." I think what those women did--filing false reports about being raped--did more to discourage actual victims from coming forward than anything else, and instead of raising awareness, raised skepticism. As a result of these incidents, I don't automatically assume that the Duke accuser is telling the truth, and that the lacrosse players are guilty...and the Duke women's actions--seeing as how they are probably very familiar with the situation--also point me towards thinking that the players might be innocent. That's for the judge and jury to ultimately decide, but I have a feeling that there will be an acquittal.
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