Post by slumbergirl on May 15, 2016 14:48:56 GMT
What about the Duke Lacrosse team?
I think celebrities get a pass more often because they are beloved by some portion of the public. We don't hear about the random stranger rape on a daily basis but I doubt those victims are "blamed" in the same way.
Celebrities and monolithic organizations like the Catholic church have the financial means and wherewithal to defend themselves in and against the media. Cosby is far from the typical case for obvious reasons. Probably shouldn't extrapolate too much from that.
Aaron Fisher was child predator Jerry Sandusky’s first victim. He’s also the only one who’s stepped out of the shadows of anonymity to publicly tell his story.
Fisher was targeted by Sandusky at the age of 11. The football hero made the fatherless boy feel special. The second year at Sandusky’s summer camp the sexual abuse began. and continued for a few years.
Aaron Fisher wrote a book, Silent No More. At 14, he summoned up enough courage to tell his mother.
They both went to his high school principal, who told Aaron “Jerry has a heart of gold and wouldn’t do those types of things.” Aaron was devastated. From Aaron’s guidance counsellor to his school principal and all the way up to the state attorney general’s office, many people in Pennsylvania refused to believe that philanthropist and football hero Jerry Sandusky would abuse children. He was rejected and ridiculed and even threatened by people who in his town who believed the Sandusky allegations were lies.
The Duke Lacrosse Team case was clearly a horrible miscarriage of justice. However, IMO, this case was amplified by the media and the prosecutor because it fit the "racial injustice" narrative - similar to the Tawana Brawley hoax.
Law enforcement are not necessarily more inclined to believe victims of stranger rape, either:
In August 2008, the 18-year-old victim of serial rapist Marc O'Leary, was not believed by Lynnwood, Washington LE. In fact, she was charged and convicted of filing a false rape report.
In 2004, 19-year-old Sara Reedy was raped by a man at the gas station in Cranberry, Pennsylvania where she was working to pay her way through college. He stole $600 from the cash register, assaulted her and fled into the night. The detective who interviewed Reedy in the hospital didn't believe her, and accused her of stealing the money herself and inventing the story as a cover-up. Although another local woman was attacked not long after in similar fashion, the police didn't join the dots. Reedy was arrested for theft and false reporting and, pregnant with her first child, thrown in jail. More than a year after attacking Reedy, serial rapist Wilbur Brown struck again, but this time he was caught and confessed to the earlier crime.
A 22-year-old victim was attacked by a serial rapist on April 26, 2012, in her East Ocean View apartment. Roy Ruiz Loredo, a serial rapist and sexual sadist, followed her home and sexually assaulted her. The victim later said an investigator told her, "If we find out that you're lying, this will be a felony charge." Investigators did not take the victim to a hospital or notify a sexual assault nurse examiner. Two investigators from the Special Crimes Division, once again, did not believe the victim's story. Police closed the case, but reopened it after she persevered and gave a written statement. Loredo was arrested two months later in Virginia Beach on allegations that he attacked three women near his neighborhood. Officers were able to match Loredo's DNA to DNA preserved from a cup that a criminalist had packaged and preserved from the April 26 attack.
I could go on....
