If you want to talk about Bill Cosby (or Bill Clinton, or Woody Allen, or Roman Polanski) please find a conversation somewhere else. This post is about what you are supposed to do if you've been raped. What's the next step?
Reading comments by self-identified Catholic conservatives in the last few days, this is what I have learned:
- If you tell the police you've been raped, it's because you're looking for attention. You should file a civil suit, instead.
- If you file a civil suit, it's because you're looking for money, and are not telling the truth.
- If you don't file a civil suit, that shows you don't have a case, and are not telling the truth.
- If you tell someone right away, that shows suspicious presence of mind, and proves that you engineered the whole thing to embarrass the alleged perpetrator.
- If you don't tell anyone right away, that shows a suspicious lack of urgency, and proves that you are making up the story for no reason other than to embarrass the alleged perpetrator.
- If you don't file a civil suit, it shows that you don't need the money and are just doing it for attention, because people love the kind of fabulous attention they get when they accuse someone of rape, especially if that person is popular or powerful.
- If you do file a civil suit, it shows that you want the money so badly that you don't mind getting all the horrible attention that no victim in her right mind would want to get, especially if the alleged perpetrator is popular or powerful.
- If you're the only one who accuses someone of rape, it shows that your story is unbelievable.
- If lots of other people make similar accusations, that is suspiciously orchestrated, and shows that your story is unbelieveable.
- If you were in the same room with the person who raped you, that shows that you are just as guilty as he is, because you're in the same room with a rapist, and who would do that?
- If the person you're accusing of rape is rich, famous, or powerful, then that shows that you're just looking for attention, and it never happened.
- If the person you're accusing of rape is rich, famous, and powerful, that shows that you should have known he is a rapist, and you wanted it to happen.
- If you tell someone right away, they will assume you're lying.
- If you don't tell anyone right away, they will assume you're lying, because you didn't tell anyone right away.
If you tell, that's a count against you. If you don't tell, that's a count against you. If you speak alone, that's a count against you. If you speak as one of a crowd, that's a count against you. If you sue, that's a count against you. If you don't sue, that's a count against you.
If you tell someone that you've been raped, it probably didn't actually happen the way you said, and even if it did, it was your fault in some way, and you should have realized that it would happen, and there is no particular reason anyone should believe you, and if you think the rape itself was painful and humiliating, just wait till you see what you've got coming next, when you try to tell someone.
So why didn't you tell someone sooner?
Clearly, because it didn't happen. There can be no other explanation.
What I've learned is that if you've been raped, your only real recourse is not to have been raped. Because anything and everything you do from that moment forward is evidence against you. The deck is stacked against you as a victim because you are a victim. They very moment you even breathe the word "rape," that's evidence in the minds of many -- many who self-identify as conservative Catholics -- that no such thing happened, and anyway it was your fault.
So tell me. What is a rape victim supposed to do, in order to be believed? What? You tell me.