Trigger Warning for medical neglect and abuse, police abuse, and discussions of the child welfare system

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Anna Brown wasn’t leaving the emergency room quietly.

She yelled from a wheelchair at St. Mary’s Health Center security personnel and Richmond Heights police officers that her legs hurt so badly she couldn’t stand.

She had already been to two other hospitals that week in September, complaining of leg pain after spraining her ankle.

This time, she refused to leave.

A police officer arrested Brown for trespassing. He wheeled her out in handcuffs after a doctor said she was healthy enough to be locked up.

Brown was 29. A mother who had lost custody of two children. Homeless. On Medicaid. And, an autopsy later revealed, dying from blood clots that started in her legs, then lodged in her lungs.

She told officers she couldn’t get out of the police car, so they dragged her by her arms into the station. They left her lying on the concrete floor of a jail cell, moaning and struggling to breathe. Just 15 minutes later, a jail worker found her cold to the touch.

Officers suspected Brown was using drugs. Autopsy results showed she had no drugs in her system.

Six months later, family members still wonder how Brown’s sprained ankle led to her death in police custody, and whether anyone — including themselves — is to blame.

The way the Post-Dispatch exploits family members’ personal sense of guilt that is a normal part of grieving, equating it with much larger forces, would have you believe that Anna Brown’s death was just a tragic accident. But the way Brown died was not the result of a few bad choices. It was the result of a myriad of institutional violences: white supremacy, the broken health care system, police brutality and the prison industrial complex, the racism and classism of the child welfare system, ableism and its intersection with racism, dehumanization and criminalization of (suspected) drug users, and the lack of housing as a human right, among others. Anna Brown did not die with the dignity we afford to human beings, but with the contempt we reserve for garbage. And a woman’s humanity is not just forgotten and cast aside with no systemic reason.

The institutional violence against Anna Brown began long before her death from an undiagnosed yet treatable condition, and her death can only be understood within the context of this long string of abuses.

Anna Brown was one of 10 children. She graduated from Kirkwood High School. At 18, she had her first child, a boy. She had a daughter nine years later. Brown was raising them alone when a tornado destroyed her north St. Louis home on New Year’s Eve 2010. She moved to Berkeley.

Shortly after, she lost her job at a sandwich shop. Bills lapsed. The electricity was turned off. So was the gas. And the water.

Family members say Brown and her children appeared fine during visits at Davis’ home in Normandy.

They weren’t.

In April, a state Children’s Division representative found Brown’s toilet filled with feces. Burn marks scarred the floors and sinks where Brown had used small fires to stay warm. One refrigerator could not be opened. Insects and rotting food filled another, according to state reports given to the Post-Dispatch by Brown’s family.

Brown was not lucid and seemed confused as Berkeley police arrested her for parental neglect. The courts awarded legal custody of the kids to the Children’s Division. Davis could have physical custody, as long as Brown didn’t live with her.

Brown’s home was condemned. She ended up on the streets. She lived in four homeless shelters from May to September 2011.

At first, she visited her children at her mother’s home. That ended in June, when Brown started telling the children they didn’t have to listen to their grandparents and called the police to report they were being abused. Police found no evidence of abuse.

After that, Brown had supervised visits with her children at the Children’s Division. She also called her mother daily to check on them.

Brown, who later started receiving treatment for mental illness, is just one of countless examples of the way that the child welfare system is an active agent of racism, classism, ableism, and sexism. Earlier assistance could have easily prevented the loss of necessary utilities like heat and water, could have kept food in the fridge, could have provided mental health services to Brown if needed, could have helped her care for her children. This crisis almost certainly could have been avoided.

But as Dorothy Roberts shows in her incredible and important book Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare, the system sees these means of assistance as undeserved, and either refuses to provide them or makes access to them overly burdensome. Indeed, the child welfare system, instead of acting to keep families healthy, works mainly as a means of social control of Black populations. While Native and Latino children are also generally overrepresented in the child welfare system, the overwhelming majority of children are Black — in some cities, virtually all are Black. Virtually all also come from families that are poor. And the vast majority of cases are not of the kind of child abuse we see on the news, but of “neglect.” As Roberts explains, “neglect” generally means being poor — not having access to adequate food, shelter, or child care. But as in Brown’s case, the system does not give beds to families when it deems they do not have enough, does not provide housing vouchers when they see shelter as inadequate, does not increase food stamp allotment when children are going hungry, or provide child care when parents cannot afford it but still have to work. The child welfare system instead almost always acts too late, and has only one means of intervention: removing the children from their parents, who are usually mothers.

Brown’s children were not only removed from her, but explicitly forbidden from living with her, even when another adult in the household was acting as their carer, even though there was no evidence that she posed a physical danger or threat to her children. The system deliberately acted not just to keep the children safe and cared for, but to keep mother and children apart. In the child welfare system, separating Black children from their mothers is seen as the only means to keep them safe, even when other options are clearly available.

Further, once the children were provided for, the system lost interest in Brown’s own well-being. Like so many poor people of color with mental illness(es), she was not given housing and access to mental health services, but instead ended up homeless — a state which only exacerbates existing mental illness, and would be incompatible with reuniting her with her children. And after this series of assaults on Brown’s rights and humanity, it is her mother who is left feeling the guilt for forcibly complying with an abusive system:

Davis also faults the St. Louis County Family Court, which she said forced her into a heartbreaking dilemma after the state took away Brown’s children on a claim of neglect. Davis could take in her grandchildren or her daughter, a judge said, but not both.

“I’m mad at myself because if I hadn’t listened to the courts, she would still be here,” Davis said. “If she had been here at this house, she would be here today.”

Anna Brown attempted to access health care from the position of a Black homeless woman who had been deemed an “unfit mother” and who was perceived as “mentally unstable.”  The social forces of white supremacy, classism, misogyny, and ableism ensured that she therefore entered this system, a site in which innumerable oppressions are enacted, as someone perceived as far less than fully human. If homeless people are inhuman, if being an unfit mother is close to the worst thing a woman can be, if being Black is both criminalized and associated with worse health care outcomes across the board, if “crazy” people are to be either feared or ignored, this inevitably impacted the care that she received.

Despite repeatedly complaining of the same symptoms, Brown was not believed. The medical staff in charge did their tests, and decided that they knew better than Brown about her own body. Instead of reviewing their work — ultrasounds were apparently conducted to check for blood clots — or searching for alternate explanations, they decided that Brown must be lying, perhaps looking for drugs. This call was irrefutably tied to Brown’s race, gender, homelessness, and mental health status. Real-life medicine doesn’t work like House. But if anyone thinks an insured white guy with no history of mental illness would have been pinned with “drug-seeking behavior” and literally dragged away in handcuffs, they’re living in one hell of a different United States of America than I am.

Anna Brown was arrested for demanding medical care for a condition that killed her several hours later. For seeing herself as deserving of life, for knowing that her constant pain was not normal or acceptable, for demanding that somebody give a damn and recognize her humanity, she was thrown in jail and died alone on a cold cement floor. An officer waited for three hours with Brown to see a doctor who could declare her “fit for confinement,” so that he could drag her from a police car when she could not walk. Who devoted those same levels of time and resources to saving her life? Who cared as much about why this homeless Black woman was in so much pain and distress as they did about locking her up?

Both the police and the hospital have shirked responsibility:

St. Mary’s officials say they did all they were supposed to do for Brown. “Our records show that, in this case, everything that should have been done medically was done properly. We found nothing that would have changed this tragic outcome,” according to a statement.

Police Chief Maj. Roy Wright said his officers had no way of knowing Brown’s condition. “A lot of times people don’t want to stay in jail and will claim to be sick,” he said. “We depend on medical officials to tell us they’re OK.”

We found nothing that would have changed this tragic outcome.

I am not a doctor. Even if I were, I do not have access to Anna Brown’s medical records. I do not know if the ultrasounds were conducted properly. I do not know if there were additional tests that could or should have been done. I do not know if her condition was not diagnosed because of carelessness and prejudice, or because it simply could not be diagnosed. I do not know how or if Anna Brown could have lived.

But I do know one thing for sure: she did not have to die like she did.

It was not inevitable that she was charged with “trespassing” at a hospital while complaining of a legitimate medical condition. It was not inevitable that her pain was ignored and treated as a fabrication. It was not inevitable that she be literally dragged away in handcuffs because she could not walk and because authorities just needed another Black body locked up. It was not inevitable that she die alone on a cold floor, in a way that we would never wish on animals. It was not inevitable that a homeless Black woman asserting herself was perceived as being “on drugs,” or that being “on drugs” revoked her right to decency and humanity.

I do not know that Anna Brown had to die. But even if she did, she could have died in a hospital bed. She could have been given the same dignity afforded to insured white people who aren’t (actually or perceived as) “crazy” or “on drugs.” She could have not have had her identity as a mentally ill, homeless Black woman equated with criminality and worthlessness. She could have been treated like the human being she was, as a person whose life had value.

And anyone who cannot see that is the one who is actually lacking humanity.

A new study about the ongoing rape epidemic in the Congo has some rather terrifying statistics to offer. According to USA Today, 420,000 women are raped in the DRC every year.

Or, if you ask the Boston Globe, 1,152 women are raped every day. The Guardian reports that 48 women are raped every hour. And the Sydney Morning Herald ups the ante even further by putting the number at one rape every minute.

Even if all of the varying numbers did add up just so, I can’t be the only one wondering when exactly this ongoing campaign of sexual terrorism against women turned into a competition over which Western newspaper could write the most shocking headline. Nor can I refrain from asking what, exactly, is the magic number of rapes that will suddenly make us care? Would the headlines still be blaring if it were 30 rapes an hour? Is one rape every one and a half minutes just too few that the numbers needed to be fudged and made even more sensationalistic? Do we, as Western observers, care more now than we would if the number were actually one rape every five minutes?

Do we care now? Will the subject merit our true attention? Will we suddenly start listening to Congolese survivors? Are we ashamed for not having listened more closely before, for not believing the full magnitude when women were already telling us the truth? Do we feel better now that a U.S. organization has officially verified their lived experiences? Or will we remain indifferent until the numbers hit two rapes every minute? Five rapes every minute? One every second? Where precisely is the cut off point for compassion and a sense justice? How many women must be raped before we start to care enough to look at the causes? How high do the numbers have to be?

I am in no way trying to suggest that these numbers do not matter. Nor am I arguing that they are not horrific, that they do not deserve attention, or that headlines on the topic are unwarranted. What I’m condemning is the objectifying and imperialistic tendency towards disaster porn. What I’m criticizing is the refusal to engage with the issue of violence in the Congo in an in-depth and ongoing basis that puts these numbers in context, and the decision to instead resort to pearl-clutching headlines designed to shock Western readers with information we already had and will continue to ignore.

I’m also making clear that the response to this extremely extended crisis would look a lot different were it occurring somewhere other than sub-Sahara Africa. It’s not that the media takes most rape seriously, or that even the most privileged rape survivors are immune to rape apologism, victim-blaming, and indifference — this entire blog is a testament to these things not being true.

But on the one hand, that is precisely the point. These same newspapers that report these numbers with horror and very little background or analysis will tomorrow resort to shaming and casting doubt on rape victims from their own communities. Tomorrow, when it is no longer convenient to feign interest in rape, it will be back to business as usual. Tomorrow, lines will be drawn between the “date rape” that so many women needlessly whine and exaggerate about and the “real” rape that is downplayed by taking it seriously — after all, what about those women in the Congo?

Indeed, the part of this study that has been the most ignored and will continue to be pushed to the margins is the fact that this study shows higher numbers than others, in large part, because it includes rape by intimate partners instead of only rape committed as a tactic of war — a fact that makes the situation look a lot more similar to the one in countries where most don’t consider rape to be a big problem.

And, on the other hand, while the shaming and ridicule of rape victims is ubiquitous in the U.S. and other Western countries, some victims are indeed always more valued than others. We wouldn’t have to wait until the number of rapes hit “one every minute” before we started to care, if a large portion of those victims were white, cis, economically privileged women — at least, not if those rapes were in large part being committed within the context of war and with the level of violence we’re seeing against Congolese women. We wouldn’t have to wonder whether one every minute is actually going to be enough to cause real concern. We would know that there would be outrage.

But women who are black, who are poor, who are from countries labeled “third world” always fall towards the very bottom of hierarchy of rape victims who will gain Western attention. We in developed Western nations can and will ignore their plight because we have constructed them as less than women, less than human. We can simultaneously tut-tut at the atrocity and turn away from it because it is what we expect from those men we have culturally constructed as inherently barbaric, because it’s what we believe the women have come to expect, too.

And we can ignore our role — the role of industrialized nations and of consumers, especially in the U.S. We can look at the numbers and think it is “them” instead of “us.” We who aren’t living in the Congo can refuse to ask the question of why there is so much rape and assume that it has something to do with “lesser” cultures instead of so much to do with our own. We can side-step questions of rape culture and imperialism and colonialism and economic racism and consumer culture. We can forget to ask why we ignored earlier opportunities to ask hard questions and demand change.

We, we reading these headlines divorced from the context in which the news was created, can read “one rape every minute” and exclaim “those poor women!” without wondering why we didn’t care before someone made the headline sufficiently eye-grabbing, and without demanding accountability from ourselves now.

Yesterday, I wrote about the horrific case of Kelley Williams-Bolar (pictured left), a woman who has been jailed for ten days and slapped with a felony record — which will prevent her from obtaining her teacher’s license — for sending her children to a school district other than the one they lived in.

My analysis of this unconscionable set of events can be found in the previous post. Today, I just want to draw your attention to a way that you can help Williams-Bolar appeal her case. Via Change.org, Williams-Bolar is working with the National Action Network, and is in need of funds to help her pay the legal fees she will incur in appealing the judge’s verdict.

You can send donations to the National Action Network Akron Chapter, c/o Kelley Williams-Bolar, P.O. Box 4152, Akron, Ohio, 44321. Checks can be made payable to Williams-Bolar.

Please give if you can and help spread this information far and wide.

Last week, a woman was sent to jail for ten days, placed on two years probation, and ordered to complete 80 hours of community service for a felony conviction. Her crime was fudging documents so that she could send her two daughters to the “wrong” school district, in the richer Akron, Ohio suburb where her father lived. She was led away in handcuffs.

On Saturday, a jury found Williams-Bolar guilty on two counts of tampering with records. She was also facing one count of grand theft, but the judge declared a mistrial on that charge after the jury couldn’t reach a verdict.

Williams-Bolar could have been sent to a state prison for up to 10 years, but Judge Cosgrove decided on a 10-day sentence in the Summit County Jail after weighing Williams-Bolar’s lack of criminal record with the seriousness of her crimes.

“I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school systems,” Cosgrove told NewsChannel5 after the sentencing.

Prosecutors said Williams-Bolar lived in Akron, but falsified enrollment papers in the Copley-Fairlawn School District so her two girls could attend schools for two years.

Prosecutors said the lies cost the district about $30,000. Copley-Fairlawn does not have open enrollment and out-of-district tuition is about $800 per month.

The school district spent about $6,000 to bring the case to trial. That included hiring a private investigator who followed Williams-Bolar and her children around while secretly videotaping their movements.

Superintendent Brain Poe said Copley-Fairlawn has lost hundreds of thousand of dollars because of parents illegally enrolling their children into the schools.

Poe said residency disputes are usually resolved after parents prove that they live in the district, pay tuition or remove their kids from the schools.

This marked the first time that one of their residency challenges went before a jury in criminal court. Poe said prosecuting this case was meant to send a message.

“If you’re paying taxes on a home here… those dollars need to stay home with our students,” Poe said.

One cannot honesty discuss this case without discussing the fact that Williams-Bolar is a black woman, raising black children in a city that has a large non-white population, living in a home secured through the local Housing Authority, while Copely is a very comfortably middle-class and overwhelmingly white town. Williams-Bolar is a mother who has been jailed for sending her kids to the “wrong” school district. But she’s also a black mother who has been jailed for sending her kids to a white school district.

Still, some will inevitably argue that this is not an issue of race or even class. It’s an issue of rules, of order. Someone broke the rules, and now they have to pay.

I would like to remind them firstly that who pays and how is always political.  But just as importantly, it is not arbitrary where we place borders, how we enforce borders, and who we punish for crossing them. Borders, especially modern ones, are chosen. They are artificial. We like to tell ourselves that we create borders out of necessity, to more efficiently manage communities and resources. But we also create those borders specifically to keep other people out, to control resources in a way that prevents certain populations from accessing them. There is no accident in how borders are drawn and who is being kept out and removed from resources, not along lines of race, and not along lines of class — especially not in a country were so many borders were explicitly drawn with racist intent, during times of colonization, during times of slavery, during times of Jim Crow and less “official” forms of segregation, or even during modern times of “legals” and “illegals.” It’s a little too easy to write off as coincidence that the “wrong” school district was white in a country that has a very long and modern history, both official and unofficial, of keeping all non-white but especially black students out of white schools.

As Superintendent Poe explicitly states up above, this is about “our” tax dollars, and keeping them where they belong. And anytime we start talking about “us” and “them,” we need to look at what we mean by those words, because it rarely reflects well on our intentions and prejudices. William-Bolar crossed a border that was designed to keep her out. She “stole” resources that were apparently not her or her children’s to have. (Indeed, she was also charged with grand theft, which resulted in a hung jury.)

I think it’s about time we think about what we mean by “racism” if a black mother landing in jail because she sent her kids to a better school that would not have them doesn’t count, if calling it “stealing” when she gives them access to resources these white parents get to take for granted doesn’t qualify. If we don’t understand the racism of the much higher likelihood that a black mother will have to send her child to a sub-par school that will not teach them all they need to know than a white mother, if we don’t understand the racism of punishing her for fighting back against that inherently unequal, oppressive, white supremacist system, we don’t understand the first thing about racism at all.

In fact, (though I object to his metaphorical use of the word “cripple”) I can’t say it any better than Dr. Boyce Watkins did in his blog post:

This case is a textbook example of everything that remains racially wrong with America’s educational, economic and criminal justice systems. Let’s start from the top: Had Ms. Williams-Bolar been white, she likely would never have been prosecuted for this crime in the first place (I’d love for them to show me a white woman in that area who’s gone to jail for the same crime). She also is statistically not as likely to be living in a housing project with the need to break an unjust law in order to create a better life for her daughters. Being black is also correlated with the fact that Williams-Bolar likely didn’t have the resources to hire the kinds of attorneys who could get her out of this mess (since the average black family’s wealth is roughly 1/10 that of white families). Finally, economic inequality is impactful here because that’s the reason that Williams-Bolar’s school district likely has fewer resources than the school she chose for her kids. In other words, black people have been historically robbed of our economic opportunities, leading to a two-tiered reality that we are then imprisoned for attempting to alleviate. That, my friends, is American Racism 101.

This case is a textbook example of how racial-inequality created during slavery and Jim Crow continues to cripple our nation to this day. There is no logical reason on earth why this mother of two should be dehumanized by going to jail and be left permanently marginalized from future economic and educational opportunities. Even if you believe in the laws that keep poor kids trapped in underperforming schools, the idea that this woman should be sent to jail for demanding educational access is simply ridiculous.

You should read everything he has to say on the subject.

In the end, William-Bolar’s real punishment is not the indignity and injustice of her 10 days in jail. It is the felony record that will follow her for many years to come. It will inevitably keep her from obtaining employment, from creating an economically better life for her daughters. Specifically, it will keep her from getting the teaching license she has been studying for at college — money, time, and effort all sent down the drain. A dream and opportunity taken from her because she had dreams for her daughters, wanted opportunities for them, and did the best she could in an oppressive system to see to it that they got them.

Maybe we should talk about that when we want to talk about theft, what was stolen, and from whom.

via sheresists

UPDATE: Information on how to help Kelley Williams-Bolar with her legal fees can be found here.

Trigger Warning for rape apologism, brief descriptions of sexual violence

Former pro-baseball player Lenny Dykstra (left) was recently accused by a woman, his former housekeeper, of repeated sexual assault. According to the woman’s claim, Dykstra forced her to perform oral sex on him every Saturday. Earlier this week, prosecutors declined to file charges, apparently citing a lack of evidence that the sexual contact was forced.

No story that I could find on the topic provided many more details than that. Indeed, providing a stark insight into their priorities, more than half of the LA Times article (the longest article available) consists of information not about the rape charges, but about Dykstra’s recent financial problems. Nevertheless, with the information available, I cannot form an opinion on whether prosecutors made an ethical decision, though I do find it interesting that they seemingly accept that the sexual contact took place, and only dispute whether a housekeeper giving oral sex to her boss every week like clockwork was non-consensual. I also, of course, do not know whether or not Lenny Dykstra is guilty of the allegations made against him.

So while all of these things certainly matter, they’re not what I wish to discuss today. What I’m interested in is Dykstra’s comment to the LA Times denying the charges, and how exactly he chose to frame that denial:

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Dykstra denied the allegations, saying the woman was trying to extort him to buy drugs.

“If she was assaulted on Saturdays, then I’m a … ballerina dancer on Sundays,” Dykstra said. “This is a maid. That’s not even worth commenting on, are you kidding me?”

This is a maid. That’s not even worth commenting on. The allegations are not worth commenting on, apparently, because she’s a maid.

I probably don’t have to tell you that we live in a world where rape allegations are very rarely taken seriously. Rapes are glossed over, covered up, shushed. Victims are blamed, accused of petty ulterior motives, called liars or worse. Police dismiss complaints, hospitals refuse to do rape kits, and prosecutors decline to file charges — even when there’s video evidence or eye witnesses. If rape accusers aren’t working for the CIA (see: Julian Assange allegations), then they’re jealous or regretful, and always vengeful.

Rape allegations are very rarely taken seriously, but the fact is that some allegations are taken more seriously than others, some accusers defended more vigorously, and some attacked more vitriolically or dismissed more easily. Some accusers are seen as having credibility while others do not, and it is not a mistake that these accusers more often than not fall into camps according to relative marginalization and privilege. Some accusers are seen as being rapeable, are seen as having violence against them matter, and some are not. And it is still no mistake which victims tend to already be relatively valued by society. When Dykstra dismisses the allegations against him with nothing more than “This is a maid,” with an affirmation that she and her claims are not worth his breath, we see the heart of this matter.

It takes for granted a set of shared and oppressive cultural assumptions to say the words “This is a maid. That’s not even worth commenting on, are you kidding me?” You must be kidding Dykstra. Who would take anything a maid says seriously?

The word “maid” is intended here as a blatant insult. (Indeed, the more correct term is “housekeeper.”) And what, exactly, do we know about maids?

Firstly, we know that the word maid is specifically gendered. Maids are women. Unlike culturally gendered terms, such as “nurse,” most people don’t just (wrongly) assume the term to refer to a woman; they know it. “Nurse” is the term for both men and women who work in the profession. But men and women housekeepers are not both called “maid.”

We also know that maids are both economically and socially devalued. According to the 2009 wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median wage for maids and housekeepers is a mere $19,250 — hardly a reasonable living wage. So, maids tend to be poor. But regardless of actual wages, housekeeping is still decidedly perceived as a “low status” occupation, not only because there is usually little pay and upward mobility available in the profession, but also because the work itself is not valued. Cleaning, scrubbing, picking up after people — these are all seen by most middle and upper class folks as submissive, degrading activities. Which is, of course, part of why they hire other people to do them. (It’s also no mistake that they are activities usually associated with women, or even called “women’s work.”)

We also know, or think we know, that maids are disproportionately women of color. I was unable to find statistics verifying whether or not this perception is accurate (if you’ve got them, toss them my way). But whether accurate or not, the fact remains that in the U.S., maids are understood to be more likely to be black, Asian, and especially Latina than the general female population. Maids are also commonly assumed to be immigrants, whether documented or undocumented.

Now, with the identify of Dykstra’s accuser rightly concealed, we obviously do not know her race, her immigration status, or even her wage. We do, however, know that even if she is white and U.S.-born and was paid handsomely, Dykstra was unequivocally playing into all of these assumptions about maids when he made his misogynistic, classist, racist comment and openly declared that their word does not matter, that violence against them does not matter, and that neither should be considered worth anyone’s time.

Saying “This is a maid. That’s not even worth commenting on, are you kidding me?” in a country where the term “maid” rightly or wrongly conjures up an image of a poor, migrant, Latina woman in a large number of minds is hardly a neutral act. Especially when poor, migrant, and non-white women are always more likely to have sexual violence against them be disbelieved or ignored. Abhorrently, in a culture that still links sexual assault to sexual attraction (and sexual attraction to social value), his words also suggest, “Who would want to rape a woman like that?”

I also can’t help but notice his syntax. It’s true that when speaking, especially when upset, few of us speak with perfect grammar. I don’t even write with perfect grammar. But in light of the rank misogyny, classism, and racism of his words, I find that it stands out. She is not a maid; this is. The dehumanizing sentiment is furthered by “That’s not even worth commenting on.” Presumably, Dykstra is using “that” to refer to the allegations, but coming right on the heels of “This is a maid,” it is jarring phrasing. If the spite of a dismissal framed as “This is a maid” did not transform the accuser into a thing quite starkly enough, “That’s not even worth commenting on” certainly does.

She is a thing. A thing to be raped? Perhaps. Certainly not a thing to care about, to protect, to value, to believe.

This has an impact on rape victims. Attitudes like this determine whether or not victims report, whether or not their friends and communities and judicial systems believe them, whether or not they blame themselves, whether or not rapists find themselves free to rape again and again. And attitudes like this do not harm equally, but discriminate against those already most disadvantaged on the social ladder.

I don’t know whether or not Lenny Dykstra committed the rapes of which he was accused. But I do know that his words, his defense, make life easier for rapists, and much, much harder for rape victims. Especially those marginalized rape victims who already are among the least likely to be acknowledged in our heteropatriarchal, racist, all-around kyriarchal system, who already have it much more than hard enough.

Trigger Warning for descriptions/discussions of sexual violence

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti. In the wake of this milestone, much reporting has appeared on the current status of the earthquake recovery, and how it is sorely lagging behind everyone’s hopes, as well as what the expectations would be for richer countries. Less frequently discussed is how women are being specifically impacted by the lack of reconstruction.

Last year, I wrote about the huge spike in sexual violence against women following the earthquake. Sadly if unsurprisingly, seeing the slow pace of other changes, this situation has seen little improvement. And since the same story every day doesn’t fit the model of the dominant news cycle, the dire circumstances are largely going ignored.

Last week, Amnesty International released a report on this very topic, titled Aftershocks: Women Speak Out Against Sexual Violence in Haiti’s Camps (.pdf). As implied by the title, the report consists largely of women sharing their stories of sexual violence. From the press release:

One 14 year old girl, Machou, lives in a makeshift camp for displaced people in Carrefour Feuilles, south-west Port-au-Prince. She was raped in March when she went to the toilet.

“A boy came in after me and opened the door. He gagged me with his hand and did what he wanted to do…He hit me. He punched me. I didn’t go to the police because I don’t know the boy, it wouldn’t help. I feel really sad all the time…I’m afraid it will happen again,” Machou told Amnesty International.

One woman, Suzie, recounted how she was living in a makeshift shelter with her two sons and a friend when they were attacked around 1am on 8 May.  Suzie and her friend were both blindfolded and raped in front of their children by a gang of men who forced their way into their shelter.

“After they left I didn’t do anything. I didn’t have any reaction…Women victims of rape should go to hospital but I didn’t because I didn’t have any money… I don’t know where there is a clinic offering treatment for victims of violence,” Suzie said.

Suzie lost her parents, brothers and husband in the January earthquake. Her home was also destroyed.

Many women in Haiti — those who are currently among the most marginalized and vulnerable across the board — are living multiple horrors at once. On top of the trauma of the earthquake itself and the many deaths and injuries it caused, on top of the trauma of homelessness or near-homelessness and fear for one’s ongoing ability to access food and water, on top of an epidemic of cholera, large numbers of women in Haiti’s camps are also facing the trauma of sexual violence. And virtually all women in the camps are living with the trauma of the daily, persistent, and very real threat of sexual violence.

A vast majority of the assaults are never reported, for various reasons: fear of retaliation from their attackers, lack of knowledge about how to report, lack of faith in the legal system, and even refusal by officers to accept their reports. Few also go to hospitals after the attacks — there are many barriers to access — and there is little emotional support to help survivors in the aftermath of their assaults. With infrastructure at a bare minimum, too many survivors are going it alone.

Though no level of economic, political, and/or social instability cause rape on its own — the cultural structures of kyriarchy must already be in place to make sexual violence exist as a viable and desirable option — there is no doubt that the increase in rates of rape are directly connected to the overall conditions presented by the earthquake’s aftermath. Creating greater stability and sustainability — adequate housing, working toilets, sufficient food, access to clean water, ongoing sources of income — won’t stop rape in Haiti anymore than it has stopped rape in any community that does have access to these basic necessities. But it would take the edge off of the current crisis. And the people of Haiti, women included, deserve these things whether they impact the prevalence of sexual violence or not, for the basic reason that they’re human rights.

I would also be extraordinarily remiss if I failed to note the historical background behind the devastation that the earthquake has wrought. Under different circumstances where Haiti had not been so poor prior to the earthquake, the damage would not have been nearly so severe. The ongoing recovery efforts would also not be lagging so far behind; the cholera outbreak would have most likely never happened. And Haiti’s poverty has direct roots in the history of colonization and economic racism by numerous rich Western countries, including the U.S. Those nations have a direct culpability for this tragedy, and therefore for the increase in rapes as well. It is hardly a stretch to say that we (as those culpable nations) have not done better in responding as a result of ongoing economic racism and colonialist attitudes towards poor nations made up mostly of black people. Every day, that culpability only increases, as women are raped and people die.

The one spark of good news is that local activists have been organizing. In their report, Amnesty International mentions two of them specifically: the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV) and Women Victims Arise (FAVILEK). These organizations are providing support to survivors of sexual violence and working to end the assaults. FAVILEK has a website, including an address to which you can send a check donation. KOFAVIV can be found on their Facebook page. They have not directly responded to requests for information about how to donate, but users have suggested giving to their partner IJDH and including a note requesting that the funds go to KOFAVIV. If you have the means to do so, please consider supporting the amazing work these women are doing.

Last week, Adam Sewer published a great article at the American Prospect about the trend of making former prisoners literally pay for their own incarceration, with “user fees” being imposed as a condition of parole. It was a practice that I was unaware of, and one that I imagine many readers who do not have direct interactions with the prison system also did not know about:

Missouri defense attorney Justin Carver has seen it a million times. One of his clients, an 18-year-old parolee, was about to be sent back to prison because he was late paying restitution and “user fees” related to property-damage and peace-disturbance charges. The client showed up at court with $200, more than enough to pay off his $118 debt, in the hopes he could convince the judge to let him stay out and graduate from high school. The judge said he’d take the money, but Carver’s client would still have to spend 20 days in jail. Since he wouldn’t be able to graduate anyway, Carver’s client pocketed the $200 and spent two months in jail. Given that one Missouri county-prison administration estimated the cost per day of housing a prisoner at $64, it’s more than likely that stay cost the state several times the amount Carver’s client owed.

“If the taxpayers knew that was going on, they’d go bananas,” Carver says.

Unfortunately, I’m not nearly as optimistic as Carver. Personally, I know far too many people whose response to the above story would be a shrug and “Well, I guess he should have paid his fees on time.” Among many who would be outraged, the sense of anger and exasperation would come from the cost to the state — not the absurd and tragic fact that a young man was not able to graduate from high school over some property damage and $118. And I’d argue that’s really not a whole lot better than not being outraged at all.

It’s true that in a public policy sense, doing the right thing tends to cost less than doing the wrong thing. Providing universal health care would cost less than the waste and neglect of the current U.S. health system. Providing sustainable housing, mental health care, and addiction treatment would cost less than the current responses to either homelessness or drug use. And yes, it’s true that the right absolutely has obscured these truths, and their all too successful efforts do need to be combated. But unless we care about the underlying issues, we’re just going to keep finding ways to cut costs — or make it look like costs are being cut — without shifting our actual approaches to the problems at hand.

This creation of “user fees” for ex-prisoners is a perfect case in point. People are finally beginning to care about the cost of the prison industrial complex to the U.S. public. But since recidivism and humane treatment for offenders are still not the primary concerns, and the public still has a strong investment in punishment, the “solution” has simply been to find new and more inventive ways to punish offenders. And such punishments may take the form of “user fees” or cutting programs within prisons that make life more bearable and recidivism less likely.

In the recent Florida governor’s race, Republican candidate Rick Scott — now the governor-elect — pledged to cut prison costs by a billion dollars, mostly by reducing the salaries and benefits of prison officers, who responded with an ad campaign that accused Scott of wanting to release dangerous felons early. Neither side was willing to consider the one thing that might actually cut costs: reducing the number of people in prison. The dispute reflected a perilous dynamic for corrections reformers. State governors with recession-ravaged budgets are attempting to reduce prison costs without reducing their prison populations. They are reluctant to invest in solutions that make it look as though they’re “going easy” on people who have committed crimes, so programs to help the formerly incarcerated re-enter society have been given the short shrift in fiscally motivated prison-reform plans.

A 2010 survey published by the Pew Center on the States found that 61 percent of respondents supported sending fewer low-risk, nonviolent offenders to prison and that 75 percent favored reducing prison terms for such offenders if the ultimate goal was to save money, despite the fact that the sample skewed conservative. The results suggest Americans would be receptive to an effective re-entry program. Seventy-seven percent strongly agreed with the statement that “an effective probation and parole system would use new technologies to monitor where offenders are and what they are doing, require them to pass drug tests, and require they either keep a job or perform community service.”

Now, it’s certainly positive that U.S. citizens are increasingly interested in seeing non-violent offenders not spend time in prisons — it’s a start, at least. But I think that the travesty of effectively paying for one’s right to parole proves that basing incarceration policy solely off of the desire to save money is incredibly dangerous. Supporting less incarceration because of money rather than a desire for justice, improved lives, and safer communities is likely to result in nothing more than punitive structures that look and act an awful lot like prison, anyway. Indeed, looking at what kind of parole and probation system the public supports, one has to wonder what exactly the point of constant tracking and surveillance is if not a somewhat more lenient form of imprisonment, and what they expect and hope to happen when one tests positive for drugs or is unable to find or keep a job. I’m guessing that most respondents are relying on the threat and reality of prison to keep these individuals “in line.”

In other words, it seems that we, as the U.S. public, are increasingly open to alternatives to prison — but only so long as the prison system remains the backbone of our method of dealing with all undesirable behavior. The fact that we’re trying to force ex-offenders to pay for their own incarceration even though it probably costs significantly more than the alternative should be considered a problem, but it’s not the problem. The problem is that really, most of us are probably pretty alright with that. Because the point isn’t really so much about saving money, but proving to offenders and ex-offenders that they aren’t worth “our” money. The point is to force ex-prisoners to literally pay their way to freedom. The point is the same as the point of the entire prison system, at least from the general public’s point of view — punishment.

So I’m not sure that fighting the practice of “user fees” with information about how they’re actually costing more is the most effective method, either from a practical or social justice standpoint. It’s not particularly practical because saving money doesn’t really seem to be the goal of these initiatives — no matter what the official reasoning and surveys happen to say. The goal is to add punishment on top of punishment. And it’s not great social justice because focusing on the money completely eludes the conversation of how punishment is being wielded primarily against oppressed classes, furthering a cycle of harm, violence, imprisonment, and marginalization. It ignores that prison is designed to be oppressive, and forcing overwhelmingly already-oppressed (and poor) people to pay for the means of oppression against them is beyond unjust. Appealing to people’s pocketbooks instead of their senses of justice seems a lot easier and realistic, but it doesn’t question the system in which the prejudice and financial concerns of the privileged get to determine the worth and humanity of the oppressed.

The mainstream conversation needs to move away from a conversation about monetary costs — which we need to remember is far more frequently used against imprisoned populations than in favor of them — to one about recidivism, specifically why recidivism rates are so high and how to most effectively lower them. This seems like a far more effective and appropriate starting place for leading into conversations about why we are imprisoning so many non-violent offenders to begin with, where this desire for punishment comes from and whether it is either healthy or just, and how this connects to the way the prison system acts as a means of oppression for marginalized communities. Hopefully it would even eventually lead to conversations about punishment for violent offenders, and whether punishment is really the best way to prevent future harm (a topic I myself still struggle with deeply).

Centering the conversation around justice instead of money takes a lot more work and induces a lot more headaches, at least in the short term. But it’s the only way to manage conversations like ones about forcing ex-offenders to pay for their own incarceration effectively, in a way that doesn’t just play wack-a-mole with each symptom of a highly racist, classist, and all other kinds of -ist system one at a time.

Trigger Warning for sometimes graphic descriptions of human experimentation and medical research on non-consenting individuals

There’s a photo on my wall of a woman I’ve never met, its left corner torn and patched together with tape. She looks straight into the camera and smiles, hands on hips, dress suit neatly pressed, lips painted deep red. It’s the late 1940s and she hasn’t yet reached the age of thirty. Her light brown skin is smooth, her eyes still young and playful, oblivious to the tumor growing inside her — a tumor that would leave her five children motherless and change the future of medicine. Beneath the photo, a caption says her name is “Henrietta Lacks, Helen Lane or Helen Larson.”

No one knows who took that picture, but it’s appeared hundreds of times in magazines and science textbooks, on blogs and laboratory walls. She’s usually identified as Helen Lane, but often she has no name at all. She’s simply called HeLa, the code name given to the world’s first immortal human cells — her cells, cut from her cervix just months before she died.

Her real name is Henrietta Lacks.

– The opening words of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman, a tobacco farmer. She knew that something was wrong when she went to seek health care at the free “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was diagnosed with a highly aggressive cervical cancer, and during her treatment — without her consent or knowledge — they cut out a piece of her. The cancer cells they cut are still alive today, are growing as I write this, are growing as you read it, are being bought, being sold, and being used for so many different kinds of research, I doubt there’s anyone who could name them all.

Henrietta Lacks died an excruciatingly painful death in 1951. And her cells have helped to develop seemingly endless medical advancements since then, and continue to develop them now. But just like Henrietta Lacks was never told that they cut out a piece of her cervix, her family was never told that here cells were still alive. The Lacks family only learned through a long series of events over 20 years later. Though those cells have made billions of dollars for various companies — both directly through the selling of HeLa to researchers, and indirectly through the selling of medicines and treatments HeLa has been integral in developing — they have not made a cent for the Lacks family. Indeed, at the time the book was written, many of Henrietta’s children and grandchildren continued to struggle financially, and several did not have health insurance to access the care that only exists because their mother and grandmother died.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot and released in 2010, is about all of this.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a piece of creative non-fiction, which  means that while it is entirely fact, the author heavily relies on narrative to get those facts to the reader. As a result, unlike with most non-fiction books, some of the details contained in this review could be considered spoilers by some readers.

The narrative of the book alternates between the scientific history of the HeLa cells and the personal story of the Lacks family, particularly Henrietta’s youngest daughter Deborah, who was desperate to learn more about her mother and see her get the recognition that she deserves. The book is not a “feminist book” in the sense that it does not offer a feminist or otherwise gendered analysis of the events it describes — though some relatively small race and class analysis is included. But I imagine that few who have even a passing understanding of the ways that gender, race, and class intersect and operate in U.S. society could manage to read this book non-politically.

Indeed, what was done to Henrietta Lacks and her body is as impossible to divorce from her gender as it is to divorce from her race and her class. It’s impossible to separate the violation and violence of removing a part of a woman’s body — a part of her cervix, no less — while she is unconscious, and without even bothering to ask, from the continued sense of public ownership over women’s bodies and reproductive lives, black women’s especially. It’s impossible to divorce that violation from the ongoing history of sexual violence against women, and sexual violence against black women by white men in positions of authority specifically. It is as impossible to divorce her treatment from her gender in the same way that it is impossible to divorce it from the history of non-consensual scientific experimentation on African Americans or the history of slavery or the context of segregated hospital wards. It is as impossible to render her gender irrelevant just as it is impossible to render irrelevant the notion that doctors felt poor patients owed the “donation” of their bodies for scientific research as a form of payment for their care.

The point is not that they would not have stolen from Henrietta Lacks’ body if she had been a man, or if she had been white. The book presents evidence, in fact, that they likely would have. The point is that context matters, especially when at stake are not only individual senses of trust and safety, but lives. Violations don’t occur in a vacuum. This violation was committed against the backdrop of racism, classism, and misogyny, as did the ongoing violations committed against her family.

At no point is this made more clear than through the story of Elsie. Elsie was Henrietta’s second child and oldest daughter. Elsie had both cognitive and physical disabilities, and required a full-time caretaker. Henrietta was the only one available to act as her caretaker, but she had four other children, including two babies — so after years of resisting, she did what doctors told her was best and sent her to the Hospital for the Negro Insane. She visited Elsie every week until she got sick, and then no one visited her. Elsie died a few years after Henrietta.

Elsie’s story is not told within the context of the devastation that Henrietta felt at relinquishing her daughter, but rather what was done to Elsie after she was committed. It is eventually revealed that she not only lived in horrific conditions marked by abuse, and died a horrific death, but also that she was the subject of abhorrent, non-consensual human experimentation because of her disabilities and institutionalization. They drained the fluid surrounding her brain and pumped air into her skull. They inserted metal probes into her brain. She would have suffered extraordinarily. These things were done to her because she was black and disabled. Because no one ever thought that she or her family might have a right to say no. Because no one cared.

What was done to Elsie matters simply because it does. It matters because she matters. But it matters within the context of the Lacks story for the way it illuminates the climate of abuse and brutality that the violations against Henrietta Lacks were committed. These violations were far from isolated. And they were also far from extreme by the standards of the day. What was done to Henrietta and what was done to Elsie existed at two ends of a spectrum, but they were both a part of the same racist, dehumanizing system.

The cruel irony is that Henrietta’s cells, too, have been used to do highly unethical testing on unknowing patients, largely those with disabilities. Though paling in comparison to the literal torture committed against Elsie, HeLa cells were injected into unknowing, non-consenting individuals — mostly those with disabilities or serious illnesses — in order to see if they would develop the same cancer that Henrietta had. Henrietta was not just violated at the hands of this system; her violation was also used as a means to further its abuses.

Without being pedantic or even particularly explicit, Skloot beautifully weaves together these two “separate” historical stories. Overwhelmingly, the point of telling the stories of the Lacks family’s many misfortunes is not to show what evils HeLa cells brought on their lives. Though the Lackses did experience trauma as a result of their connection to the cells, it is not the direct cause of most of their problems. Rather, their story serves to reveal that a great deal of their problems did stem from Henrietta Lacks’ death — and to remind us that it was only because a woman got extremely sick and died that so many of us have had access to treatments and vaccinations that have kept us alive. It’s to remind us that while Henrietta did not donate her cells, they were stolen from her, she and her family did make an unchosen sacrifice. It’s to remind us that researchers didn’t just take a part of her — they took the part that killed her. And she, and her family, are real people. Real people whose lives matter, too.

But they have been treated repeatedly as if their lives mean nothing. As if Henrietta’s life was not worth anything. As though the horrors those cells have imposed on their lives do not matter in the face of the medical advancements. As if their mother and grandmother did not have a right to her own body, and they do not, as her descendants, have a right to it on her behalf. As though their bodies mean nothing, too — and they do not, with their frequent lack of health insurance, have the right to access the care that only exists because their mother or grandmother died.

It’s long past time that Henrietta Lack’s story was told, that her family’s story was told. For the fact that it accomplishes that vital justice, and for the eloquence and sincerity with which Skloot tells the story not only of Lacks by the history of ethics in biomedical research, I couldn’t recommend The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks more strongly. This is a story that needed to be told, and that needs to be read.

Sadly, it is also long past time where things could ever truly be made right. Years cannot be undone, dead family members cannot be brought back to life. But the remaining Lackses do still deserve that which has always been rightfully theirs, as well as our gratitude, though it seems that those who most owe it to them are not going to be the ones to provide it.

As promised to Deborah Lacks while she assisted in writing the book, Rebecca Skloot has set up the Henrietta Lacks Foundation, which provides funding for education and health care to the descendants of Henrietta Lacks. Again, while billions have ultimately been made from Henrietta Lacks’ stolen cells, her family has never seen a single cent from their use, and family members are often without health insurance, and without access to the funds needed to access higher education. Anyone can make a donation to the Henrietta Lacks Foundation by clicking through to their website.

Today, the LA Times has a really interesting profile on the Second Chance Women’s Re-entry Court program, a rehabilitation program and alternative to incarceration for women who commit non-violent crimes. The program is one of the first in the nation to focus on women in the criminal justice system:

Thirty miles east of Tynan’s courtroom, the women of the Re-entry Court program are housed in a Pomona drug treatment facility for women called Prototypes.

The complex has the look and feel of an elementary school, with bright-colored murals, playgrounds and dirt plots sprouting gardening projects. The dorms are painted in pastel shades, with the occasional motivational quote taped onto the wall.

Here, the women are referred to as clients or patients rather than defendants or inmates. Binders and book bags take the place of handcuffs and jail scrubs, and women shuttle between therapy, life- and job-skills classes, chores and support group meetings. Mothers are reunited with their young children and given counseling and parenting classes.

Behind closed doors, the path to recovery is slow and painful as women learn to open up about their past. Some lived on the street for decades, hustling or resorting to prostitution for the next fix. Many had their children taken away and had felt, at one point, that it would be best if they stayed away. All had addictions, often compounded by mental illness and histories of trauma and abuse.

“There are a few of them who come in so broken and so sick that you’re amazed that they’re alive,” said Nancy Chand, a deputy public defender who acts as the attorney for most of the women. “They come to realize that it wasn’t their fault that they were hurt. As that shame starts to come off, the confidence comes out.”

Their time here, a minimum of six months but longer for most, is designed to prepare them for another shot at life — be that a job at McDonald’s, a new relationship with their children or paralegal school.

I’m sure that the program inevitably has its flaws — indeed, it seems to me to still rely too heavily on an authority deciding who is and is not “deserving” of help and support. But so far, it is proving overwhelmingly successful.

And compared to prison, this is much, much closer to what the response to crime should be. Right now, the overwhelmingly dominant method of dealing with crime in the U.S. and many other nations has nothing at all to do with either preventing crime or reforming perpetrators, and has everything to do with punishing and further oppressing already marginalized populations. The evidence shows that violent authoritarianism convinces very few people to “turn their lives around” — and gives even fewer people the tools with which to do so. And it isn’t really even designed to. We know that prisons are a revolving door. And far too few people are asking themselves how to change that, rather than shrugging their shoulders or counting the profits the prison industry makes them.

Crime doesn’t come from nowhere, and neither do prison populations. Most crime is rooted in pervasive structural problems such as poverty, addiction, prior abuse, an inability to access mental health services, and systemic discrimination. There’s a reason that poor populations, people of color, trans* folks, etc. are highly overrepresented in the prison system.  No, it’s not because marginalized people are more likely to have criminal inclinations. It’s because marginalization leads to the kind of circumstances in which crime seems like a genuine and/or unavoidable option. And because when we design a system that is set up entirely to punish people, it’s inevitable for said system to draw on oppressive ideas about who is most deserving of punishment.

And issues like prison rape are a huge problem, in very large part, because of attitudes that people who have committed crimes are deserving of crushing state authoritarianism, rather than compassion. Prisons are so full because we respond to addiction as a crime and a choice rather than a disease, and because we respond to crimes stemming from addiction with handcuffs and a locked door instead of with treatment. We remove people from their communities, separate them from their children, and place them in abusive environments, and then ask ourselves why they can’t function non-criminally once they are released. The answers are largely right in front of us, and we refuse to look at them because we’re still more wedded to the idea of making people “pay a price” than to the idea of human worth or even the goal of community safety.

Contrary to what you’ll hear many people argue, it’s certainly not about rehabilitative programs being too expensive:

The treatment, currently funded through a grant from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and donated services from Prototypes, costs about $18,000 for each woman per year. But compared with keeping them in prison and their children in foster care for years, the state is saving millions of dollars, the program’s organizers say.

Indeed, the state is apparently saving around $29,000 per woman per year.

Now, I’d personally rather spend more to get real results and avoid subjecting human beings to violence at the hands of the state, anyway. If re-entry programs cost more than incarceration, I’d still support them.

But they don’t. And I’d wager that the real reason that this myth about the high cost of such programs persists is because of how the money is being spent. The grumbling about inmates who have cable television tells us this much. We’re fine spending tens of thousands of dollars per inmate every year if it’s to lock them up in oppressive conditions, put them at risk of beatings and rape, feed them substandard food, and deny them adequate medical care. Spending less money to treat these same people like human beings of value and worth, though? It’s considered too much, because that, these people are seen as not deserving.

These programs aren’t a simple fix for all of society’s problems. They don’t address the issues that cause people to enter the criminal justice system in the first place. They might help individuals to work their way out of poverty, but they don’t address why so many people are poor to begin with. They may help individuals recover from addiction, but they don’t address how addiction starts. They may provide counseling to deal with the trauma of abuse, but that doesn’t stop victims from being raped, children from being beaten, slurs from being shouted on the street, or teenagers being kicked out of homes. They don’t even begin to look at how to deal with violent perpetrators. Further, issues like addiction have no one quick solution, and people often relapse. And as I’ve said, I’m sure that the Women’s Re-entry Court program specifically is far from perfect in terms of how it does what it does, and leaves many avenues for valid critique wide open.

But such programs are a start, a movement in the right direction. One action can’t adequately respond to centuries of abuse, oppression, and structural violence overnight, but that doesn’t make each part of the solution any less necessary.

Trigger Warning on post and links for descriptions of sexual violence and rape apologism.

Last week, I wrote about a case in which rape allegations were made against two Michigan State University basketball players, but the district attorney declined the police recommendation to prosecute the two men. This decision was made despite indications in the police report that one of the two alleged perpetrators had corroborated the accuser’s account, and the alleged victim spoke to the media about her outrage and distress at the decision to not go further with the case.

Since then, student protests have been held, and the Michigan Messenger has stayed on top of the story with comprehensive coverage. In response to the vocal criticisms of the decision to not prosecute, Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III released full transcripts of the interviews with the one player and with the victim (pdf, and obviously a trigger warning). Ed Brayton writes at the Michigan Messenger:

The interview transcript does appear to add a fair amount of ambiguity to the information contained in the police report, which contains paraphrases of what was said during the police interview. But that ambiguity also seems to cut both ways, allowing people to reach opposite conclusions about whether it supports or diminishes the credibility of the victim’s story.

After my own reading, that’s an assessment that I would more or less agree with. The accused player’s interview hardly amounts to a confession by any means. A lot of his statements are ambiguous, and I wish that police had done a better job of asking him questions and seeking clarification. Still, he does appear to agree with several key parts of the victim’s story, and at the very least indicts his fellow player, if unintentionally and in an extremely apologist manner. As for the accuser’s interview, my admittedly amateur reading finds her both credible and extremely clear in her assertions that a) she never gave affirmative consent to sexual contact and b) at several points she explicitly stated her lack of consent.

But as stated, I’m not an expert on the legal side of this issue. So I found it interesting that the Michigan Messenger took the time to seek out three individuals who are — a former prosecutor of the same county this case took place in, Thomas Rasmusson, defense attorney Joshua Moore, and “nationally recognized expert in sexual assault investigation and prosecution” Steve Thompson. I’m not going to lie and say that it doesn’t chafe at me that all of these experts just so happen to be men (though, it should go without saying, women are as a generally rule sadly no more or less rape apologist). But what they had to say was interesting, and I was surprised to find that not all of them followed the “party line” I would have most expected:

Rasmusson said the testimony of the victim raised certain “red flags that make me worry about the allegations.” He was not specific about the items that raised those concerns, saying, “I do not want to embarrass [the alleged victim],” but he said they involved “certain details and absence of details” and “circumstances leading up to the events” that would make him worry about getting a conviction in the case.

The bottom line, he said: “It is unlikely I would authorize a warrant without more.”

But Moore and Thompson had opposite reactions.

“I do not understand why the prosecutor chose to say that ‘no crime’ happened. It is very clear to me that, at the very least, this should have been investigated more,” Thompson said. “In the police interview with one of the suspects, the suspect clearly indicated coercion and lack of consent. The survivor’s behavior after the assault indicated physical and emotional trauma that is not associated with consent. If this is not a crime, I do not know what is.”

Thompson said after reading the interview with the victim he felt even more strongly that a crime was committed.

“She indicated several times that she did not want to engage in the behavior,” he said. “In sexual assault one does not have to scream and resist in order to prove lack of consent. The presence of intimidating force resulting in submission and compliance was evident to me.”

Defense attorney Joshua Moore says, at the very least, more investigation by the DA’s office was needed before reaching the conclusion that no crime was committed.

“While there is no evidence per se of crime committed from the statements of the interviewee, there are definitely indications that a crime could have been committed (probable cause) and additional evidence and/or investigation would be warranted,” Moore said. “There is corroboration of the alleged victim’s statement that there was, at minimum, statements that the alleged victim asked the alleged perpetrators to ‘stop’ at some point.”

Moore says there was “most certainly be probable cause to issue first degree criminal sexual conduct charges” under Michigan law because there was “no evidence from the interviewee’s statement to discredit and/or invalidate the alleged victim’s statement.”

I expected the director of sexual assault prevention programs to come down on the side of the victim. And I initially expected the prosecutor to come down on the side of prosecution — though I immediately recognized this as naive, on the basis that prosecutors generally like to go forward only with the most clear cut of cases. I don’t know what Rasmusson meant by his ambiguous comments, but my educated guess is probably shared by many readers here, as is the negative opinion of it. The one thing I was most certainly not expecting was the defense attorney to support issuing charges against the two accused players.

Which just goes to show where assumptions and bias will get you. I write so much about defense attorneys doing their job really unethically that I find it really easy to forget that there are many out there who really are out there just plain old working for justice. Everyone deserves fair and vigorous representation in court, and far too many people in the U.S. legal system don’t get it. The work done by ethical defense attorneys really should be considered invaluable. So while I can’t say that I know what his record in court looks like, I can say that in terms of what he has to say for this article, a big old kudos to Joshua Moore for being a defense attorney who doesn’t fall for rape apologist lies.

I do recommend clicking through to read the rest of what the panel had to say — it deserves a trigger warning, but no more so than the content presented within the post here. I’ve also received word that some of the readers here have responded to the story directly through the Michigan Messenger, and provided invaluable feedback. So a big kudos to you, too, for speaking up, showing solidarity with victims of sexual violence, and sharing your own stories.