Roger Canaff

The Fantasy of the Dragon Tattoo

Roger Canaff — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 04:26:33 +0000

The suffering, revenge and eventual triumph of Rooney Mara’s character in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo over institutionalized rape is something that stands out even as a minor subplot in a fairly complicated film. And what she is able to accomplish against her abuser is nothing short of fantastic in the traditional sense of the word: It is the product of fantasy. Tragically, for untold numbers of victims placed in the situation that Rooney’s character, Lisbeth Salander is, fantasy must suffice.

I use the term “institutionalized rape” because that’s how I view what happened to the character of Salander, a legally incompetent ward of the state deemed mentally unstable. She is subjected to sexual torture by a predatory bureaucrat who controls her finances after her legal guardian suffers a stroke. He withholds money for essentials like food and electricity, releasing funds only when she endures sexual acts. Eventually he demands that she come to his home where he anally rapes her while she is strapped to a bed.

As the predator discovers, however, Salander is not what she appears to be, which is the “typical” helpless victim. Instead she is a computer genius armed with a photographic memory, intense athletic prowess, and an iron will. She has the wherewithal to secretly film herself being raped, and eventually uses that evidence to not only control the predator’s actions toward her, but also to effectively paralyze him from harming other similarly situated women and girls in his sphere of control. But not until brutalizing him justly and branding him a rapist with crude tattoos across his ample mid-section.

In short, she is a rightful, rageful hero to women and children everywhere who have experienced that kind of abuse. And believe me, abuse at the hands of a protected cog in a monolithic institutional wheel is abuse that is grossly under reported and almost never vindicated.

I suspect that what Salander endures at the hands of the all-powerful authority who holds the keys to her very survival is even more impactful in the context of a social democracy like Sweden where the state intrudes further into everyday life than it does in the U.S. Regardless, what she suffers is time-honored and sickeningly resilient despite reforms and efforts to eliminate it. Across the globe and in every possible arrangement of human organization, predators seek, find and feed.

The reason is simple. Predators infiltrate the institutions that provide them power to predate and victimize. It’s true that power corrupts, but more importantly, it attracts. Power attracts predators who will seek it as a catalyst to get the things they want. If what they want is sexual control over others, they’ll infiltrate the institutions society creates that will allow for such abuses. There is no shortage of them.

What’s wonderful and dreamlike about Lisbeth Salander is that she embodies the intoxicating if mostly fanciful notion that resourcefulness, brilliance and brutal determination can turn the tables on a powerful predator and render him limp and lame. Sadly, for most, it is only a dream.

Trayvon and Five Pounds of Pressure

Roger Canaff — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:41:58 +0000

For decades and maybe longer, gun rights enthusiasts have sought to end the gun control argument with the following statement: “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

This is technically true. It is also meaningless.

Of course, guns don’t kill. And pencils don’t make spelling errors. So what?

Not a single assassin of a United States president has accomplished altering history by being a terrific knife wielder. James Earl Ray did not end the blessed life of Martin Luther King with a slingshot. John Lennon was not felled by a punch. James Brady would not have gone from a dynamic, affable new press secretary to a man still struggling with a disability had his attacker approached the side entrance of the Washington Hilton in 1981 with a baseball bat.

It’s also true that guns don’t have mystical powers over the human mind, seducing to reality their own use. Again, so what? It is undeniably true- and frankly common sense- that killing is more likely to happen when a loaded gun is within easy reach of a person familiar with its use. Police officers take their lives in greater numbers, it is believed by experts, at least in part because of the ready presence of guns. We in the anti-violence world know well that access to firearms increases the risk of intimate partner murder around five fold.

No, this isn’t because guns in these homes suddenly come alive like brooms in a Disney movie, begging to be used.

It’s because the handgun is an object as perfectly designed for killing other humans as a chess board is for chess. The opposable thumb and its meaty base folds securely around the grip. The index finger- the one we control with far greater dexterity than any other- slides against the trigger like a key in a lock. Propelling death at hundreds of feet per second is now a squeeze away. For millennia, killing was by necessity a contact sport. Beating, strangling, stabbing and other forms of inter-personal violence required a victim, in most cases, no further than arm’s length away. Guns changed all of that. Now death could be dealt from a distance, both physically and- inexorably- emotionally.

But handguns reduced it to little more than the dexterity and strength required to snap one’s fingers.

George Zimmerman, the apparent shooter of Trayvon Martin, carried a snub-nose 9mm pistol, very simple in operation and something my Virginia friends growing up would have called a “belly gun.” Five pounds of pressure are required to fire the thing and rip apart human tissue like hamburger. To maim. To paralyze. To kill. To alter not one life, but dozens and who knows how many more in the web that contains us all. If Trayvon Martin was to cure a disease, build an empire, or simply live happily and productively in the glow of his family’s love, we’ll never know. A compact, death-black device with a five pound trigger wiped that out like sunset does the day.

In Zimmerman’s shooting hand, I have no doubt it rested like a calming infant’s rattle.

Whether Zimmerman was remotely justified in using it is, apparently, still unknown. Was the child he killed truly an aggressor, or was it just the combination of the hoodie and the young man’s skin that prompted Zimmerman in some hateful, idiotic flash to provoke a confrontation and then create the “need” to kill? Zimmerman’s own ethnic background seems to be relevant to some, complicated apparently by his being not black but not quite white either. Personally I find the juxtaposition of skin color in this case to be gasoline on an already raging fire. But the reality of how Trayvon’s skin color likely did lead to his death is impossible to ignore. I cannot blame the millions out there who refuse to do so.

But for me, and for now, the misery of this situation comes down mostly to the demonic presence of a handgun in the hands of a pathetic rogue or worse. Zimmerman is by all appearances a character police officers know too well- the community-watch vigilante with the itchy trigger finger. Maybe that’s why, for all the gun enthusiasts still defending it, Florida law enforcement officials find the “stand your ground” law pointless bravado waiting to become far, far worse.

Money in the hand of a fool simply disappears. A gun in the same hand changes everything.

Reflections On International Women’s Day

Roger Canaff — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 06:49:52 +0000

Her name is Molly. She taught me how to prosecute sex crimes and child abuse.

Her name is Sue. She taught me how her brand of nursing heals, and nurtures justice.

Her name is Judy. She gave me the understanding I needed to view the victims in my cases with the compassion and respect they deserved.

This was in Alexandria, Virginia, where I cut my teeth on the fight that has shaped my life. In the Bronx, New York, where I went next and where I was reduced to shreds as a prosecutor in a very different and more brutal environment, there was Elisa, Beth Ann, Danielle, Rachel, and many more. They picked me up, gave me the courage to go on, and reminded me who I was fighting for in the first place.

I have worked with and for women most of my career. They have forged in most cases the path I’ve chosen in every area of my professional life. They have challenged the status quo, afflicted the comfortable, made waves in order to make lives better, and advanced the cause of those who suffer- women, men, boys and girls- in more ways than I could ever properly express.

The current fight on multiple fronts regarding contraception and reproductive rights has many of them (particularly those who fought the previous battles) scratching their heads as to why a war still rages. I have few answers, but I suspect that dying ideals tend to trumpet loudly in desperation rather than strength. The struggle for what is right in terms of public policy is complex; I make no move to settle it here. I’ll only say that, in terms of several of the ideals held by some in the culture wars, death is imminent.

Our country will be one where gay people will legally marry. Our country will be one where Spanish either exceeds English or more likely merges with it in a mezclado mish-mash with a few other languages thrown in. Our country will be one where human life is highly valued, as it should be, but in balance with the value of the one gender blessed to bring it forth.

Her name is Florence, and she is my mother. Her spirituality takes shape within Roman Catholicism, but for 73 years she has bravely forged her own path to God. She gave to me a faith of love, charity, and a wise but equally childlike sense of kindness and decency. The first gay people I knew, I knew at her table. The first who believed differently than we did, I learned from in her kitchen. Food is love to her, and it has blessed the happy and content, but just as often the dispossessed, the outsider, the sick or dying, the simply lonely.

She is not angel. She is a woman. But she is why my heart beats, both literally and figuratively. The coming generations will view her- and her sisters in gender- as equals. They will do so or they will perish. It’s really that simple.

Chris Brown, Rihanna, and What Could Happen Next

Roger Canaff — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 06:14:17 +0000

If an adult, even a young one, can be labeled by his actions, Chris Brown is a violent, narcissistic thug. The savage, lengthy beating he inflicted on his then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009 earned him a felony conviction, something not particularly common in the world of intimate partner violence. I saw quite a few of those cases as a prosecutor, many of them violent and damaging, but few other than homicides that merited the possibility of a prison sentence. It’s a possibility Brown avoided, but happily so for many adoring fans who still refer to that drawn-out, bludgeoning attack as a “mistake.”

Since that mistake, Brown has shown again and again an explosive, boundary-bereft side and a frightening inability to even fully control himself.

Now, for whatever reasons, Rihanna has chosen to request a relaxation of the protective order she was granted against him, and to collaborate with him musically. Collaboration may be all it is. Or, she may be entertaining a friendship or something more with her attacker, a circumstance often encountered if rarely justified. She was a blameless victim in the pummeling she endured, and since I know nothing of her personally I won’t seek to judge whatever reunification she’s navigating with Chris Brown now.

But I will judge the “Birthday Cake” remix she is releasing and on which Brown joins her, because it’s classless and crass, even by the standards of Rihanna who often objectifies herself sexually in her music. But what makes this first collaboration since Brown’s arrest and conviction far worse is the past that underscores it. What Chris Brown adds to the magic of “Birthday Cake” includes the lines “Girl, I wanna f— you right now. Been a long time, I’ve been missin’ your body.”

Bravo, Chris! This is far more than an expression of what I suspect are your creative limits or your grasp of subtlety and real sexuality (which I rather enjoy, although I find it resonates more when it isn’t reduced to the sputtering of a worked-up child). It’s also a window into how you likely viewed this woman before you viewed her as a punching bag. She’s a toy as far as you’re concerned, and that’s how you want to treat her. First sexually. Then violently. Then sexually again.

Take a wild guess, dear reader, as to whether a pattern is forming here.

Lewdness in pop music is a fact of modern life. Many would criticize Rihanna for the overt sexuality she injects into her music and speculate darkly from it on how she views herself. I won’t. Frankly, she has the right to engage her sexuality in any way she sees fit and I won’t impose my model or that of anyone else in an effort to judge her. What she does artistically and how it might affect the millions of girls who look up to her is best discussed elsewhere.

For now, what’s clear is that Rihanna, a beautiful and talented young woman, was beaten- breathtakingly- by a man who now joins her in a song in which he celebrates the idea using her like a plastic doll. That’s wrong on more than one level. Unfortunately, I doubt either of them have a clue.

Crossing the Line, As Usual

Roger Canaff — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 01:38:04 +0000

There’s really no question that the photograph above is sexually violent. There’s also no question that the subject is underage, the child supermodel Hailey Clauson, who is 17. Max Pearmain, a British fashion editor and stylist (I’m pretty girly for a straight guy but not so girly that I know exactly what a “stylist” does professionally) is apparently the brains behind the full layout which can be seen on his blog.

Kudos to Jezebel, probably my favorite online magazine, for bringing this to light. As they already point out, it’s unbelievably creepy. And it joins a child with a porn star for a photo shoot (they’re holding hands in one shot). While this isn’t the crime of the century, it’s really the kind of thing that should be avoided.

Yes, I know. We Americans are dull, overly uptight puritans. We should be more relaxed, like our free-wheeling European betters. Whatever.

First, a child is a child.

Second, no woman should be portrayed this way; with a large hand, attached to a hairy arm, grasping her throat. To the extent that excites someone, it’s wrong and so are they. But lo and behold, at the time of this writing, the first two comments to the Jezebel story “point out” that what was being depicted was 1) consensual and 2) common, apparently, for women during sex.

If erotic asphyxiation is an agreed upon activity between consenting, legally competent adults, then I’ll be the last person to stand in it’s way. But that’s a far cry from depicting the strangulation of a child in a way that is most definitely meant to be sexually stimulating.

I hope and pray that Hailey Clauson grows to be a healthy, happy and strong woman, able to enjoy her beauty and success and make the most of every opportunity. If, God forbid, she instead stumbles onto a tragic path because of what she’s being joined with and exposed to now, I’ll have little patience for the hand-wringers who will then wonder how it happened.

Pobrecita

Roger Canaff — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 05:25:32 +0000

“Beeper duty” is what’s it’s called. For ADA’s in the Bronx District Attorneys Office, it means a 24 hour shift in which the Assistant District Attorney responds to serious assaults and homicides that occur in the borough when someone in authority deems it necessary.

It’s not nearly as garish as it was back in the day. My mentors at BXDA, there since the 80’s, remember a time when beeper duty involved a separate pager reserved just for homicides, when ADA’s were literally “beeped” from location to location for the entire period, encountering shot-through, rotting, broken, body after body in the gruesome series of killings that plagued the Bronx before the relative calm that finally settled in by the mid 90’s.

I was on beeper duty on a random Tuesday night in April of 2007, shortly before leaving BXDA. It was one of the roughly 15 days of perfect weather the New York area experiences every year. A beautiful spring day darkened into a warm, breezy, evening. I got the beeper at 9:00 a.m. and worked my typical day. The beeper was blessedly silent. Knowing I had the thing for 16 hours after that, I planned an evening with two of my favorite NYPD detectives, Brian Carey and Lourdes Gonzeles, both of the Bronx Special Victims Unit. They were working that night, and I had a couple of tasks out in the community I needed their help with. Brian and Lulu were partners, and two of the best people I’ve worked with in any environment. Lulu had taken a bullet to her arm as a young cop; Brian ruined his knee and required a brutal series of surgeries after chasing a perp not long after the night I write about now. The two of them are open-hearted, deeply decent, dear friends- big reasons why I love cops the way I do.

We chased down my witnesses and then went to dinner in one of the myriad, little known, and phenomenal restaurants that dot the Bronx and that only locals and NYPD really know. It was a great night. The weather was angelic. The company was sublime. We ate, we bitched about city employment, we reminisced. From there I stayed with the two of them as they worked through their evening until it was past midnight. They offered a couple of times to run me back to the west side of Manhattan where I lived; Brian spent years on the mayor’s security detail and could bridge distances throughout New York City with breathtaking brevity. But I was happy being out. I was on duty anyway, and it was a beautiful night.

And then Lulu got the call.

There was a dead baby at Lincoln, meaning Lincoln Hospital Center, in the South Bronx. The baby had been brought in by her parents, a young couple, and the circumstances of death were unknown. The parents were talking to Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS. There was nothing to prompt a murder investigation yet, but Special Victims needed to respond with an ADA. Lulu and Brian had that covered. At about 1:15, we headed over to Lincoln.

I never met the parents of the baby. I left the office shortly after that duty shift, and I don’t believe either of them or anyone else was charged in relation to her death. I never knew what killed her. I only knew that she was about 13 weeks old.

We usually see the dead in one of several general circumstances: the actual place where they died, the morgue, or the funeral home. I had seen dead children in those places. I had never, for whatever reason, seen a dead baby in the sterile, ordered confines of a hospital room, as of yet unprocessed for transport to the morgue. She had been classified dead on arrival, or DOA. So there were no tubes, no wires, none of the apparatus often associated with the extremities of modern medicine. She was not in a bathtub, a gutter, or the bench seat of a car. She was not tucked into the white silk pocket of a hideously undersized casket. She was just still, lying neatly and peacefully on an exam table.

There was a nurse’s assistant attending to the baby in a way I can only describe as lovingly desperate, as if even in death this girl-child needed tenderness and attention. The assistant adjusted the blankets over the baby as if she still might feel a chill in the exam room. Brian and Lulu left me and went to talk to the ER docs who had seen the baby.

The nurse’s assistant was an older Latina woman. She saw me, in the hallway in a rumpled suit and tie with an advanced 5:00 shadow and reddened eyes. She smiled and I greeted her in Spanish, a language I am conversational but not fluent in. Despite probably speaking English, she answered me in her language which I’m always grateful for. It’s good practice.

“Senora, soy fiscal,” I said quietly. I’m a prosecutor. “Estoy con los detectivos. Por favor, puedo verla?,” I asked. Can I see her? She nodded and beckoned me into the room.

The baby girl was perfect. Doll-like with long, curving eyelashes, unblemished, coffee-colored skin and plump, smooth, healthy-looking arms and legs. Her eyelids were closed and she lay almost poised, her stillness seeming attributable to something other than what it was, which was death. But it didn’t look like death. It seemed as if she knew someone was watching her sleep. I crossed myself and the assistant joined me.

“Pobrecita, no?” she said, out loud and as much to the universe as to me. She asked this the way Spanish speakers do, in a rhetorical fashion. No one other than God is expected to have an answer. Poor little thing, no?

“Si. Claro,” I said.

Yes. Of course.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Roger Canaff — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:14:00 +0000

This week I had the honor of speaking at the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, sponsored by their remarkably vibrant and inventive Family Law Center. I was joined by Lester Munson, a senior sportswriter and legal analyst at ESPN. Munson is funny, blunt, opinionated, and apparently a big part of the conscience of pro and college sports. He’s doing exactly what a journalist and a sports fan should, in my view.

I listened to him discuss the Penn State case, with some detail and context that I lack simply for want of his understanding of the game and the dynamics of the Paterno dynasty. As I listened, it struck me even deeper how inexcusable the decisions were that slithered out from the circle of men in control of it.

It also begged the question of what we can do going forward. What can we do to prevent another predator at another venerated institution from leaving a long and concealed trail of wreckage? What can we do in general about this miserable part of our own nature?

I am often invited to make observations based on what I know from research and my own professional experience. That’s the easy part. I can speak for hours on what’s wrong, why it’s wrong, and even a little bit about where it stems from. The hard part is when a sincere, decent person in the audience asks me “what, then? What do we do?”

For now at least, this is what I had to offer:

-Do more to understand the urge that leads to sexual violence, because it is anything but obvious or easy to comprehend.

-Consider prevention efforts, but be fair and realistic about them. Most of the traditional ones do not work.

-Abandon foolish ideas that many or most complaints are false or incorrect, or that violent situations are just the product of mistake, intoxication or just ‘roughness’ on the part of a violator.

-Reduce the power and mystique of institutions by valuing human beings individually more than we value the institutions themselves.

-Finally, accept that sexual violence, for now, is a part of the human condition.

The last one is the hardest, for most, to really own and internalize. But we must.

We have done much, in rich cultures at least, to add abundance to our lives and sanitize our physical experience so that we can be dignified, clean, clothed and presentable. More importantly, we have made great strides in nurturing our minds and souls. We can free ourselves much more effectively from depression and dysfunction. We can sow hope where it’s been banished. We can bind emotional wounds that formerly truncated our own lives and infected countless others.

But where our sexuality is concerned, we’re still surprisingly in the dark. We know what appeals to us and what makes us more appealing. We certainly know what sells. But we don’t fully understand the line between sexuality and sexual violence- a line that, once it’s crossed, marks the end of defensible eroticism and the beginning of misery and injustice.

We do not yet know how to fully acknowledge our sexuality without the intrusion of myth, mores, and standards. I do not, for the record, believe that all mores and standards are wrong it comes to our sexuality. Part of what lends us our dignity is the ideal that our sexuality can be robust and varied, but closely controlled and never a weapon. Nevertheless, it’s undeniable that some of the standards we’ve imposed on each other sexually do more harm than good, and perpetuate damaging ignorance and misunderstanding.

Most importantly, we still don’t know how to keep from judging each other when one of us is sexually abused. We can’t effectively protect each other from the abuse that springs from our most cherished creations- our institutions. We can’t yet do these things because we have neither fully grasped nor fully faced what we are, and are capable of, as sexual beings. That won’t happen until we open our minds first and our mouths second.

Take a page from the gay and lesbian movement during the plague of AIDS.

Candor and understanding move us forward.

Ignorance and denial hold us back.

Silence equals death. Still.

Myth and Innuendo In the Greg Kelly Investigation

Roger Canaff — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:32:23 +0000

She waited three months to report.

She has a boyfriend who was angered by the situation.

Sex-themed text messages may have been exchanged before the night in question, and ones suggesting another meeting may have been sent after.

She has a Facebook page upon which she posted “nothing out of the ordinary” during the month where the alleged crime occurred.

She joined the man she’s accusing at a bar that hangs women’s underwear from the ceiling.

Dear God, why is anyone even investigating this? Why is Martha Bashford, the highly capable sex-crimes chief at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, wasting time to determine what happened between this complainant and Greg Kelly?

Hopefully because Bashford isn’t being swayed by “law enforcement sources,” quoted widely in the media this week and assigning authoritative finality to factors like the ones above. DA Vance has firmly stated he doesn’t know the source of the leaks and does not condone them. He has good reason beyond their basic irresponsibility. They reflect a stunning ignorance regarding the reality of sexual violence.

I have no idea if Greg Kelly is guilty of anything; it’s been a week since a complaint was made and there are far more questions than answers. Hence the investigatory process and venerable presumption of innocence. Kelly has been charged with no crime. He deserves to be treated respectfully and without smearing or assumption. But to assert that the case against him is false because of the factors being touted is dangerous nonsense.

-Delayed reporting is hardly abnormal or indicative of a false report, despite the fantasies of apparent “veteran investigators.” Delaying is extremely common, if anything the norm rather than the exception in acquaintance cases. Survivors delay reporting for dozens of valid reasons, most exacerbated by the circumstances seen here (a celebrity accused, a media frenzy, microscopic scrutiny of the victim, etc).

-The idea that women regularly, falsely report being raped in order to cover regretful behavior or the betrayal of another relationship is vacuous. Has it happened? Surely. Is it remotely common? Hardly. Reporting rape falsely and enduring what follows is anything but a typical impulse, let alone a popular choice when confronted by an angry boyfriend who wants to know why you’re pregnant.

- Sexually charged texts from a woman to a man prior to an encounter says absolutely zero about whether that man is capable of raping her either by force or as a result of physical helplessness. It also says zero about her inclination or ability to tell the truth about an event she recalls as a crime. Rather, they demonize her as someone less deserving of legal vindication no matter what happened. Texting afterward might be more problematic, but it depends on the context, what was said, and when. If the texts sought clarification of what happened (which would make sense in a case alleging severe intoxication and incapacity to consent), they are hardly smoking guns. What of texts suggesting another meeting? Again, it depends- when were they made in context to when she realized fully what had happened? An evolving sense of what occurred is also not uncommon in cases where incapacity through intoxicants is suspected.

Comparisons are already being made between this situation and the cases of meteorologist Heidi Jones (who fabricated a rape complaint originating in Central Park), Kobe Bryant, and Duke Lacrosse. Never mind that Jones accused no one by name (very common in false complaints), Bryant’s legal team savagely wore down the complainant until she gave up (yet he later apologized), and the complainant in Duke Lacrosse was so severely mentally ill that authorities suspected she probably believed her own lies.

The issues so far in this nascent case present challenges for the prosecution; that is undisputed. Kelly may be innocent of anything criminal, a fact which may genuinely co-exist with the complainant’s belief that she was violated.

But to conflate these challenges with the recklessness and moral bankruptcy that must accompany falsely accusing a man of rape- at this point and on these factors- is dangerously unfair and ignorant. The “sources” publicly voicing skepticism should be kept far away from the investigation. Commentators, particularly former sex crimes prosecutors who should know better, are doing little good by furthering myths they either 1) never understood as such, or 2) allowed to intimidate them into inaction. If these things occurred when they were on the job, it was the victims who paid the price.

If the complainant has falsely accused Kelly, then she is already getting what she deserves. If her complaint is valid or at least sincere, she is getting far, far worse. My prayer is that NYDA gets it right, and for the right reasons.

Vulnerabilty, Danger, and Blame

Roger Canaff — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:51:55 +0000

“There is no vulnerability without danger.” Veronique Nicole Valliere, Psy.D.

It’s a simple and brilliant truth, introduced to me at a sex assault prosecution training in 2009. The doc was discussing how we blame women (and men) who are sexually assaulted, particularly when their choices leading up to the attack make them, in most minds, “more vulnerable.” Like when they drink too much, or when they go home with a man they don’t know well. And so on.

When I heard it, I nodded sagely. Sure, I believed in what I called “rape prevention,” and felt that everyone needed to take some responsibility for their own personal safety. But that’s all. I wasn’t anywhere near victim blaming. Because I was too smart for that. Too enlightened. Too smugly ensconced as one of the more influential sex assault prosecution experts nationwide. So naturally, I understood her perfectly.

Except that I didn’t. Because I was victim blaming, even though I told myself I wasn’t. And in buying into the kind of “rape prevention” I believed in, I was a part of the problem. Many of us, most with the best of intentions, still are.

The ad above from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (now pulled) sparked a debate in feminist circles. The ad itself wasn’t the issue; most agreed it was offensive. Visually it sexualized violence, right down to the blue underwear around the seductively placed ankles matching the tile on the floor. That’s not a representation of the aftermath of a felony. It’s wanna-be pornography. And of course, it callously blamed both the curled up, naughty-girl and her irresponsible friends for not preventing the rape she apparently endured. No mention of the rapist.

But while the attempt was botched, the underlying message begged a question: Shouldn’t we warn girls and women about the dangers of losing control, and thus “becoming vulnerable?” Isn’t it simply a dangerous world, like it or not? Of course it is and of course we should, went the argument. It was a bold one apparently, expectant of a backlash from uber-feminist PC police who would label it victim blaming even though the goal was simply to “reduce vulnerability.” When the backlash came, I initially sided against it. I had seen a career’s worth of victimization- how could I not encourage safe behavior myself, in the name of reducing vulnerability? Because vulnerability invites danger. Right?

Wrong.

Go back to the statement at the top of the page. Vulnerability does not exist unless danger is present. Choices, however reckless they appear, do not create danger anymore than liquor creates rape in a man who is not a rapist. Danger exists because of the choices dangerous people- rapists, in this case- make. From this reality, two others flow: First, encouraging young people (the most at-risk population, male or female) to avoid victimization through more responsible behavior will not prevent a single rape, as author Jaclyn Friedman points out in her piece on the subject. Rape is never an accident, and it’s almost always a planned attack. The rapist who cannot target the “better-behaved” woman will find one who isn’t. So there won’t be less rape, just rape of perhaps different people. Of course, the predictable rejoinder is “well my daughter won’t be the targeted person, then.” Game, set, match. Admonish away.

Except that she might be regardless, which is the second reality that results from Dr. Valliere’s observation. The woman who believes she is safer because she’s avoiding something like heavy drinking might well be safer to a particular kind of attack. But there are many others, and being lulled into a false sense of security because of the avoidance of one behavior will likely blind her to the danger that can exist under the most responsible appearing of circumstances. Women are raped by trusted friends. They’re raped during the daytime while studying or just listening to music with known, clean-cut, well-regarded men in their communities, on their campuses, from their churches. Alcohol is extremely helpful to acquaintance rapists. But it is hardly their only tool.

Youth involves blind spots, but regardless of age, risk-taking is at bottom the essence of life. There is no elimination of it short of solitary confinement. What we must do is grasp that vulnerability exists only when danger is present, and turn the focus rightly on the dangerous and away from the endangered.

Because when we create rules, particularly ones laced with moral superiority in order to somehow deliver us from evil, we then distance ourselves from those who break them. When those people are victimized, we rest easy, believing that our wisdom and temperance saved us. But there are always more rules, both to make and to break. In the end, all that rule making accomplishes is the encouragement of an insidious urge to will to life something other than luck separating us from the unlucky. So we’ll draw attention to the choices the rule breakers made that we wouldn’t make. And we’ll blame them for theirs.

In Paterno We Trusted. Now We’re Left Cold.

Roger Canaff — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:57:35 +0000

Death comes for us all. And while it seems to have come with relative and merciful swiftness for Joseph Paterno, there are many who believe that the man truly died in November of last year when his Valley was flooded with sick, pale light and a stinking truth stirred in its glare. Death was not swift, but rather a protracted, miserably public, three-month torture session. Some see this as the gross mistreatment of a scapegoat who had nothing to be ashamed of. Others view it as the bitterly just end of a pompous villain, brought low in time to suffer his downfall. Neither view is accurate or at all helpful.

What must be avoided, in fact, is a binary approach to viewing the man as his body cools and his soul proceeds to whatever is next. Demanding that Paterno be either lionized or demonized allows for a pernicious diversion from what desperately needs to be understood, which is how the demons of secrecy, misery and darkness thrived in “Happy Valley” in the first place.

Far too many would prefer a two-dimensional explanation to the real one. They’d prefer, consciously or not, to reduce the shattering, life-altering experience of God-only-knows how many victims, fueled and protected by a monstrosity of an institution, to a stage play and a handful of players. Western culture and the tender, succor of myth shield us nicely; it’s not a frightening, complex issue at all, but rather a simple “Greek tragedy” with an almost poignant, tsk-tsk lesson for those with ears to hear. Paterno was its flawed hero, its fallen angel. A neatly wrapped archetype for the ages to follow.

This is dangerous oversimplification.

Acknowledging that the allegations are yet unproven, I believe they are true and that they involve far more than nine victims. I also believe that whatever blame there is for what occurred at Penn State is shared more broadly and in more nuanced ways than much of what’s been suggested so far.

To be clear, I do not in the least blame the innocent spirit that underpins the excitement of cheering for the team. I fully acknowledge the greatness of the football tradition that has played such a positive role in the development of the university, the lives of the players, and the fans and supporters. But if there is one thing I believe our universe is truly ordered with, it is the unbending concept of the yin-yang, the Chinese philosophical intellection that tells us light cannot exist without darkness, joy without sorrow, pleasure without pain.

Prize without price.

For decades, the prize of Penn State football greatness was won by many, but guided by, channeled through and embodied in Joe Paterno. To assume that that prize came without some price exacted for it is the height of foolishness. The question is not whether it was paid, but how and by whom. Paterno apparently had high personal and professional standards and valued character, service, and education as much as he did wins. He should be remembered warmly for it and emulated appropriately. But as well, he was both product and protector of an entity far too large for any ‘saint’ to control, and more importantly one that was depended on to produce: Money. Glory. Status. The entity became a beast. The beast needed to be fed. It’s worth noting that the Sandusky matter is not the first time institutional concerns and image have been accused of taking precedence over the welfare of youth in Happy Valley.

While many questions remain unanswered, it appears at this point that Paterno acted without malice, but also with at least dangerous naïveté and at worst a perception noxiously colored by the responsibilities he felt toward his institution. His “superiors” appear much more directly responsible for decisions that apparently allowed a predator to spread additional misery in amounts we are years if ever from fully grasping. But wherever these men fall on the scale of guilt and accountability, it is the institution- the beast- they served that likely guided their decisions whether they fully understood it or not.

And beyond these caretakers are the rest of us. We who demand the glory of gridiron victory to fill our lives, diminishing those who cannot deliver it. We who increasingly depend on the filling of stadiums rather than public commitment to fund research and open classrooms. We who allow the stakes to rise higher and higher until nothing else can possibly trump the needs of the hungry institutions we’ve created, regardless of what unholy things thrive within their bowels. We who eventually agree, whether in high-level meetings or in our own hungry hearts, that nothing else matters.

Certainly not the silent anguish of boys on cold, locker room floors.