The Crime.

In July of 2009, Teresa Butz was 39, engaged to her female partner, active in charitable causes in the Seattle area, and a deeply loved daughter, sister, friend and member of her community.  As the two slept, a young man entered their home through a window with a knife.  He raped and began stabbing both repeatedly until Teresa decided to fight back.  She saved her partner’s life and lost her own.  The crime was one of the worst local police had seen in years.   This one act, spurred on by whatever unholy combination of drugs, instability and pure, undiluted evil, altered forever the life of one of these decent women and ended that of her soul mate in a paroxysm of blood and terror.  We in the system have ways of dealing with these things, sometimes involving alcohol, cigarettes, or 100 other forms of self-medication.   I usually get by with a few stiff drinks and can normally avoid the ontological angst.  But stories like this one, thankfully rare but still being made, are the building blocks of the dark doubt in my mind that there is rhyme or reason to anything in the world as we see it.

The Project.

Teresa’s story has an angelic twist, though, something that despite the horror and sadness surrounding her death, scatters the darkness and bubbles up fountain-like with something hopeful.  Something beautiful.  Something almost ordered.  Teresa’s partner, you see, is a conservatory trained vocalist.  Her brother is a Tony award winning musician and actor.  At Teresa’s funeral and memorial service, the singing and music experienced there inspired a project, which is Angel Band.  It involves these two and others who loved Teresa, hitting different studios around the country and recording a tribute collection of songs in her honor.  What I’ve heard so far is sometimes melodic and haunting, sometimes rock and roll heavy, but always captivating.  It’s a work still in progress, easy to follow either on Facebook or the band’s web page.   The proceeds will go to support a group I work with and admire greatly called The Voices and Faces Project.  Voices and Faces is a documentary project that specializes in memorializing- either through audio or video- the accounts of survivors of sexual violence.  Some are women in old age who for decades had never uttered a word of what they suffered.  Some were violated in war, some in marriage, some in childhood.  Their accounts put a deeply human face on sexual violence, something desperately needed in order to take one more step toward ending it altogether.  It is, yet again, a matter of light, even a spark, penetrating and then destroying darkness.

I guess it’s the power of that light that, through both of these projects, threatens in benign fury the neat and unhappy picture of the world I have.  But light is just a symbol.  The real, beautiful, bountiful thing is order.  Order suggests a Creator.  Order suggests a destination as well as a journey, however tortured or smooth.  Order suggests a reason for a beating heart.  A reason for giving a damn at the end of another day.  This isn’t to suggest that the chasm created by Teresa’s death will be at all filled by the great gesture of Angel Band.  But it helps to see darkness- blind, random and cacophonous- scattered by light so wonderfully clear and guiding.

Upon the assassination of John Lennon, Elton John noted in song “it’s funny how one insect can damage so much grain.”  Thanks to the acts of one particular insect, I’ll never know Teresa Butz.  I’ll never experience her warmth, her kindness, her spirit.  But thanks to the courage, love, and resolve of these remarkable people, I am blessed with a profound sense of what they saw in her, and more importantly, what just might lie beneath the surface- ordered, sane, and loving- of a far too broken and random looking world.

© 2010, Roger Canaff. All rights reserved.

Basically, “Victim? In Virginia” attended a fraternity party, drank some alcohol, and was then talked into going into a bedroom by the guy who eventually raped her. She made it clear to him that she didn’t want to have sex, and made him promise that he wouldn’t attempt sex with her.

An unwise move? Probably, but not necessarily inappropriate for the age and life experience this woman apparently had to work with, particularly under the fog of alcohol. Not surprisingly, once this rapist had her behind closed doors, all bets were off as far as he was concerned, and he raped her in a state of intoxication where she could scarcely figure out what was happening, let alone successfully resist.

Following this nightmare, “Victim?” reached out to Amy Dickinson. Ms. Dickinson might have meant well, but the cold fact is she displayed a dangerous lack of understanding as to the dynamics of non-stranger sexual assault in her answer, not to mention how to counsel and advise a survivor of such an experience. Her biggest missteps, in my view, were these:

1. She began her her response to this victim by chastising her for “awful judgment,” reminding her that, after all, going to a fraternity party and getting drunk is really inviting what Dickinson describes as the possibility of “engaging in unwise or unwanted sexual contact.”

It ought to be axiomatic that “unwise” and “unwanted” aren’t the same thing. Last I checked, after all, one does not “engage” in unwanted sexual contact any more than one “engages” in being robbed at knife point. Conflating these two things- unwise and unwanted sexual contact, exposes Dickinson’s bias against young women who make choices she finds repugnant.

2. She noted that the victim didn’t say whether or not her rapist was “also drunk.” Because, she says, “if so, his judgment was also impaired.”

Sigh.

I’m sorry, but I’m choking on this. It’s because frankly I know what I’m talking about, and a syndicated advice columnist clearly doesn’t. Rape doesn’t come out of a bottle, folks. Claiming that this guy’s alcohol impaired judgment somehow brought forth this act is akin to saying that a gun found on the sidewalk turned a normally law-abiding citizen into a rampaging murderer. Alcohol doesn’t create the desire to commit acts like rape. It only loosens the chains that might hold a sober rapist back for fear of taking the risk of something like getting caught. The guy who did this is a rapist. He was a rapist at .00 BAC, and he was a rapist at whatever level he obtained before he committed the act. (And incidentally, if he was truly so intoxicated as to be somehow delusional, he wouldn’t be able to obtain or maintain an erection and complete the act.)

3. Ms. Dickinson counsels the victim to seek out the truth of her victimization by involving ”the guy in question to determine what happened.” This is terrific. Involving the rapist- the guy who has already lied to this girl repeatedly and violated her- in determining “what happened” is not only futile but toxic. Dickinson appears to buy into the myth that accidents happen, boys will be boys, and drunken sex will sometimes look and feel a lot like rape even though it’s really no one’s fault.

Nonsense. Rape isn’t an accident, and there isn’t an accidental rapist lurking in every boy or man. Rather, good and recent research suggests that there are relatively few men who are capable of rape, but they do it over and over again. This truism is one that -finally- Ms. Dickinson recognizes when she notes “he might have done this before.” But she appears to believe that what he’s done or what he’ll do again is at least half the other party’s fault. And worse, that a good heart to heart with one of his victims might help avoid this kind of behavior in the future.

No, ma’am. A guy might be a dog. He might be a player. He might be a cad. But unless he’s a rapist, he’ll recognize terror, struggling, semi-consciousness and the simple word “no” (which this victim reports telling him many times) for what they are: Signs that, to quote Susan Serandon from Thelma and Louise, ”she ain’t having fun.” This guy ignored those signs, because unlike most guys, (and like all rapists) he doesn’t give a damn what his prey is feeling. What she wants, after all, really isn’t the point.

A great group of anti-sexual assault professionals I’m a member of called CounterQuo suggested that I write a response to the papers where she’s syndicated, and thankfully some very good editors at CQ toned it down and added some great points. If it makes some difference and serves to educate Ms. Dickinson, we’ll have done a day’s work. BTW, check out CounterQuo- we’re changing the conversation.

© 2009 – 2010, Roger Canaff. All rights reserved.