i am trying to wrap my mind around this and see the reasons (leaving the judgment to the jury?), but it just doesn't work. it falls into irony when you compare it with anything else.
a burglary victim forced to describe a burglar as a visitor!, a stabbing victim saying 'he reached over and touched me with a blade..inside my body!', a battered woman describing physical hits as 'bodily contact',
it's forcing the victim to deny the intent of the action, and hence the FACT of the _ACTION_. it forbids the accusation within the accusation. it just makes no sense.
I was wondering about that also. If they can ban a rape victim from saying "rape," shouldn't that extend to all crimes? And make a trial pretty difficult to conduct?
Yeah, this is pretty mystifying to me. I'm glad people are drawing attention to it, and I think the judge should have expected an outcry.
man, i'm liking the word 'sex' less and less with the ways its misused and abused to the point where i don't want to have what they mean when they say 'sex' anymore.
i stopped liking the word a while ago when i realized most people misuse 'sex' for 'vaginal penetration', or perhaps 'vaginal penetration with male penis, until male ejaculates'. now not only that, but sex is also supposed to be the word for 'rape, from the victim's perspective'?
This is so impossibly disgusting. I shared the news story with my S/O and we've just been sitting here fuming. I can't believe something like this would be allowed to happen. His legal licensce should be revoked. How can you have a judge with such a warped sense of impartiality?
A lot of judges suck, but this one is right up there w/the worst. He might as well have hung a banner in front of the bench saying "find for the defendant; this wasn't rape".
Tho as grrrlishgrin said, the particular way in which he did this indicates more than just an opinion on the present case; something is seriously wrong w/this guy's view of rape, and probably a lot of other things.
Why didn't you include the good news: the victim is not having any of it and her case will most like be relocated out of that judge's district?
"I refuse to call it sex, or any other word that I'm supposed to say, encouraged to say on the stand, because to me that's committing perjury. What happened to me was rape, it was not sex."
You are totally correct that Tory Bowen is amazing, and deserves applause for everything she's doing. And I'm hopeful there will be both a relocation and more importantly, a different and better judge, tho that last part isn't a surety yet.
Also, that she's having to go through all this extra nightmare and the judge is saying it's okay to describe a rape as sex but not rape? That to me is the bigger story.
I just read my response to your comment to the original post (give me time and I could string that out a few more lines) and it looked awful.
I was trying to (mostly) agree w/what you said, it looks like I'm arguing w/it. Hopefully this will not sound equally stupid; I think my phrasing is just bad right now.
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i am trying to wrap my mind around this and see the reasons (leaving the judgment to the jury?), but it just doesn't work. it falls into irony when you compare it with anything else.
a burglary victim forced to describe a burglar as a visitor!,
a stabbing victim saying 'he reached over and touched me with a blade..inside my body!',
a battered woman describing physical hits as 'bodily contact',
it's forcing the victim to deny the intent of the action, and hence the FACT of the _ACTION_. it forbids the accusation within the accusation. it just makes no sense.
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Yeah, this is pretty mystifying to me. I'm glad people are drawing attention to it, and I think the judge should have expected an outcry.
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(The comment has been removed)
i stopped liking the word a while ago when i realized most people misuse 'sex' for 'vaginal penetration', or perhaps 'vaginal penetration with male penis, until male ejaculates'.
now not only that, but sex is also supposed to be the word for 'rape, from the victim's perspective'?
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I doubt it will be, though.
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Tho as grrrlishgrin said, the particular way in which he did this indicates more than just an opinion on the present case; something is seriously wrong w/this guy's view of rape, and probably a lot of other things.
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"I refuse to call it sex, or any other word that I'm supposed to say, encouraged to say on the stand, because to me that's committing perjury. What happened to me was rape, it was not sex."
http://www.49abcnews.com/news/2007/jul/11/woman_refuses_obey_judge_who_banned_word_rape_tria/
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Also, that she's having to go through all this extra nightmare and the judge is saying it's okay to describe a rape as sex but not rape? That to me is the bigger story.
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I was trying to (mostly) agree w/what you said, it looks like I'm arguing w/it.
Hopefully this will not sound equally stupid; I think my phrasing is just bad right now.
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