And today’s doucheplonker of FAIL award goes to… this Sydney Morning Herald reporter, who managed to write this entire article without once mentioning the word “rape” or “assault”. Instead, she repeatedly labelled these violent gang rapes “sex”.
SMH: “Schoolboys’ sex acts with girl, 13, filmed and sent to mates”
Trigger warning, sexual violence.
The article:
A 13-year-old girl who was violated by seven teenage boys – some of them dressed in school uniforms – was told to “smile like you’re enjoying it” as they took turns with her in a public toilet cubicle, a court heard today.
The girl had vaginal and oral sex in several different locations in Sydney’s western suburbs with the boys in acts that one teenager taped on his mobile phone and later sent to his friends.
Four teenagers appeared in the NSW District Court for a sentencing hearing today, after pleading guilty to aggravated sexual intercourse with a person aged between 10 and 14.
The lawyers for the four argued it had not been a planned affair, but was “opportunistic” because the girl was available and they had limited sexual experience.[…]
But when he arrived, she saw that he had brought two friends and they led her to a nearby public toilet where four others were waiting. The girl’s new friend asked her to give his friends oral sex, which she declined, but after he continued to press her she felt intimidated and said “yeah, whatever”.
Over the next few hours, the boys took turns entering the toilet cubicle, where they had oral sex with her.
One 15-year-old announced to the others “I’m going to root her”, but it took several unsuccessful attempts before he penetrated her while she experienced a tearing sensation that she said felt “terrible”.
When council workers interrupted them, they moved to a different public toilet in a nearby reserve where the activity continued, while outside the cubicle the boys made comments such as “smile like you’re enjoying it”.
They made her take off her clothes and watched one another violate her, causing her to bleed.
Two of the teenagers took her to a third location, on the rooftop of a building, where another teenager turned up wearing a toolbelt.
Again she was asked to give him oral sex, again she declined, and again they pressed her until she angrily relented.
Later that night, a friend told her that footage of her performing oral sex had been sent between mobile phones and that one boy reported she “looked like a slut”.
She reported the matter to police.
Don’t get me started on this lawyer. Opportunism is a defence for repeated gang rape? “The girl was ‘available'” is a defence for repeated gang rape? “The perps had limited sexual experience” is a defence for repeated gang rape?
I’d also like to know what these council workers saw when they “interrupted” the rapes. Did they just assume she was a big ol’ sluttery mcslutterson, and quietly ask the boys to move their fun elsewhere?
Gah.
Categories: gender & feminism, language, law & order, violence
DUFC #69 
Rape Culture Datapoint 
Hoyden About Town 
GGGGNNNNFSGH. *has no words*
Anji’s last blog post..links for 2009-01-29
Opportunism is when something quick happens in a moment of passion or a moment of weakness and I think that has a valid legal aspect to it in some crimes. Opportunism isn’t taking a girl, raping and abusing her over hours in three locations! That would give even the most stupid person plenty of opportunities to realise this was pure unadulterated rape.
This is appalling and what’s worse is the press reporting it in such a cold manner. Unfortunately, this is the norm in reporting rape practically all over the world. A girl’s life has been destroyed, she’s been abused in a way that will take her decades to get over (if ever) and they describe it as “the girl had vaginal and oral sex”.
I hope that this poor girl is at least getting the support she needs to handle this, not that she’ll ever be able to trust a man again after what she’s been through.
The other problem with this article is it has the air of larrikin teenage behaviour (“schoolboys”), when in actual fact a 13 year girl has been violently raped, assaulted, humiliated and physically and emotionally scarred. If the perpetrators had been 18+ year old men I’m sure the article would be couched in a much more outraged tone, and the lawyer far more contrite about his clients’ behaviour.
13 years of age. This is sickening.
Yes, I too had this anuerism today – twice. I posted the first time when it was still ‘alleged’, the second when the teenagers had admitted it (the same article you’ve got here) – also ‘took turns with her’ is a pissweak euphemism for RAPED her. I hate this shit so very very much.
In the area I grew up in girls were often raped by many guys at the beach parties, but it was referred to as ‘taking turns on her’ as if a girl is some kind of fairground ride and the boys are doing nothing more harmful than that.
The Sydney Morning Herald reporting in this way is inexcusable, and thankyou YES – adult council workers interupted, then said what? “As you were”?? “Oh, carry on then, we thought it was something serious like graffiti, but now we see it’s just boys being boys”??
Oh yeah, feminism is irrelevant, gender equality is real…
This is my angry face. My “time to take people out back and shoot them” face.
I just tweeted your article fp. I blogged it independently, I swear! (I’m behind on my RSS reader…)
Thank you!
I read this earlier today and nearly started crying.
So let me get this straight … the GIRL was ‘having sex’, the BOYS were just ‘taking turns’. W.T.F.?
“the GIRL was ‘having sex’, the BOYS were just ‘taking turns’. ”
And the council worker just ‘interrupted’ them.
How old is Harriet Alexander and how long has she been a journalist?
Did she actually attend the court or rely on a ‘brief’ from the defence.
Appalling. Extreme youth and abysmal ignorance would be the only excuses available to her.
Jeez, it doesn’t even manage the whole imaginary gnomes passive-voice thing: in the sentence “The girl had… sex… with the boys” makes her the subject, the agent of the sentence. The boys are, in fact, the objects! Yes, that’s right, the very sentence construction makes it impossible for anything to have happened to the poor girl against her will; she’s the one with the capacity for action. If you ask me, between the ‘had sex’ (come the fuck on, people, ‘sex’ is not the same as rape!) and the grammatical construction of these sentences, this is straightforward misogynist mis-reporting. And I’m thinking that I might be heading towards writing to SMH over that one.
How do you have “aggravated sexual intercourse with a person aged between 10 and 14″ (a child), or anyone else for that matter? Is that an actual crime on the law books? I thought it was sexual assault or rape. Are they using these euphemisms in actual law now? Sickening.
Does it bother anyone else that they go into so much detail, as if it were a fantasy?
And they describe it in such a way that an ignorant person can think “if she really didn’t want to do it she could have left, so it was consensual.” Like the whole “yeah whatever” thing, as if it were equal to the peer pressure to wear a certain kind of shoes or something.
Sickening.
“Does it bother anyone else that they go into so much detail, as if it were a fantasy?”
Yes. I kept wondering when the description would be over.
And I’m left at a loss with respect to these young rapists.
Lauredhel @ 6 – hehe. No, I was mentioning I’d blogged on it also just because I needed shared outrage, not because I was like “HEY!”. I was at work when I read these and the first one I just posted the link, the second I went rank, and it’s true we’ve both covered the same points – but they are points that scream for a ranting. Oh god it’s infuriating.
And CG @10 – for some reason, I read your comments and went “A WOMAN wrote this??”. I know a man writing it shouldn’t ‘excuse it’ or a woman writing it make it ‘worse’…but as a woman I constantly relate to rape stories. I have never been raped, but I have always known it’s a possibility *because of the way that women are treated*. So I don’t understand someone failing to grasp it so very much that they write like that.
WP, yes, I think writing to the SMH on this one is a good idea. Damn.
JA@13, YES that ‘trying unsuccessfully’ image was burned into my brain all night. The media seem to LOVE LOVE LOVE them a graphic description of sexual violence.
fuckpoliteness’s last blog post..One last look at that Sacred Heart
Oh and SttT I hear you. Let’s not ‘plan it’ though…let’s just HAPPEN to be lurking by the shed out back, and just HAPPEN to have the shotgun loaded. Cos then we can cry ‘impromptu slaying’ and all will be well in the world.
And for any passer by dense enough to think that constitutes an actual threat, as much as this world piles unimaginable violences on women, as much as I’m sick of it, as much as it makes me make comments like the above, I have not, do not and will not ever be reduced to vigilante violence. But there are times where you just wish people would spontaneously drop dead from the pure evil of their actions.
The sad thing is, when I saw this, I wasn’t even surprised– outraged and disgusted, yes, but this is exactly the way that I expect rape to be reported by the MSM.
Maybe the journalist did write rape and her words were changed by a sub editor and put under her name. I understand that that is not uncommon. Still it means that someone at the SMH needs to be re-educated.
Is this the Australian equivalent of American-style “statutory rape” used where sex is consensual but both parties are legally under age?
Thank you for noticing what I noticed.
I hate the reasoning that if a teenage girl puts her self in a position where she wants to get involved with or experiment with a particular guy that she fancies, and that guy shows up with his mates, then somehow because she was inviting the one guy whatever subsequently happens with all his mates is not considered to be rape.
I also hate predatory pack mentality that guys in groups develop, and the pressure that they put one another to perform.
There is a word for this. Pack-rape. It should be used. The fact that they knew her makes no difference. I hope they throw the book at these animals. Preferably an old family bible launched from a supersonic jet.
Preferably the full Oxford English Dictionary, with some sort of catapault.
Just horrific… and that any part of that girl’s experience should be described as sex is a repulsive level of misogyny in our society.
I’ve written letters of complaint to newspapers for the use of qualifying language when describing child abuse cases. My pet peeve is when they describe an abused child and her attacker as being in a “relationship”. It implies that there was some sort of mutual consent involved, just like in this case.
WHY do journalists continue to do this?
Does it involve some clash with the legal requirements of publishing?
Presuming that they personally do not condone these terrible crimes, surely people whose job it is to work with words could be more resourceful.
I usually keep well away from the Murdoch press, but I thought I’d do a search to see if News Ltd. had an article on this horrific event. The Daily Telegraph does. It is not afraid to use the words “rape” and “ordeal”. The way the SMH dances around the brutality of what happened is disgraceful.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,,24980654-5005941,00.html
That last line in the news.com article
“One of the four boys, who was only at the rooftop, had not known about what happened earlier and had “taken the opportunity” to engage in his first sexual encounter, Judge Richard Cogswell was told. ”
Oh Yeah – just like taking turns on a computer game – lets all learn how to be rapists. Just simply boys games.
Their lawyer needs hitting over the head with a bloody heavy dictionary too
Also from the news.com article, apparently the boys’ lawyer cited “good family background” as one of the factors that is supposed to mitigate the seriousness of the crime. Because it’s less wrong to rape a girl if you’ve got privilege up the wazoo.
Could you imagine a lawyer trying to defend any other crime like that?
“My client had never beaten someone up before, so he took the opportunity to engage in his first experience of inflicting pain on another person.”
I don’t think any lawyer would even consider such a line.
Also, rather disturbing that even the Telegraph article doesn’t seem to think that being bullied into “performing” oral sex is rape.
Could you imagine a lawyer trying to defend any other crime like that?
Just thinking about this– I think that lawyers might use that sort of defence in relation to crimes against property, rather than crimes against a person– for instance, taking the opportunity to steal a wallet because it was left unattended, rather than pre-meditated theft. So it really plays into the whole women=property/objects paradigm.
@Arctic Firefox. A team from the The Daily Telegraph won a Violence against Women Prevention award in 2007 for a series of articles they did on rape. They also editiorialized in favour of the recent changes to NSW Rape laws (a bloody refreshing change from the hand wringing from civil libertarians and lawyer types at the time). They have some good form.
Deus Ex Macintosh – while I’ve not read the criminal code for every state in the U.S., I have read quite a few and I know of no state today that criminalizes non-coerced sex between two people below the age of consent and of comparable age. A person below the age of consent can be charged with statutory rape in the U.S., but only if there’s a certain gap in ages. (15 and 11, for example)
I’ve also written some angry shit to the SMH over this, also for the decision to use the word “schoolboys” in the headline.
Way to make gang rape seem like a naughty prank.
Clearly the legal system considers anyone with a vagina to be “available”. Those fuckers.
Adding my disgust to the pile.
The newspapers haven’t reported it as rape because the boys were not charged with rape. Aggravated sexual intercourse with a child between 10 and 14 under ss.66C(2) is an offence to which consent is not relevant. Lack of consent is a central feature of the definition of rape.
The only facts about the case I know are what I have just read above, but the prosecutors probably looked at the evidence, considered the gray-area consent issues involved (girl angrily relented after being bullied by these little toolbags), and were content to let the reprobates plead guilty to a lesser charge than sexual assault, rather than risk pursuing a rape conviction and having them get off.
If it makes you all feel better, the maximum penalty for aggravated sexual intercourse with a child 10 <14, at 20 years imprisonment, is not significantly lower than if they had been convicted of rape.
So direct your anger at the right people. [ableist language removed ~L] Not the newspaper that could have been dealing with a defamation case for reporting the incident as rape.
And yet, Tofuloaf, the Telegraph, as noted above, uses the word “raped” and “sexual assault”, and writes the entire article so as to not minimise the horrific ordeal this girl experienced at the hands of her gang rapists. How do you account for that?
As far as I can tell, there is no offence “rape” in the NSW Crimes Act. (IANAL; someone will correct me if I’m wrong, of course.) The common law offences of “rape” and “attempted rape” were wiped from the law. In the absence of a crime officially called “rape”, the media are free to refer to sexual penetration without valid consent by its English word, which is rape.
And… you can fuck off out of here right now if you think for a second this was a “gray area”. There is nothing grey about a gang of boys bullying a frightened 13 year old into rape, and continuing to rape her in three locations while she was bleeding and in pain and terrified. Nothing.
What exactly about “smile like you’re enjoying it” says “consensual” to you?
Gah. I feel sick.
@ Lauredhel:
Well said, Lauredhel. There was absolutely nothing “gray” about this rape except the veil over the eyes of council employees who failed to help a young girl who was being assaulted by a pack of vicious young thugs.
I’m tragically reminded of an online argument I had many years back, when my opponent kept insisting that even in the most dire circumstances, you still had choice, so even if someone was holding a gun to your head and said “do xyz or I’ll shoot you” you were still able to choose to let them shoot you instead of complying, which meant you consented.
Anyone who thinks “well, she did eventually say yes when outnumbered, pressured, and threatened, so it can’t have been as bad as rape” … I just have no words.
I hate that one, QoT. How long would the average dude (nearly always a dude who runs that line of argument, in my experience) take to phone a lawyer to have a contract declared null and void if he was coerced into signing it at the point of a gun?
Coerced acquiescence is not considered legally valid consent in any other circumstance.
Also, by my reading of the situation, this girl had already been seriously assaulted by these boys a number of times already so her angrily saying “OK” to shut them up, to get it over with, caving to the nightmare she was in was NOT FUCKING CONSENT. Apart from anything else, in this situation it can be self preservation. If you know you’re just going to be hurt even *worse* if you struggle, going along with it to minimise the damage is NOT the same as saying Yes Please or even Yes.
“And… you can fuck off out of here right now if you think for a second this was a “gray area”. ”
When I used the term ‘grey area’, I was talking specifically from a legal point of view and what would have to be established in order to convince a jury that there was an absence of consent for the purposes of a s.61I or 61J sexual assault conviction. Personally, I have no doubt that what those kids did to that girl amount to rape in the way that the term is understood outside of legal circles, but within a courtroom, there’s a lot there that any competent defence lawyer could have played around with, and that is probably why the prosecution were happy to accept a plea to a lesser charge.
As for why the Tele was happy to use ‘rape’ and ‘sexual assault’ in reporting this particular case, while the Herald wasn’t, I have no idea. Perhaps they had legal advice to the effect that since the offenders were minors and their names could never be made public, there was no risk of a defamation case. That is conjecture, though.
Once again, I just want to make it perfectly clear that in no way do I personally believe that the legal ‘grey area’ around the consent in this case ameliorates the culpability of these boys for their actions. I’m just pointing out that it would have been a less than cut-and-dried case if the prosecution had gone after a sexual assault conviction.
Qot, I’ve read a good account of this in a book about the Holocaust, which referred to the concept of a ‘choiceless choice’. That’s when every outcome from your choice is dire it’s not really a choice.
It has also entered the lexicon as “Sophie’s Choice” because she had to choose which one of her children lived and which one died in a concentration camp – movie of the same name starring Meryl Streep. Not sure if it was based on a true story or not.
Not sure if it was based on a true story or not.
I don’t know if that exact story is true, but that sort of thing certainly did happen. I know that Hannah Arendt discusses the case of a mother who was forced to choose between selecting one of her children to die, and having all her children killed (and herself).
I just discovered this…..
International guidelines for journalists reporting violence against women
“A series of guidelines have been designed for journalists who are reporting on violence against women. International Federation of Journalists have developed the guidelines to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The guidelines are available at –
http://www.ifj.org/assets/docs/185/063/c3093b9-8c8e63f.pdf
Thanks for the link, Mortisha. It is good to see that this is at least a matter that is reflected upon by journalists. The guideline about victim/survivor terminology is an interesting one. There was a really good post and debate about this onThe Curvature recently and I think that there are valid and interesting arguments for either term.
My personal view is that I don’t like either term. Firstly neither of them express a sufficient degree of defiance and I find defiance to be a very useful feeling. It turns powerlessness and the enforced passivity that is often the essence of victimisation, into action. Secondly, I think that both terms inevitably stigmatize me for having been subjected to a specific event/s, and I am not willing to play by those rules, the rules whereby the abused become the shame bearers for the abusers. Stimgatization takes a negative event and turns it into an identity, so I think it is very difficult to speak of one’s experience of a past event in “I am” terms without being stigmatized, however unwillingly. The statement “I am” is a claim of identity, however you look at it and I refuse to build or define my identity upon those events. However influential they have been and are, they still are not the defining feature or foundation of me. So if the occasion arises I prefer to talk about my experiences of sexual assault in concrete terms where both the abuser and I take our respective places and the temporal context is explicit.
My other qualm is that by taking on a label, either victim or survivor, I can talk about my experience without ever having to mention the rapist/abuser in anything other than disembodied and abstract terms. I see this as an extension of the passive voice problem whereby the role of the person who rapes is discreetly removed from the narrative.
(Slightly meta but I don’t think that the label and stigma of rapist/abuser should be indelible, however until such time as a rapist/abuser demonstrates that they are safe people to be around then a stigma should indeed be applied to abusers and rapists. Rapists are extremely prone to recidivism and as much as I believe that all people regardless of behaviour are owed a debt of basic respect, I simply do not accept that rapid assimilation into wider society is a cure for the kind of thinking and behaviour that enables someone to violate another person in this most cruelly intimate manner. All of my experience, and the experience of people I know supports the diametric opposite, that it is the avoidance of stigma that is the problem, that the all too ready excuse of “he’s just a good bloke who went too far” actually enables rapists to rape again.)
Trust academic literature for new and improved euphemisms for rape – “Coerced Sexual Debut”. *sigh* just Google scholar it to see what I mean.
Su: Thanks for that. I also found that Curvature thread very insightful, thought-provoking, and productive; and your points about the “I am/She is a…” terminology sometimes being a passive-voice analogy is an important one. My primary association with the word “survivor” is with people who survive a natural disaster like a flood or earthquake, or a disease like cancer, which makes me a bit less keen on the term personally; because sexual violence has been compared to an unchangeable natural force far too many times. I recognise that others might not share that.
When the guidelines said “A term that more accurately describes the reality of a person who has suffered in this way is ‘survivor’”, my first thought was “Not all of them survive.”