The vicious aftermath of the rape of a teenage girl
Wow! There certainly has been a decrease in posting activity in this Group since the election. DU seems to have lost a number of regular posters. I can see why. I myself am tired of political and social controversies on the Internet. This could be my last post.
The article to which I've posted a link has also been posted elsewhere, but I thought it needed wider circulation. Specifically I feel it's quite appropriate especially since there is an ongoing discussion about a "Don't Rape Her" PSA.
This WaPo piece is a long read, but it deals with a painful but important issue that should concern all decent people.
"Aug. 11, 2006, was a sweltering Friday night in the midst of a long, fatally hot summer. A 16-year-old girl reported that she was raped that night, in a storage shed off a dirt road in my hometown of Arlington, Tex. Nobody was ever prosecuted for it, and nobody was punished except, arguably, her: By the end of the fall semester, she had disappeared from our high school, leaving only sordid rumors and a nascent urban legend."
<snip>
"On and off over the next three years, I reviewed police documents, interviewed witnesses and experts, and made several pilgrimages home to Texas to try to understand what exactly happened to Wyatt — not just on that night, but in the days and months and years that followed. Making sense of her ordeal meant tracing a web of failures, lies, abdications and predations, at the center of which was a node of power that, though anonymous and dispersed, was nonetheless tilted firmly against a young, vulnerable girl."
<snip>
"The story of Amber Wyatt’s assault begins in some sense a decade earlier, with another assault — and another failure of irresponsible adults and their children to face consequences. In 1996, another 16-year-old Arlington girl was allegedly sexually assaulted at another high school party, and another opportunity to prosecute those responsible was ignored. And, with that, another moment of clarity that could have turned toward reform instead degenerated into a rally for the guilty."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/opinions/arlington-texas/?utm_term=.15eba1733840
And to think that when I was a boy, I was made to feel ashamed simply because I had no interest in sports. If I had known what was going on in my own school district (not to mention others), I would not have been ashamed at all.