Uproar over U.S. rape laws

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33777, 25 February 1975, Page 13

Uproar over U.S. rape laws

'By

CHARLES FOLEY.

of the Observer Foreign News Service.)

LOS ANGELES. !1 '*lf a man tries to ! rape me. I will fight him 1 wjth anything I can get ' my hands on and try to disable him no matter , what the injury. If he intrudes into my house he'll be warned that I’ll shoot him. and I’ll do just that.” The speaker, a Los Angeles woman, is one of the : many thousands across America who have decided that it is time for women to i take the offensive on rape. They say they’ve waited too many years for United, States legislators and judges, who are mostly men, to wake up to the problems po&ed by century-old rape laws, and they want drastic i social change now, not in sotne unspecified future. Recent court cases involving women who have turned on their attackers hive stirred up a hornet’s nest of feminine anger. In at lAst half-a-dozen recent incidents, victims have killed or wounded rapists. A Long; Beach girl has been charged with first-degree murder for shooting the man she says assaulted her. A New York woman, awakened by her I room-mate’s cries, grappled with an intruder armed with

a .steak knife, and shot him in the leg. A 20-year-old! biack woman in North Carolina is charged with the [ nhirder of a 62-year-old white man she alleges raped her. An ice-pick was the weapon used. “It’s a trend,; all right,” says a 49-year-old university teacher who was herself raped in a Los ■ Angeles parking lot five years ago, and whose at-: tacker is now back on the streets after four years in gaol. “A lot more men are going to be killed.” On hearing about another: Los Angeles woman who! had shot her attacker five 1 times after he had broken I into her apartment, she re-! marked, “Good. Good for! her.” 'More than any other, the: case which has outraged feminists is that of Mrs Inez Garcia, aged 30, an attrac- ! tive California wife and j mother who, within minutes of being raped, pursued her two assailants and shot down the 300-pound man who held her down. Mrs Garcia was cheered by hundreds of feminists when she told the judge, “I killed the son-of-a-bitch, and I wish I’d killed the other, toe.” The courtroom filled with hissing as the judge sentenced her to five years to life for sec-ond-degree murder. Feminist groups charged that Mrs Garcia had been “raped’ again” on the witness stand by demeaning and’ intimidating questioning, and they called the verdict “an affirmation of the male right to rape.” Dr Phyllis Chesler, a professor of psychology and j author of “Woman and Madness,” believes that death is ■ the proper punishment for; rape, and says that if a woman kills her attacker at the time of the rape it is j legitimate self-defence. She| is a passionate defender of! Mrs Carcia who, she says,: “should be admired, not!

punished, for the value she i put on herself. When a ’ woman values herself and < her sisters that highly, men i will not dare commit rape.” t In California, a “Free t Inez” committee is working i on a legal appeal. A leading i member, Ms Martha Shelly, :j says, “I think the average ; woman feels it's right and i natural to assert herself in | this way. It will reduce rape. There will be more of 1 it, though I hope it won’t j dead to a war between the|; sexes.” | Ms Shelly goes on: “Be-'i fore the Garcia case, ll' would have reported it, if I’d : been attacked. Not now, not after seeing what can happen. I see no other way than I to get together with friends ’ and see what we can do about it. A lot of women are reaching the same conclusion, reluctantly.” • A few days after shej spoke, a particularly brutal i assault on a woman in the: Los Angeles suburb of Ve-| nice seemed to emphasise her point. A 31-year-cld woman was forced into a car by two youths in their twenties, stripped, beaten, : driven to an alley where she was placed, semi-conscious in the roadway. Then the youths drove the car over the body six times before And the incidence of rape

is rising, although rape con- : victions are not increasing commensurately. A forcible rape occurs once every 20 minutes in California, and once every two minutes nation-wide; but only about i one in ten is reported to the police because most women ; are afraid of being put through a gruelling experience in court. The victim will be extensively questioned by a number of people, she will be examined and photographed and the pictures produced later as evidence. Doubt may be thrown on her morals and: marital fidelity in court, and her entire sexual history' trotted out before a jury, while the defendant’s past is kept a guarded secret. Her| whole story may be seen as: suspect, while many male: jurors show open sympathy; juror reportedly said that the assailant was “only- trying to give her a little fun.”) ' ; Such is the law in a I majority of American states. But matters are changing, : slowly. California has led the way with a piece of landmark legislation which was enacted on January 1, al-! though, for feminists, it is I only the start of the legal! reform struggle. It places! strict limitations on the per-1 sonal questions which can! be put to a victim. State:

Senator Alan Robbins, author of the bill, explains that cross-examination involving a victim’s sex life will be restricted to whether lor not she might have reason to lie about a rape. Defence attorneys must give the judge a written affidavit spelling out all! such evidence they intend to bring, and questioning about! a woman’s past will be allowed only after a special hearing out of the jury’s earshot. Even then, it will not be allowed if the intention is to show that the j woman consented, unless the judge finds it relevant to her credibility as a witness. The legislation, passed last year after a stiff fight in the California Assembly, has already served as a model for i similar laws in three states, land 17 others are now con- ! sidering bills along the same i lines. Much of the opposition comes from lawyers’] I associations, who argue that I many rape cases involve “outright fraud.” They contend that the new law constitutes an unconstitutionali restriction on the defend-1 iant’s right to a fair trial! i since some evidence will be ikept from consideration by I the jury. More rape law reforms, however, appear to tbe on the way. i What the uproar has done

already is to create a more favourable climate for treat-' ment of a victim, whether' by poiice, hospitals, ori courts. The Los Angeles' police department has set up a rape investigation pro-[ gramme to encourage' women to report rapes, andattempted rapes, even if charges are not to be 1 | pressed. Several hospitals | have taken on the job of | examining victims for the I city police, and providing' additional psychological and; social service counselling.! Films and booklets are being 1 issued about self-defence. Dr Mary Conroy, who has taught a self-defence programme for women in a dozen American universities -(“concentrate on the five ’vulnerable points — eyes, nose, neck, knees, and groin”), tells of a girl who took her course, and }vas attacked one night while putting out the garbage. “She I turned on the man and broke his leg with one wellplaced kick." Her philosophy: “Do him in if you can.” laws or not, she [advises that the troubles a I woman faces with police and the courts are “simply not ’worth it.” Rape, at base, is an exaggeration of United States society’s male-agres-sive, female-passive patterns, and the more women fight back, using violence to prevent violence, the less; frequent it will become, say feminists. — O.F.N.S. Copyright. I