Yeah, so did JFK, MLKjr, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G…
I thought the shield laws were about disallowing use of the alleged victim’s past sexual history at trial?
These are hardly comparable scenarios. Kobe Bryant is a public figure and, as such, has safeguards in place to insulate him from the general public. Even before all this happened, he needed protection from obsessives and whack-jobs. It’s a certainty that recent events have motivated him to increase his security, and he doubtless has the resources to do it.
The alleged victim can’t round up all the public phone directories that list her telephone number and address.
What is your point, anyway? That there should be no news coverage of criminal complaints? Or only in the case of celebrities?
If it turns out that the investigation concludes that the charge was malicious, the woman is going to be properly villified. If Bryant is blameless, she’ll have left herself open to that, and rest assured, her name will probably be as infamous as that of Tawana Brawley. And she’ll deserve it.
There was a case, Cox Broadcasting v. Cohn, that said that a rape victim’s name could be revealed if obtained from public records. Rape shield laws prohibit evidence of a victim’s sexual history from being presented.
Just because he was not found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt does not mean he can prove a defamation case.
They are. I was mistaken and I apologize.
This is correct of course, but my point was that at this point there is no longer any reason to withold the original accuser’s name. The man stood up to the charges against him, was found innocent, and then accused the woman of wronging him. It would be her turn to answer the allegations against her, and be subject to the same publicity that surrounded the defendant in the rape trial.
Actually, Leykis wasn’t the first person to reveal the name. Lucas White of mosszone.com posted it on Usenet on the 15th. I believe Leykis’s show didn’t air until a few days later.
I’m just glad there’s someone out there brave enough to stand up and decry the outrageous rape-victim crime sprees in this country. They’ve been coddled long enough. When, oh when, will the authorities decide it’s finally time to protect our celebrities from revenge-maddened rape victims?
To any and all of you scum-sucking shithead asshole sons of bitches that think it’s OK to broadcast the name of the rape victim.
Fuck you, often, roughly and repeatedly up your god-damned smug asses with a fucking BIG rusty piece of fetid sewer pipe.
Rape is a crime against a woman that far exceeds a regular assault. It is mind-numbingly, soul-destroyingly henious. It is violence and the destruction of the psyche combined with a violation that only the victims can understand.
After 30 years, THIRTY GODDAMNED YEARS, it makes my blood run cold to hear the word. It makes me sick to my stomach to think what stupid, stupid people you have to be to think that a nineteen year old desk worker at a hotel deserves to be raped because she took a hotel guest something to his room.
OTTO, ask your mother what SHE feels about it. If a mugging affected her that badly, she’d probably have committed suicide after a rape. You may just be stupid, but THERE IS A DIFFERENCE.
And TEZMAC, you are just too fucking clueless for words. Most rape victims never get enough inner healing done to be able to have the ability to DO that. You’re having a “World According to Garp” hallucination.
And I am the most healed of all the women I have ever been in therapy with. Most of the rest of them would still be shaking with fear over the flashbacks. Several from my long-term contacts group are already heading back into the group meetings over this shit being in the news. (Two out of three being celeb rape victims. They often have it harder, because of the shit that goes on with idiots like some of you guys.)
Honestly, I won’t sleep for several nights. Thirty years down the road, and I still don’t sleep well, even at the best of times.
Yeah, they’re called reporters, and they’re sticking microphones in his face and snapping photos of him all the damn time. And that’s before he was accused of rape. I’m sure he’s not all that happy about showing his very recognizable face anywhere in public these days.
I’m sure his answering machine is loaded with calls from reporters from around the world, even with his unlisted number.
I’m OK with her name being withheld. But what if it is proven she is lying? OK to broadcast her name then?
Just a question.
Anybody know a method of finding out the advertisers for Leykis’ show, besides actually listening to it?
I don’t know if it’s broadcast in this market, and, even if it is, I’m not that interested in it.
Just want to point out for the record that in my flippant response about Leykis getting pulled off the air I didn’t mention the FCC at all. I agree, it’s a freedom of speech issue. You have the right in this country to be an asshole on the air. I just personally don’t like his show, so I’m always hoping he’ll say something that’ll get him in trouble. Not with the FCC, but with his superiors. (Just as he has the right to say what he wants, they have the right to put who they want on the air, or take who they don’t want, off.)
I’ve read this whole thread, and maybe I missed something, but I’d like you to cut and paste where anyone said that she deserved to be raped.
And as a fellow rape survivor, I’d like to say that it’s unfair to air her name and drag her name through the mud, but because it IS such a heinous crime, it’s unfair of YOU (and anyone else) to assume Mr. Bryant committed the crime before the evidence is in.
If you can’t tell when someone is being over the top, then you need to calm the fuck down and take a deep breath you ignorant bitch.
I’d also like to know where you read that she deserves to be raped. You’re just making shit up to defend your feminazi bullshit argument. Shut up and sit down back in your seat until you have something relevant to add.
I listen to the show every day.
I certainly don’t think she should have been named, but I also don’t think Kobe Bryant should have been named simply because of an accusation. I also don’t think that prisoner who got butt-raped with a toilet plunger by those NYPD officers should have been named and had his picture plastered all over the papers, but since he’s a male, I guess nobody cares about his privacy.
If you listen to the show, you’ll notice that Tom routinely states that everything he says, he says to get ratings. EVERYTHING. He’s only doing this because he knows it will create a lot of media attention, boosting his ratings, so he will earn even more money. Tom Leykis is definitely an attention whore and a gold-digger, just like certain other people. But I love the show!
Actually, she made it through the repeated rapes she suffered as a child at the hands of her brother and his friends pretty well, considering. Took quite a bit of therapy and a number of years but she has recovered.
I’ll be sure to pass along your good wishes.
Dumbfuck.
Come up with something better than “rape is different” or get off the pot.
Kobe wasn’t named because of an accusation, he was named because he was formally charged with a crime by the state. Should we keep the names of all criminal defendants a secret?
Oh, and although you didn’t ask, I’m doing well too after a sexual assault by a baby sitter.
I hate that fucker… and I’ve said so in this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=192201
I hate his anything to get ratings attitude and his I make seven figures so I must be right logic.
But he did make a good point yesterday when defending his “divluging” her name on the air. He said in essence and I agree, that all the media that covered this event by divluging her age, workplace, high school, friends names, recent partys shes been to, qoutes by proxy from her “friends,” and etc… had already violated her privacy and for all intents and purposes exposed who she was. It doesn’t take a private eye to take all that information got to the internet and figure it out.
Yes Tom Leykis is the ultimate Whore and prick and insert your descripter. But so is the rest of the media and they are a bunch of hypocrites to boot by chastizing that jerk and putting them selves above him. They’re jerks too.
No, you didn’t. Larry Mudd hoped the FCC would take him off the air and TeaRoses suggested legal action. But convincing advertisers to pull out, or his employer (Westwood One) to fire him, or his affiliates to drop him, is something I have no problem with. This was a stunt calculated to boost his ratings, so if it backfires on him and outrages the public, he knew the risks and took his chances. I just don’t think the government or the courts should get involved.
Neither the name of the accuser or the accused should be released to the public until a verdict is reached.
What Lykes did was wrong in a moral sense. His reason for doing so was to adress inequities in the justice system and as such his reasons were not without merit.
His methods are akin to the activities on the IRA or other terror groups who may be fighting for a good or just cause, but the methods themselves create victims.
The fact is that this woman has and will continue to suffer no matter what the outcome of the trial is. If this suffering changes the laws to reflect greater equality in the justice system then her suffering with not have been in vain. It is unfortunate but true that to effect change in our system’s legal form people are often used as disposeable tools and are thus made victims in a broader sense.
Kobe Brynat is innocent as of this writing. A jury has not convicted him of anything as yet. The accuser is telling the truth of the incident as of this writing. If we lived in a fair society then those two statements could exist outside of contradiction, but we do not live in such a society.
The only fair course of action is to keep such accusations a private matter completely until a jury verdict is reached.