[QUOTE=Spit]
Did he drag her back to his place? She walked out under her own power, so she made a decision. Not the best one, obviously.
Granted, if he is sober, that is pretty shady.
[/QUOTE]
Alrighty, then.
Some years ago, I was living with a former lover with whom I had severed the romantic relationship. We were still living in the same apartment (largely for financial reasons because our lease wasn’t up yet but was in both of our names and the rental company refused to let either of us break the lease and neither of us could afford what amounted to double rent on a new place and the old place we still had leased). It was absolutely, perfectly, crystal clear to everyone and their dog that we were no longer dating.
One night he got hammered (as he so often did - one part of the reason he was my former lover at that point) and let himself into my bedroom. It was 4am, I was passed out cold, and am not coherent when awakened anyway. He proceeded to fuck me - I woke up, pushed at him, told him to knock it off and go away. He ignored me. He was a lot bigger than me, had the leverage on his side, and he didn’t stop until he was finished. Whereupon he rolled over and went to sleep. In my bed. Couldn’t be awakened. And believe you me, I tried to wake him the fuck up.
At no point did I consent. In fact, I objected repeatedly.
Was I raped?
I think so. However, I made several decisions leading up to that situation that your scenario implies served to alleviate his responsibility in the matter. We were still living under the same roof, after all. We had a past intimate relationship. I should point out that when my former lover woke up and was confronted with the incident, he refused, categorically, to even consider that it might have been rape.
Granted, he turned out to be precisely the sort of shitheel who actually believes that “do anything you have to to get into a girl’s pants, because if she ain’t screaming and struggling and covered with bruises when it’s over, it wasn’t rape” bullshit.
I’d also like to mention that I did not report him for rape. This decision had nothing to do with any confusion on my part about whether or not I was raped - I know damn well I was. At no point did I want that sex, I voiced my objections aloud, and attempted to physically extricate myself from the situation and failed. At a certain point I stopped struggling, but that was because it hurt less that way. Bad enough I should be raped, worse I should inflict unnecessary pain on myself in the process.
I didn’t file a report because I didn’t want to deal with the inevitable reprecussions of such a report. At that time, I was a gainfully employed law student in my middle-twenties. I also wasn’t particularly traumatized by the experience. I was wicked pissed at him, but not mentally or emotionally scarred. I did not need therapy. I did not need to be informed how big a victim I was. I did not need my relationship with him, my life decisions, my financial circumstances, or my sexual history examined in detail.* I didn’t want everyone I knew assuming that because I’d been raped, I was automatically traumatized and scarred for life. I did not want to explain a million times what happened. I didn’t want to fracture beyond recognition my social network (which would have been inevitable - he and I were part of the same social circle). I certainly didn’t need people informing me repeatedly how damaged I must be from the experience and how I’d never have a healthy relationship with a man again. If people tell you something often enough, you start to believe it. I didn’t want or need to wind up traumatized and emotionally scarred just because I heard a thousand times I should be. I didn’t want to have to shoehorn the time it would take to file and follow through on a criminal charge into my absurdly-overfilled schedule (I was a full-time law student and working three different jobs to make ends meet - my schedule was well and truly ridiculous). I didn’t want my friends and loved ones tempted into rash and illegal behavior in retribution for the assault. Hell, I didn’t want the gentlemen in my social circle to feel that I couldn’t possibly be interested in dating them because of the assault.
In short, reporting the rape would have had vastly more of a negative impact on my life than the actual rape did. Why would I do that to myself?
*Yes, Bricker (and other Doper attorneys) I am aware that those questions (particularly the ones about my sexual history) are not supposed to be asked of a person reporting a rape, but “not supposed to be” and “aren’t” are not the same. I was also aware that those sorts of questions are, in fact, routinely asked - and in this situation, when my attacker and I had a previous relationship, they would most certainly be asked. Hell, they’d have had to be asked just to determine if it was a legitimate accusation or a false one. The Rape Shield laws limit the sorts of information that can be introduced, and the sorts of questions that can be asked at trial. Those laws don’t do a freaking thing to limit the extent to which a rape victim will have to rehash his or her sexual history during the investigation. A person reporting a rape is free to refuse to answer, but the questions are still going to be asked. Probably a number of times by different people with varying levels of solicitation to the needs of the reporting person. They’re totally reasonble questions to ask if you’re investigating a rape allegation, after all. I’m totally in favor of the Rape Shield laws, but I can also understand that they’re not an absolute bar to having to discuss your sexual history to investigating officers, counselors, ADAs, and other assorted members of the law enforcement community.