Sometimes The Bad Guys Win (WARNING: NOT funny. Disturbing)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

At least you tried to do something. As you said, You have to be there.

I was in a similar situation at age 15. I slipped out the side door and left, with nary a word to anyone. I don’t have the excuse of being in the country. This was in the middle of town. It never occurred to me to pick up a telephone and call the police. It never occurred to me to knock on a neighbor’s door.

I felt sorry for Pam, but that wasn’t the main reason I left. I wasn’t scared of any consequences. I left because, even as drunk as I was, the whole scene made me feel dirty. It was all about me.

It was only 10 O’clock on a Saturday night, much too early for me to go home without questions being raised, and besides the folks would still be up and I was weaving drunk. I walked around for a couple of hours, up one street and down the other, farther and farther away from the party, until it was late enough and I was sober enough to go home. Afterwards, I said nothing.

The guys there weren’t football players, it was a collection of hoodlums, thieves, etc.

I’ve often wondered how I managed to walk around for two hours that drunk without getting stopped by a passing police cruiser. As much as I’d like to say differently, I can look back on my 15 year-old self and know that if I had been picked up by the police, I’d have lied about where I’d been and where I got the beer. I wouldn’t have told about that awful scene at the party location. In fact, it’s now 46 years later and this is the first time I’ve mentioned it.

As you said, Wang Ka, you had to be there.

62

Bumping this because I think it needs to be kept alive. And because it has never really left me since I first read it. I still wonder how Shellie got home that night, what she told her parents, how they reacted, and if she’s alive today.

Also wanted to follow up on this:

Wang-Ka also said in the OP that a member of the Jackass Squad scoffed at him on the grounds that “She’s not YOUR girlfriend!” Sure, it’s great if a girl has guys who can back her up…but that’s not the answer to everything. If a friend, brother, boyfriend or father intervenes or takes revenge on her behalf, or if would-be rapists think twice before acting because they know she has some guy who will go to the mat for her, that only means that they respect other men. It doesn’t mean that they respect women, just that they’re careful not to mess with girls who “belong to” tough guys. And it doesn’t help the girls who have no boyfriend, or whose friends, boyfriends, brothers or fathers aren’t regarded as threats. It’s wrong to do this to anyone because it is wrong, not because you might get your ass kicked after the fact.

63

I’ve never told a soul about this. This thread is clearly the time to share it.

When I was 16 and 17, I used to hang out during my Senior Year some at the local pizzaria. This was in a suburb of Philadelphia.

While it’s a very tired and worn thing to say, we all knew that the men who ran the pizzaria were “connected”. They all had lived in Brooklyn. All the foodstuffs and supplies were trucked in, in vehicles with NY plates. I would sometimes to scooted out the door if the place was empty except for me, when one of them men was on the phone. There were a couple of kids younger than me who were forever going in and out the back door without pizza boxes in their hands. ( Running numbers? Who knows ). At any rate, this was the impression I had. They let me hang out, make empty boxes for them, do little chores and fed me pizza. I didn’t have normal hours, but spent so damned much time there that after a while, they were glad to see me walk in to do little bits of work around the place.

One day I walked in and was doing my thing, making and piling empty boxes. Frank, the owner, walks up to me. There’s a girl in the place that I recognized from High School. I don’t know her name and wasn’t sure of it then. She was a very plain gal, with long dark straight hair. I remember that she had a sort of average body for a 17 year old gal.

Frank said to me, " You know her? " I said yeah, I recognize her from school, why? He said, " She’s cute, huh? You want to take her downstairs? You can do whatever you want to do to her, she won’t care." I literally asked him what he meant, I was so scared and numbed. I was sure I just didn’t hear anything right. He repeated himself, and said, " Go ahead, take her downstairs and put her on the bags of flour. She’ll do whatever you want." I looked at her. Her eyes were glassy, but her face was almost devoid of expression. Completely pale. She looked scared but not deeply panicked. She also didn’t say a word.

I fled. I knew by the time I was out the door that she was hooked on some drug that was seriously beyond the bits of pot that I smoked with my friends, and that she was not able to stop what this guy was doing with her and to her.

I was physically sickened by it, and so frightened that I never spoke about it. To anyone. Ever. I knew that Frank and the other owner knew where I lived, going to the cops was out of the question. I couldn’t look at her in school, and I have no idea if she was aware enough that day, that she even remembered the incident clearly when she came down from her high.

That son of a bitch had reduced her to inhuman degrees, and did as so many have done- exploited a weakness to rape someone. I don’t know what I would have done, but I wish I’d done something. I have never forgotten the look in her eyes. Stoned and scared and helpless.

Fucking men.

I’m a man, with a 12 and a half year old daughter. When I get home, I am going to print the OP from this thread out.

And I’m going to print out my post too. And sit with my daughter while she reads it. She’s a highly cautious girl already, but…she needs to be aware of this part of the world.

Cartooniverse

64

Far be it from me to interfere with your relationship with your daughter, CV… but I personally had in mind a slightly older audience. When my kid was twelve, she still thought the sun shone out of my navel, and that her mother could call God up on the horn to find out if our little girl had been bad that day.

I personally found the OP much more useful when the kid reached the point I MENTIONED in the OP… namely, that age where SHE was a fine, sleek, brilliant and immortal being, the utter cutting edge of what the human race has to offer, and those slow, dull creatures who bore and raised her could now go ahead and collapse into the dust of history’s obsolescent beings, because their purpose had been served. SHE was now the utter point and focus of Where It’s At…

…and what could those old clumsy things have to tell HER that could be of any use?

At that point, a lecture is pointless. Gotta hook 'em with one hand, and slap 'em silly with the other. Sneaking the message in on a stream of fascination is a tactic I’ve had a lot of luck with, over the years, and that’s how I designed the OP.

Still, you know your daughter; I do not. If you think now is the time, who am I to say it ain’t?

Part of me feels a bit like a turd for providing **Cartooniverse ** with a tool to revulse and terrify his kid.

Part of me says, “Go for it, CV. Hope some good comes of it.”

65

I don’t really talk about this often, just because it’s not something I try to think about often, but when I was 15 I was raped by a guy I knew, at my high school, after school let out. His friend “stood watch,” and when the guy was done, he told his friend “Here you go man, it’s your turn.”
Although he had no problem helping his friend hide out while he was raping me, he apparently had a problem going through with it himself, and told his friend no, and they left.
Oddly enough (or maybe not), the fact that he told him no did make me feel better. He didn’t try to stop things, but at least he didn’t continue what the other guy had started.

66

To be honest, I am glad I did not print this out and show it to her now. I agree with our esteemed Master. I will wait. Not till she’s 17, but I will wait.

I will print this out and keep the pages in my files. I will give it to her.

Oh, and the sunshine can’t make it’s way past the lint in my navel, so I dunno what ya’ll were talking about up there.

:slight_smile:

67

I wonder about this, too. If the word on the street was that Sherrie willingly took on a houseful of guys, did the Jackass Squad personally claim to have benefited from this? Or was it a more nebulous claim that she took on “a bunch of guys”, with no names mentioned? Because if the rapists were bragging, and saying “She couldn’t get enough of me”, wouldn’t that undermine future claims that they “hadn’t touched her”? Or was the legal system in this town set up so that lawyers and judges could say, “Okay, so they did have intercourse with her, but she probably started enjoying it halfway through, and I don’t have time to represent a slut”?

I also wonder if this might have worked, in Wang-Ka’s situation: Forget fighting anyone or trying to change their minds, and just grab Sherrie, carry her if necessary, and make a run for it. Sure, the Jackass Squad would object, but again, you can’t claim that someone was willing if they tried to run out of a house naked to get away from you. (Not saying “Wang-Ka, you should have done that”, just suggesting it as a possible solution for people like Jess’s son, who said he’d risk life and limb to intervene in a situation like this.

68

Master, I was curious since nobody brought it up. How did the girl act around you from that night until you never saw her again? Was she also terrified of you? Did she somehow give you the impression that while she knew you tried to stop it, she still associated you with the act?

This is a horrible tale. I’d love to someday find out who they are. :wink: You see, the girl I almost married was raped by her brother’s friend when she was 13. Even at age 22 she would almost lose it if anyone tried to touch her neck. We’re now 31 and I hope she’s doing well, but I suspect it’s something that never leaves you.

69

I don’t speak for everybody who’s been there, and I certainly don’t speak for Shellie, so please do not take this post the wrong way.

It is possible to go from an event like that to having a very normal and productive life, or at least, it was for me.

I’m not attempting to say that it’s easy for everyone, or that it always goes the way things went for me, just that it can.

Here’s the story.

A few years ago I went to a party thrown by a friend of mine who I had known for well over a year. As college parties go, there was much drinking and beer pong and in general a hell of a good time had by all. The good time was, in fact, so good that I found myself in the wee hours of the morning too drunk to stagger my way home. My friend offered me the living room couch to sleep on, which I accepted. I woke up at some point later, to find that my friend and two of his buddies were rather busy attempting to remove my clothes. I started to fight them, kicking and punching and scratching and biting and yelling at them, but three on one will always be bad odds, especially when the one is drunk. They cracked jokes about me not remembering anything in the morning, about how fun it was, and kept on fighting me back down onto the couch. There were points where I tried to crawl away, and even make it out the front door or into the bathroom where I could lock the door. This was a battle I lost, although I kept fighting them the whole time. They kept it up for quite a while, and then apparently decided they were finished. Two of them took me home and dropped me off in front of my building. I spent the next day throwing up.

It took me a while to deal with, and for a long time almost no one knew what happened. My family still has no idea that these events ever took place, which is fine by me, since I think that nothing could be gained by telling them. Now, years later, I’ve reached a point where I’ve put enough distance between me and that night to refer to it as ‘the fight I lost.’

I don’t know what happened to all of them, and I haven’t seen any of them in a few years. The last time I did see one of them, I threatened to kill him if he ever crossed my path again. So far as I know, he took me seriously.

I used to flinch when someone would grab me, but at some point, that just stopped happening. I accepted my own stupidity in the fact that I got so horribly drunk, which was not a smart thing to do. I accepted the fact that staying over when there were strange people around was not a good decision, because I could have called a cab. I even got over the idea that I should’ve been able to tell that my now former friend was ‘that kind of person’, and that it wasn’t my fault I’d been fooled. I learned to live with the fact that my decisions that night were bad, but that theirs were deplorable. I stopped hating them so that I could get on with my life, and am now at a point where I don’t give a damn if they are alive or dead because they are not my problem anymore.

Obviously not all rape survivors will come away from it the same way that I did. Some will never really heal from their experiences. If anything though, I’d like to think that I’m proof that it’s possible to go on with life. Maybe, just maybe, Shellie went on with her life too.

Don’t beat yourself up Wang-Ka. There was nothing you could do then, and nothing you can do now to change the course of events. You did no more or less than the other person in the house when it happened to me, and (although I can’t speak for Shellie) I don’t think he did anything wrong either. It’s hard, but if you haven’t already, you gotta try to forgive yourself.

70

Cartooniverse: Be my guest. Story is copyrighted, but I have no objection to individuals printing it out for personal and/or educational use, so long as no false claims of authorship are made, and the text is not altered.

Rilchiam: The following is not necessarily factual, but it is my understanding of the buzz that went on.

In the weeks and months following the event, IIRC, the word got out that there had been a party. Most of the attendees had been football players, with a few others. Number of persons at the party: (unknown/unstated, but a fair number of people). Much alcohol was consumed. No drugs were mentioned.

Certain persons had been at the party. Big Football Hero, the guy who put me on the porch, was known to have been there, as well as El Blotto, because El Blotto was famous for showing up with a keg and some babes. Others were known to have been there, but a full roster of names was never made. There were several names that were never mentioned in connection with the party; “Sam’s,” for instance.

It was well-known that Sherrie had screwed all males present. It was admitted that perhaps some males present had not screwed Sherrie, but that she would have gleefully taken them on if they’d wanted her.

I was NOT there. When I tried to mention to someone that I had been there, and I knew the facts, I was laughed at. Plainly, a scene of such all-abiding coolness could not possibly have survived MY presence. Besides, if I had been there, I would have porked Sherrie, and therefore would have bragged about it. I did not pork Sherrie, and did not brag. Therefore, I was not there. Q.E.D. It was not long after this incident that someone body-checked me in the hall between classes and told me to keep my mouth shut.

It was known that at least three people had carnal relations with Sherrie; the names I heard were Big Football Hero, Other Big Football Hero, and El Blotto. I understand that Other Big Football Hero and El Blotto bragged about the incident in detail. Others were known to have been there, and assumed to have screwed Sherrie, simply because everyone (or nearly everyone) there had done so.

Now that I think about it, it is possible that “not everyone who was there screwed her,” could refer to “the guy who left about the time the circus got started.” Either that, or perhaps there were others who sat out this particular event. I have no way of knowing. It does occur, now, though, that when I did try to tell a friend that I had been there, not long afterwards, a football player told me to keep quiet. So, although there had been much bragging, plainly someone was feeling a bit nervous about exposure.

Re: the local law: I don’t know. I do know that Sherrie would have had a hell of a time trying to prove anything or defend herself at the time, simply because it’s standard procedure to attack the hell out of the rape victim’s credibility on the stand, and Sherrie did dress rather sluttily at school before the incident in question, for all that no one ever seemed to have gotten into her pants before that. Plus, it was the seventies. And it was deep south Texas. I wouldn’t have wanted to try, if I’d been her.

Grab her and run with her? I dunno. Someone did just that to get her INTO the back bedroom, so I suppose someone could have done that once she was there. Admittedly, getting El Blotto off her might have been tricky, and then our hypothetical rescuer would have had to deal with a hallway full of horny football players; even if they put up no resistance, clawing through a crowd of football players with a woman on your back isn’t something I’d call “easy.” Short of doing a stuntman dive/crash through a closed window into the dark yard, I don’t see how this would have been feasible.

Duffer: Before the party, I had very little contact with Sherrie. She was in some of my classes, that’s all, but she ran with a different crowd than I did. After the incident, she looked at me funny in the hall at school a few times. Most times, she ignored me. Her demeanor was markedly different; I mentioned this in the OP… but I’m quite certain she remembered I was at the party, and I’m pretty sure she knew I wasn’t one of the guys who did her wrong. I was, however, a reminder of the incident, as well as… well… a guy who wasn’t real helpful when she was in the deep doodoo.

I have no idea how she felt about me. She looked at me funny, a few times. Insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

Catsix: No offense taken. Your personal experiences on the topic of the OP are no reflection on the OP. I’m sorry you had the events happen to you, but I’m glad that you’ve been able to do as well for yourself as you have. Then again, you were in college, which implies a greater degree of maturity and ability to deal with craziness.

Did Sherrie deal with it? I dunno. I haven’t seen her since 1982. She was quite young, though, when this happened – fourteen, I think, although she coulda been fifteen – and (although I have little evidence to base this on) she was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. She was still very much wound up on the idea that Tits Were Power, and that it was fun to hypnotize guys with her jugs, when combined with a skimpy halter top or tube top. She was famous for convincing guys to give her stuff before she’d go out with them, and she had a reputation as a bit of a bitch (although this may have just been irritation on guys’ part and/or jealousy on girls’ part.)

After the incident, her “power” was history. She was talked about incessantly; her reputation was pretty much shot after that. She dressed in such a way as to downplay her femininity, so hypnotizing football players and the guy who taught American History was … well, history. After the incident, I don’t even know if she had any friends; she went from being a standout to being largely invisible.

How d’you deal with that at fourteen? How does it affect the adult you become? I’m not arguing with Catsix; I don’t know enough to argue. Insufficient data for a meaningful answer. Maybe she grew up, left town, went where nobody had ever heard of her, and is today a well-adjusted soccer mom or corporate CEO. I sure wish her the best, whatever happened.

…and me? I forgave myself a long time ago. I felt victimized, sure – anyone who’s ever had to make an ugly, humiliating choice would know. But what was I gonna do? As much as I like the idea of grabbing Sherrie and crashing through the window into the night, well… :frowning:

But for all that I didn’t feel really responsible, this story was like a boil on my psyche for a long, long time. It was ugly. I didn’t like to think about it, and it rankled when I did. I *still * have trouble watching rape scenes in movies because of it (see Thelma And Louise, for example), and it was not a story I dug out and looked at very often. It hurt. It was disturbing. I didn’t like it.

So I left it buried at the bottom of my mind, and dug it out only when I had to.

And then, I finally sat down, relived it one more damn time, and wrote the thing.

I’m glad I did. Very glad. It was cathartic. It was great. In the course of the first week, the story went from boil to scab to scar. The scar’s still there, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s a scar. It’s a reminder, and that’s *all * it is. And with your help, all of you who have read, and posted, and given feedback, and discussed this with me… I have turned a painful liability into a useful tool. Even a weapon, if you will.

Thanks. :slight_smile:

71

Damn.
Most of you guys know that I teach Taekwondo. We do a seminar called SHARP - Sexual Harassment, Assault & Rape Prevention - and I do them about 7-8 times a year. I always start the seminar with a little disclaimer about how prevalent sexual assault is in our society and that there is a possibility that someone in the class may be a survivor and I’m sorry in advance if I bring up bad memories.

I had a lady in her early 40s in one class that stayed afterward. She thanked me for teaching the class and for starting it with the disclaimer that I did, and then suddenly broke down and started crying. We talked for over an hour after the class. She was a “Shellie” and had been gang-raped when she was 16 under somewhat similar circumstances. To me, the worst part was actually not the assault, it was the fact that she had called the police and was stigmatized by her schoolmates because she got the guys in trouble by snitching. She’d had counseling for years and had never really gotten over it. She hadn’t wanted to come to the seminar in the first place, but a friend talked her into doing it and the seminar basically picked the scab off the memories. We’ve kept in touch over the years. She’s gone back into counseling and is dealing with it. Her life is improving slowly after 25 years of suffering.

Tell your story, Wang-Ka. Tell it again and again, amigo. IMNSHO, you WILL make a difference. Even if you only prevent it from happening one time, you will have made a monumental impact in someone’s life. Tell the story.

72

Thank you for sharing your stories Wang-ka, and everyone else.

73

While what these guys did was wrong, her dancing all giggly like an “exotic” dancer for them, not to mention drinking at 14, was stupid, stupid, stupid. My parents taught me that these were not smart things to do when I was a teenager, and I listened, and stayed out of trouble. It would be different altogether if she had been minding her own business and these guys came after her. But she DID extend an invitation to do “something”. It’s just too bad she didn’t think beforehand that “something” could go beyond some kissing and groping. I bet she regretted acting provocative.

I’m definitely not on the side of these guys, it’s a very hard lesson she learned, but it would be something that all teeenage girls should read, esp. the ones who wear super-flimsy clothes and act sexy all the time, to let them know they’re playing with fire.

74

Read the OP back when new and filed it under things I’ll talk to littlecats about when she gets a few years older.

So ironic to see the thread bumped in lightof this recent story.

Warning: The article above contains explicit language and descriptions.

75

Satyricon: I couldn’t disagree more. No matter how sluttily a person dresses, everyone else must keep their hands to themselves. Every joule of energy that goes to fight rape should be directed at hammering it home that one should not rape, and creating a culture in which rape is unthinkable – not to normalizing rape by further restricting sexual freedom.

It may be completely unintended, but the flipside of the statement “a person should not dress sluttily, in order to avoid rape” is the statement “it is understandable to rape a person who does dress sluttily.” It’s a completely unavoidable, and completely unacceptable, corollary.

Besides, gods know enough people have been raped who were dressed soberly.

76

Well, matt_mcl, having been there, I have learned that getting drunk off my ass and sleeping on that couch was stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid and more stupid.

I could not have made a bigger mistake than I did at that point in time. I should have called a damn cab and gone home.

That in no way excuses the crimes committed by the other parties, either. What it does mean is that I did absolutely nothing to minimize the risk of something bad happening to me.

I wouldn’t walk through crack-town with a big wad of cash in each hand, and I should not have gotten drunk off my ass and stayed on that couch. I put myself in the way of danger, and danger found me.

There is something to be said for not taking stupid risks, and it’s not that ‘you deserve what happens to you.’ I think what he’s saying is that we should all be avoinding unnecessary risk.

77

I think you misunderstood me.

Of course, nobody deserves to be raped. And of course, people should keep their hands to themselves. The problem is is that many, many people CAN’T keep their hands to themselves. And that’s the problem with knowingly advertising your body. This kind of behaviour appeals to people’s deep, deep down base instincts. Think about it. If you dangle a piece of tender, grade-A beef in front of a pack of wolves on leashes, those wolves will eventually break those leashes, because they MUST have that meat. It’s no different with people. Acting on instinct, not intuition. Instinct can be a dangerous thing.

What my point is, and I probably wasn’t as clear with it the first time, is that this kind of story should be told to young girls, so they really, really think hard about exactly what it is that makes acting sexy so cool. And thinking about it might help prevent things like this from happening.

78

I don’t know. There’s just something that rubs me the wrong way about saying ‘don’t act sexy if you don’t want to be raped.’ I may be misunderstanding.

79

So, would you be wanting all the women in burkhas, then? Save the men from having to exert the willpower to forcibly overpower weak females and have their way with them?

Damn, blaming the victim for what happened is really, really scummy. :mad:

“People can’t keep their hands to themselves” bullshit. If they really can’t, they would be found mentally incompetent to stand trial. Are you a human, or an animal?

In no way can the attackers be excused by saying the the victim was “acting sexy”. And I don’t see how you can avoid saying that while still saying that “Girls shouldn’t dress sexy if they don’t want to be raped”. ESPECIALLY in this case, where she was brought to the party by someone she TRUSTED.

HOT DAMN. :mad:

80

Well, y’know, there’s “stupid” and there’s “stupid.”

Doing something stupid could get you gang-raped, sure. It could also get you killed.

But I would not regard your death as a result of stupidity *de facto * evidence of a desire to commit suicide.

By the same token, I do not regard a gang-rape resulting from stupidity as de facto evidence that “the bitch wanted it.”

The supposition that *someone wished to be raped * has always kind of made me want to kick the living crap out of the person making the supposition, and then say, “Well, you wanted me to beat the crap out of you, plainly. I mean, you went and said that and made me all angry and violent. You MUST have wanted it.”

Yeah, Sherrie was stupid. She dressed like a slut. She was a tease, and a bit of a bitch. She accepted an invitation to a party from El Blotto, of all people, and proceeded to drink an unknown beverage there, even after seeing that there were no other women at this party.

…so is this *de facto * evidence that she was, kinda, well, sorta maybe a little bit willing to screw every guy in the house? Pffft.

No means no, folks. I don’t care how sexy she is. If I’m walking down the street, and I’m really hungry, and a hot dog vendor chooses to tease me by waving a hot dog in my face, and I beat him stupid and eat his food, is the judge or jury going to let me off because this lousy rotten street vendor was being a weenie tease?

It’s time to quit punishing the women for being women. It’s time for the guys to grow the hell up. And it’s time to quit making allowances for them what can’t handle this very simple concept.

I still tend to think that lawyers who attack a girl’s character, credibility, reputation, and so on in order to weaken an obvious rape case – as in the link posted above by danceswithcats – really ought to be taken out, stipped naked, put in the stocks, and buggered in the courthouse square by six or eight large and gleeful homosexuals, preferably with all his clients watching.

THEN let’s see him tell the jury, “Well, she was asking for it.”