As Maia noted in an earlier post, The OC Rapists have been sentenced to six years each in prison – although in practice, they could all be on the streets again in just two years.
As most “Alas” readers know, the three boys videotaped themselves gang-raping their classmate Jane Doe over and over (including rape with a pool cue and a lit cigarette), and then spent years legally harassing and smearing Jane Doe in every way they could. Pinko Feminist Hellcat, who has done extraordinary work covering this case, has posted a must-read review of the harassment the victim was subjected to. The extent of the harassment and game-playing is unbeleivable, and evil. It wasn’t just the predictable “she’s a slut” attacks during the trial, but also paying jurors from the first trial to try and change the minds of jurors from the retrail (is that legal?), and recruiting several of Jane Doe’s “friends” to tell stories about her which were later proved to be lies. When Jane Doe moved to a new school, under an assumed name, to try and start over, the defense’s private detectives stood in the parking lot of her new school screaming her real name at her. Everyone has a right to a defense in court, but what happened to Jane Doe wasn’t a legitimate defense; it was revenge against an uppity girl for refusing to stay in her place.
So, about that sentencing:
Judge Francisco Briseño said minors and first-time offenders usually are not sent to prison, but in this case the defendants had degraded the victim … laughing and mocking her as she lay unconscious on a pool table … and were slow to show contrition.
“Their personal remorse for the victim, prior to today, was expressed in guarded fashion and at times seemed outweighed by personal self-pity,” the judge said. He said he also considered that the defendants would be “marked” for life, owing to media coverage and the requirement that they register as sex offenders after their release.
The defendants also were each sentenced to three years’ parole after their prison terms. Because of time already spent in jail, and with credit for good behavior, Haidl could be freed in 21 months and the others a few months later.
21 months. From Jane Doe’s statement:
As I watched that video, I remember feeling two distinct feelings. I remember becoming furious at the animals that were attacking me because no human could do such a thing. And I remember feeling my soul and inner being completely deteriorating. I was empty. They had now taken every last bit of who I was and no longer felt human. I was like a lifeless and feelingless doll that these men thought they could use and abuse in any way they wished.
A part of me died that day, a part that I don’t know if I’ll ever get back. The part that was lost as I watched three men I called my friends and trusted completely, abuse, assault and torture me. All the while they laughed and rooted each other on and smiled like it was the best day of their life.
One of the defendant’s attorneys, Al Stokke, responded to this by saying that the rape wasn’t so bad, since Jane Doe was unconscious at the time. “She couldn’t have felt it happen. She only knows it happened because of the videotape.”
I don’t think 21 months is enough. I don’t think six years would be enough. I’m not even sure what “enough” would be.
Despite the videotape, it took four years and two trials (the first jury hung 11-1 in favor of “not guilty”) to achieve a conviction. And it’s only because of the unbelievable, stunning determination of Jane Doe that the conviction happened; nearly anyone else would have folded and stopped pursuing charges under the onslaught of the defense harassment. Certainly, if Jane Doe had decided to give up, who could possibly have blamed her, under the circumstances?
The problem is not only that rape convictions are difficult to get in a system of “innocent until proven guilty.” The problem is not only with the rules of evidence and legal procedure. The problem is that, regardless of the level of evidence, rape convictions are too difficult to get in a society in which a defense attorney can claim that raping an unconscious woman with a snapple bottle and a lit cigarette is harmless and still anticipate being taken seriously by the judge.
Changing the laws is important work, and I admire the feminists who have led reforms of sexual assault laws for the last three decades. But study after study has shown that reforming rape law hasn’t led to more convictions, or to a greater likelihood of conviction. Changing the law isn’t going to bring about more rape convictions, because the law isn’t a computer program; it’s a guidebook for how various human beings involved in the system should act. And humans have agency, and can choose to “bend” the law.
Two years is nowhere near enough, but it is almost a miracle that the OC rapists are being punished at all. Even faced with overwhelming evidence, and even with a prosecutor willing to pursue the case, the defense still went far beyond the bounds of decency in attacking the victim. The judge refused to reign in the defense. The first jury was one vote away from finding the videotaped rapists “not guilty.”
Consider as well, that Jane Doe’s case could easily have been classified by “unfounded” – or simply let drop entirely – if the cops who initially took up the case (after someone turned in the videotape, mistaking it for a videotape of sex with a corpse) had taken the perspective of the boys. Or the case could have wound up with a prosecutor who would have decided that the odds of a guilty verdict were too low, or who decided this was just a case of a drunk slutty girl and boys being boys.
As all this illustrates, at every step of the way, in our system, there are actors who can bend the law to prevent rapists from being punished – especially if those rapists are rich, fresh-faced, white boys. Even in a case where the evidence seems overwhelming, some of these actors will try to find ways to let rapists off – and in many cases, they’ll succeed. As long as human actors implement the law, legal reforms will be very limited in their effect.
Real reductions of rape – and increases in the likelihood of convictions – may be accompanied by legal reforms, but they won’t be caused by legal reforms. It’s only by a massive alternation in how our society thinks of rape at every level – so that “boys will be boys” and “the slut defense” is understood by the average person, the average judge, and the average juror as not merely wrong but also repugnant – that real change will happen.
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I haven’t been aware of this case until reading about it here, but I am absolutely, totally, utterly, beyond belief, stunned that that first jury could have been so close to finding them not guilty. How is that possible? HOW? It makes me despair, that without the staunchness of Jane Doe, and that one juror, they would have got away with such despicable acts, acts that they repeated in different ways throughout their defence.
How is it possible? I’ll tell you how: a good percentage of people, when they find out she had sex with two of the men the day before the rape, get really fence straddly like.
Me, I’d’ve thrown the keys away, but I couldn’t get beyond this issue with some folks.
Call me stupid, but it seems to me that the fact that she’d previously had consensual sex with them would point more to their guilt. If they had to get her unconscious, wouldn’t that mean that they knew the torturous things they were doing would never be allowed during a consensual encounter?
It’s only by a massive alternation in how our society thinks of rape at every level – so that “boys will be boys” and “the slut defense” is understood by the average person, the average judge, and the average juror as not merely wrong but also repugnant – that real change will happen.
Yes.
We’re still a long way from there, sadly.
I hope Jane Doe can find some peace and enjoy her life. And I wish there were something concrete people could do for her.
Thanks, Amp. Please click here for info about how to send a supportive message to Jane Doe.
Necrophilia gets up to 8 years under california law. How can these men be sentensed for less than that, when they abused a live human being that has to live with this for the rest of her life?
Well, jury tampering and suborning perjury are both illegal…
My guess is that in this fucked-up culture, anything and everything a woman does becomes “consent,” unless we’re really fortunate.
Example: I’m married but don’t wear a wedding band. Five to one, the same people who thought Doe deserved to be raped because she’d had sex with two of the rapists previously would say, “Well, that tramp didn’t have a wedding band on. It serves her right.”
Wait, so does that mean that if I happen upon Stokke’s unconscious body in the course of my daily business, I can do whatever I want to it and then videotape it for posterity and it wouldn’t be so bad on account of him not being conscious?
When these cases in which boys or men have bonded with each other over the act of sexually degrading and abusing girls and women finally come to court, who does a jury identify with when they come from the same culture that created this bonding behaviour? That’s how you get just one juror standing between those OC boys getting away with it completely or not.
Maybe it would help if group assaults carried much harsher penalties than individual ones because bonding in this way itself became another crime. So each man is charged with the assault, and charged separately for the other serious crime of ‘joining’ in the assault. At the very least this would put a spotlight on the source of the issue, which currently doesn’t seem to be faced or addresed at all.
If legal reforms were able to lead to a higher likelihood of arrest and conviction, there’s a good chance we’d see a decrease in the incidence of rape. The evidence is that criminals are generally relatively insensitive to increases in the punishment if convicted, but they are sensitive to an increased likelihood of arrest and conviction.
I’m sure you’re right Tony, but is that a good reason not to add a new crime to the books that reflects a crucial element in the commission of the crime? Aren’t people charged with leaving the scene of an accident without offering help to injured parties? And the important thing is the message that would be sent as well – that ganging up to rape or otherwise sexually assault girls or women (or anybody, but most victims are female)) is specifically not tolerated in our society. You can be charged with being part of such a group. We might then see some serious analysis and reporting of the influences involved in that particular crime, out of criminology studies etc. Teenage boys and men often bond with each other over the commission of these crimes which perhaps only one or none of them would have commited alone. That dynamic needs to be understood and dealt with. I don’t see any evidence that this is a serious consideration in the legal system , or anywhere else, currently. Has it even been mentioned in the horrific case we’re discussing?
That’s the point and the problem.
I sometimes compare the sentances handed out to rapists, with those who commit other crimes. Graham Capill was the head of the Christian Heritage party here for years, he was for the death penalty and against abortion and all the rest. He also raped little girls, and was recently sentanced to 9 years in prison. Every other prison sentance I compare to that, and think that values the lives of those girls too low.
I do find comparisons awful, but I’m not happy to call for tougher sentancing. I don’t think it helps. I don’t think jail helps. Those boys are going to come out of jail worse than when they went in.
I agree with Tony that making convictions more likely is more important than increasing sentances. And with you that the only way is to increase convictions is eliminating rape culture.
Which again is the problem
i have only been called for jury duty once. i didn’t end up serving on a jury. if i ever serve on a jury, i hope i have even one-tenth the resolve of the one dissenting juror in the first trial.
after jane doe, that person is the other real hero(ine) in this story. i mean, can you imagine…one juror. i guess in a sad way, it does give me a little hope…that’s why we have 12: to reduce the probability that any trial will contain an entire jury full of idiots. at least that one tiny (but crucial) little part of this whole ordeal went the way it was supposed to.
What really amazes me is how different the two juries were. One was almost all for not guilty, the other was all for guilty. How can it be that they would come to such opposite conclusions? There are two factors that are pretty obvious here. One, the retrial could have gone differently, and presented a better offense. Two, the defense could have not tampered as much in the retrial, or perhaps the way they tampered backfired.
But the third factor is kind of interesting too. What if the main reason is that the juries each had one or two people with really vocal opinions that swayed the rest of the jurors? Of course, it’s hard to know what happened in there, but it doesn’t sound all that unlikely. The first jury might have had one person who could persuasively argue their point of view who vehemently thought the defendents were not guilty, and one person who thought the opposite, but who wasn’t good at all at defending their views to their peers. The rest just fell in line.
I don’t think the one dissenting juror is accurate. I think they jury in the first trial were split differently on different charges.
Ironically, once our culture starts taking rape seriously, the rape rate will probably decrease.
I served on a jury once and saw a similar situation as with these juries. In my case, there wasn’t enough evidence to convict the defendant. Unfortunately, the victim refused to offer full testimony, so, as a jury required to follow the law, there was nothing we could do. The first night of deliberation, we were deadlocked with eleven jurors saying guilty and one saying not guilty. Before noon the next day, we came back with a not-guilty verdict. It really can come down to one persuasive person.