Today was a big day for updates in the Duke case. The lacrosse coach has resigned and the University has suspended the entire season for the team.
Here is a quote from the Raleigh News Observer:
“Coach Pressler offered me his resignation earlier this afternoon, and I accepted it,” Duke athletics director Joe Alleva said in a statement released at 4:36 p.m. “I fully support President Broadhead’s decision to cancel the remainder of the season as well as his outrage at the latest developments involving the men’s lacrosse program. I believe this is in the best interests of the program, the department of athletics and the university.”
However, the most important update comes from the newly released affidavit for the second search warrant. The Smokinggun has a copy of the search warrant here. While the search warrant reveals more details from the case, the biggest news is the following email message sent by one of the players just after the victim reported being assaulted. The email sent by Ryan McFayden says,
To whom it may concern
tommrrow night, after tomights show, ive decidedto have some strippers over to edens 2c. all are welcome..there will be no nudity. i plan on killing the bitches as soon as the walk and proceding to cut their skin off while cumming in my Duke issue spandex.. all in besides arch and tack please respond
41
Well the young man who wrote this email has been suspended from Duke University. His lawyer says for his own safety–it’s rather hard for me to buy this one, but this is his lawyer. The email was anonymously sent to the police (looks like somebody is cooperating behind the scenes).
A close read of the affidavit, insinuates possible premeditation because the men intentionally used the wrong names and said they were part of the Duke baseball or track teams. She also noted that the man who called himself Adam, was called Dan by people at the party. However, I would need a little more evidence to definitively say it was premeditated.
The email alone is enough to make me sick. It doesn’t prove he raped someone, but it sure shows he has depraved fantasies.
The email above is clear evidence of the lack of character (my edit: depravity) of at least one of these young men.
Also posted at Rachel’s Tavern.
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I don’t think “lack of character” covers it. WTF is wrong with some people?
I’m wondering now if “hate crime” could be added to the charges. if one can distinguish a rape from a “hate crime.” but I mean: legally? I have no idea how that would work, legally, but: wondering.
also gives weight to this being premeditated. whoever that was was out for a nastier form of fun than just booze ‘n’ chicks from the git-go.
…waitaminute, that was sent *after* the assault? So, like, that was just a warm-up for the real event, or what?
Jesus Christ. It doesn’t just show his lack of character, it shows his complete lack of brains. What a shithead.
I can’t wait to show this to my mom now, who just last week said we don’t know if it happened or not because women lie about rape all the time. WTFever.
But I think rape itself should be charged as a hate crime because it proves that the man doing the raping hates women, not necessarily that one victim.
But I think rape itself should be charged as a hate crime because it proves that the man doing the raping hates women
Can you please support that conclusion. The commision of rape doesn’t prove hatred in and of itself.
The commission of a rape may not show personal hate, but it does show utter contempt. A “hate crime” is not a crime against a person because one feels the personal strong emotion “hate” against that person, but because one feels utter contempt and hatred toward that class of person. There is a secondary goal of “hate” crimes (the name is a terrible choice) of frightening and causing oppression of the class of people of whom the victim is a member.
It could reasonably be argued that in the case of rape, the first standard of “hate” crimes is automatically met whenever the victim is other than an able bodied adult male. It could also be argued that the effects of rape on women’s behavior and women’s worldview are so well researched and known, that any rapist should know that rape causes oppression against women as a class. Perhaps a gifted lawyer with a good test case could make the leap from rape as a “generic” crime to rape as a crime intended to show contempt and to cause long lasting fear and oppression in a particular class of humans (women, or possibly gay men or children, or even all of the above).
I wonder, this was known march 27, 2996 and today is april 4, 2006. How much time will it take for the duke citizens to raise enough money to pay off the victim? when will the police have a line up for the victim to identify the rapist? How does the media know the name of the victim and already investigated the victim? The media is attempting to tarnish the victim, this will lead to violence, the media and duke are ochestrating a cover up.
I want to be very careful about falsely or prematurely charging any of the Dookies with rape. But this is certainly a real teaching opporunity. And that email indicates a morally and spiritually impoverished environment in the Duke Lacrosse team. Not that it’s different anywhere else.
There should be a quick reference page for women’s info and stats. I quickly googled for statistics about false rape claims today and only 2% of claims are false which is the same as any other crime. Here are two links. The FBI says 8% of rape claims are false but an unfounded claim includes rapes in which:
–the victim has a prior relationship with the offender (including having previously been intimate with him);
–the victim used alcohol or drugs at the time of the assault;
— there is no visible evidence of injury;
— the victim delays disclosure to the police and/or others and does not undergo a rape medical exam; and/or
–the victim fails to immediately label her assault as rape and/or blames herself.
Since 67% of victims know their rapist and many victims are inebriated during a rape the figure stands at about 2%.
There is a great deal of sexism and racism behind this attitude of “let’s not rush to judgment” because there is a 98% chance she was raped.
Sorry, that second link didn’t work. This should work.
Let’s throw in the class angle too.
Eleven lawyers have already lined up behind the men and the victim only has the district attorney. She doesn’t have the money to hire a lawyer while the men have plenty of resourses and supporters.
Oxxboyy, I wonder how long it will take for the victim to be silenced as well. Here in Kansas city, a football team opposing Kansas City’s arena football team had several members accused of raping a young woman lured to their hotel room. There seemed to be pretty good evidence that a crime occurred. Three days later, the young woman dropped the charges and nothing ever came of the case.
I, however, do not assume that money will be used to silence the victim, since it is much cheaper and easier merely to threaten to put her personal life through the wringer, slander her and make her life a living hell if she agrees to prosecute. See, that’s what usually happens.
Intimidation techniques are always used by defense lawyers in these cases. God forbid if they ever found out she had a abortion or cheated on her taxes. I hope her children are really, really young. Because the thought of someone saying something to or about them would just be sickening. Look for them to open up her divorce records, if in fact she is divorced and to bring up every nasty thing about it in the press. You keep hearing about a possible record, but NOONE seems to know what it is. Shoplifting, writing bad checks? All they say is nothing to do with prostitution or being an escort and so why is it relavant? 1/3 of the larcrosse team has a reocrd of public drunkeness and disturbing the peace, so that doesn’t mean they are rapist either. Something bad happened in that house and it was more than calling the women the N-word.
from following this case on this blog, it certainly seems to me that a terrible crime was committed, and that several of the men at the party should rot behind bars. this is said in the spirit of amp’s post the other day about how i think they should get full benefit in court of their presumption of innocence, but how my opinion can still be that they’re guilty.
but having said that, i admit that i read that e-mail as over-the-top sarcasm, and not evidence of any plans or even fantasies. it smells to me of a guy who thinks he’s being unfairly persecuted, and who is up late drunk and worried, and who wants to point out in his pathetic way how he thinks the charges are so ridiculous that they might as well be accusing him of trying to murder and torture for sexual pleasure.
not defending the e-mail, mind you, but i don’t think those words were intended literally as hate speech or threats. i’ll probably get flamed for that, but i do think there’s another reading of those words.
the e-mail was written the same night only an hour or so after it was reported. He probably didn’t know about the charges yet. So he wasn’t being scarcastic because of the “charges”. He is aJack—! Just like most of his buddies on the team, but someone had enough decency to leak the e-mail and that makes me think th ey all are probably not complete animals. Unless someone leaked it to save themselves…hmmmmmmmm. interesting thought. I like conspriracy theories too.
I know one of the reports mentiones the victim recounting that the man who hired/invited her to the party identified himself as Adam, yet other players at the party called him Dan. Today’s NY Times article identifies who that is. It’s the first time I’ve seen it, though I don’t know if it’s already in the public record.
The police affidavit also added that players admitted to using one another’s names to try to confuse events.
Wow. This sentence can’t be emphasized enough.
The police affidavit also added that players admitted to using one another’s names to try to confuse events.
“…the e-mail was written the same night only an hour or so after it was reported. He probably didn’t know about the charges yet. So he wasn’t being scarcastic because of the “charges”. He is aJack…! ”
Or, immediately after the near-dead victim stumbled incoherently out of the house, the boys realized that they were in deep, deep shit, and immediately began engaging in various back-slapping, sociopath-bonding rituals (like engaging in symbolic women-murder through email) in an attempt to comfort themselves and to try to convince themselves that richwhitemale privilege would keep their world from being ruined.
Or, Prince Ryan was a witness to the rapes/beating/strangulation, but not a participant, and he wants to become a real rapist torturer just like the rest of the Alpha Bullies, so the email is a way of sucking up to the honored, oh-so-cool criminals.
Or, Prince Ryan was a witness to the crimes, and got extraordinarily turned on by the whole thing, but the three primary criminals wouldn’t let him have a go at helping rape/almost-murder her, so he wrote the email in a fit of drunken misogyny.
See, when people are under susupicion (as in neither innocent nor guilty), you consider all sides, and look for concrete evidence for which is true. You don’t use they “presumed innocent” idea as an excuse to ignore all possibility of their guilt.
I wonder why they would do that? HMMMMMMMMMM! Very interesting indeed. Surely these boys weren’t trying to hide anything. Wow that is really interesting about mixing up names. Makes them harder to identify!
“i don’t think those words were intended literally as hate speech or threats”
Saying you’re going to kill women and then cut their skin off doesn’t look like hate speech to you?
I got news: whatever the context they were written in, saying you are going to do that (to women who, btw, would NOT have any connection at all to the event of that night, but would just be different women hired to come to the house) is hate speech of the most repugnant kind.
yes, in the haidl gang rape case and the similar recent chicago case where the men were acquitted, maligning the victim’s character was the tactic. in the latest newsweek (april 10), it says they are starting to look into the duke victim’s background. this seems to be the textbook strategy.
Polymath: the mental gymnastics that you would have to go through to get to ***this*** conclusion is almost as worrisome as the email itself. How the fuck you could come to this, after reading the *facts* of the case so far, knowing it was written only *****minutes**** after a disoriented, emotionally wrecked woman was approached by a Kroger’s security man… and her friend/driver told **him** to get help… I mean, the woman was so upset she was inable to tell the security man himself what had happened (he intially thought she was inebriated)… I mean, really. THIS WOMAN WAS TEMPORARILLY INCAPABLE OF COMMUNICATING WHAT HAD HAPPENED TO HER
and some pissant 20-something year old privileged white male, who had witnessed at least SOMETHING at that party, is writing about wanting
to murder
and to skin
this black woman
until he came in his sports shorts
in fact, he specifically names the ones issued for him by Duke for his playing on the Lacrosse team.
You have got to be fucking kidding me that you came up with that twisted synopsis of yours.
I think Q Grrl’s got it right. The guy specifically references ejaculating in his Duke shorts in response to murdering and mutilating a woman. He did so right after the attack (I’m not saying “alleged.” After the fingernails, the physical evidence of assault and this e-mail, is there really a lot of doubt that this woman was seriously physically and sexually assaulted by members of the Duke Lacrosse team?) If he’s not actually planning to rape and kill a woman, he’s joking with his teammates that it would be okay to do so (which would only make sense if they were trying to maintain cohesion by fantasizing about an assault worse than what had just gone on.)
One this is now beyond dispute: this guy assumed his audience was in on the joke. Every recipient had some level of knowledge that would allow them to understand his reference.
His reference to nudity also makes me wonder what the woman set as her boundaries for her dancing at the party. Perhaps she refused to perform completely naked and this is why the men got “excited and aggressive” and why she left the party originally. Who knows. He obviously is angry that there was some prohibition [somewhere] about nudity — and he expresses his contempt for this simplistic morality by trumping it with his aggressive/mutilation/murder fantasy of sexual release.
ummm, okay, i did miss the fact that it was written before anyone knew of the charges. i was imagining a (rightfully) scared and accused person writing that e-mail.
if the author of that e-mail was not aware that charges would be brought, i can’t think of any way to construe it in any innocent way.
i’ll retract my interpretation. i guess i still think the author was joking (and not planning), but that’s still pretty strong evidence of serious misogyny. sorry for my misunderstanding.
Thanks polymath — I appreciate that. This is all too close to home, way too close.
Polymath:
Nobody should be left to rot. When we wish inhuman things on people who have done inhuman things, we make ourselves that little bit more like them.
It is enough that these people be jailed if convicted.
The word you are looking for is ‘hyperbole’. I agree that I couldn’t convict anyone on intent or conspiracy to murder, on that email alone.
I would, however, regard that email, together with the events already alledged, as sufficient to sustain a charge of intent to commit a felonious assault.
I also can’t agree that this is not a fantasy. If I said “I’ll kill my sister if she doesn’t phone me this evening”, then that’s an idiomatic use of the word kill. I wouldn’t be visualising a murderous act. The email is not like that. There’s no way to parse it, without envisaging a murderous act. It’s a fantasy.
I don’t buy that at all. There’s nothing there to indicated that he’s even aware that the police might be interested in him. Rather it smell to me like someone who feels invulnerable. ‘We had fun today; we’ll have even more fun tomorrow’ is the message I get from it.
I really don’t get this. Even if it wasn’t intended to be a credible threat, then it’s still hate-speech. If it isn’t, then what the hell is?
Add homophobia (and perhaps just-plain-generic abuse) to the list. Apparently, three Ivy League LaCrosse guys (including one from the Duke team) harassed and beat up on a complete stranger in DC a few months ago. Duke now says they’ve set up committees to look into the “culture” of the team and on campus…
My folklore professor at University of California, Berkeley, wrote a paper on the rape imagery in football folklore, mostly folkspeech. It was called Touchdown in the End-Zone. He considered the game a ritualized homosexual gang rape.
The language you use does mean something.
This is how I interpreted the email at first glance, if anybody is interested in a different take:
Disgusted by the night’s events, McFayden sends out the over-the-top sarcastic question of what could possibly top that night’s violence/rape. To me, that seems to make the phrase “tonights show” make more sense. Also, if you’re reading it this way, his request for “all in besides arch and tack” makes sense as well, if he’s implicating Arch and Tack in the crime. Basically, Arch and Tack are so morally repugnant that the author is sure that they’ll be in for the sarcastically suggested “activities.”
That’s just how I saw it, and I’m in no way suggesting that McFayden is some kind of moral figure, because if he was so disgusted he could have gone to the police instead of cravenly covering for his teammates. Also, if you read the email the way I do, then it suggests that the whole team (all of whom the email was CC’d to) knew exactly what had gone on during the night’s “show”–a brutal rape.
Add homophobia (and perhaps just-plain-generic abuse) to the list. Apparently, three Ivy League LaCrosse guys (including one from the Duke team) harassed and beat up on a complete stranger in DC a few months ago. Duke now says they’ve set up committees to look into the “culture” of the team and on campus…
Wow! I hadn’t heard that before. Peter Wood, a historian at Duke, told a Dean a few years ago that the team was “out of control.” Wood has coached lacrosse in the past (although not at Duke.) He also wrote a great book on slavery in South Carolina called _Black Majority_.
The e-mail boggles the mind. It’s insight into a scary mind.
I’m glad someone turned in the e-mail and is apparently co-operating with the police.
A different but analogous spin to Ginger’s: The e-mail is a riposte in a game of “Can you top this” — and perhaps the two referenced by name are those who objected to the whole business (as in, we know you won’t be there). There’s no way to know. None — except that, as others have said, it is clear that all present at the house have a great deal more knowledge than they seem to have admitted. But then, as I have suspected, more than a few may be cooperating sotto voce. I have to believe that when parents (and their lawyers) get involved they are unlikely to be amused by any notion of standing and falling together. They may be affluent but they weren’t planning on supporting these kids through prison and beyond. And it just may be that some of these guys do have a conscience, they just don’t want it to be known in public.
Kell, Duke is not an Ivy. The Ivy League is Yale, Harvard, Brown, Princeton, Dartmouth, UPenn, Columbia and Cornell.
The way it’s phrased makes me think Arch and Tack are two of the three rapists the woman said attacked her and Ryan himself is the third. Where to go after gang-raping a woman with your buds, what could be more thrilling than the rush of what he just experienced? The murder and skinning of a woman qualifies.
Does anyone know what the 41 references? He uses it like a signature, and I wonder if 41 is his team jersey number. Which makes me wonder whether they objectified even their own selves to such an extent that chunks of their identities, such as their given names, were replaced by alternate personas marked by lacrosse team symbolics?
I’ve read about that sort of thing before, how sometimes membership in a powerful group can induce actual alterations in identities, and how renaming is often used (whether consciously or subconsciously) to affect those changes. I wish I could remember where I’ve read about it. Something about cults and renaming maybe? Or somewhere in one of Foucault’s books? Anyone else know?
“Kell, Duke is not an Ivy. The Ivy League is Yale, Harvard, Brown, Princeton, Dartmouth, UPenn, Columbia and Cornell. ”
Actually, I’m personally reassured that I didn’t know that someone had codified that term to that degree. (But, then, I don’t care who wins TV talent shows either.) I do wish we had shorthand for “private school for rich, white, conservative kids,” though. I.e. an American version of what Brit’s call “public” schools.
Well, some people refer to Duke as the Ivy League school of the South. And it does have a lot of ivy growing on the older buildings . . . Yes IndyLib, his jersey number was 41. Apparently team members referred to themselves by their jersey numbers and other pseudonyms in front of the victim. They also used a false name to hire her.
Silly point, but FYI the Ivy League is a college sports league.
Ginger, I’ve tried reading the email with your spin on it, but I don’t think so… I think it’s just what it seems. Not ironic, not disgusted, but f-d up, the kind of sick mentality that would lead to raping strippers actually.
Barbara, I’m not sure that using pseudonyms in front of the victim and signing a private email with a jersey number reflect the same psychological issues or modes of identity behavior (although I would suspect there is some overlap).
Speculative mode here: the pseudonym usage is a behavior I see as being employed specifically and consciously to cover up their traceable identities because they knew they were doing something wrong to the victim and/or started off with the intent to do something wrong to her. I assume they figured if she couldn’t identify them, they’d be harder to prosecute, or something up that alley.
But signing an email that presumably went out only (or predominantly) to his teammates with his jersey number seems different. Obviously, his teammates know his jersey number, and know who he is, so he is not “covering up” in the same way when he does that. But I do wonder if he was “covering up” in a different way.
Put another way, I’m wondering the extent to which “Ryan” is one persona, and “41” is a different persona who would do things that “Ryan” might not choose to do. Further, I wonder about the extent to which these two personas might be confused inside of the young man’s own mind. I’m not suggesting a multiple personality here, and I’m not a shrink so I’m probably screwing the terminology all up, but I do study identity theory and I’m examining it from that perspective.
The reason for this line of inquiry is that, as discussed in one thread or another that I’ve read lately about this case (maybe here at Alas?), there’s a tendency by some folks to view rapists as “monsters” rather than “normal” men who have adjusted themselves in a psychological fashion that makes them capable of rape. I tend toward the latter interpretation. I don’t view most rapists as “bad seeds”, although some may be, but rather as men who started off as normal little boys but then acquired beliefs and an identity somewhere along the way that allow them to objectify women enough to rape them. I’m trying to peel back the layers of the identities that men might acquire which would affect their behavior in such a fashion as to turn some of them into rapists.
“According to a 2002 police report, the woman, currently a 27-year-old student at North Carolina Central University, gave a taxi driver a lap dance at a Durham strip club. Subsequently, according to the report, she stole the man’s car and led deputies on a high-speed chase that ended in Wake County. Apparently, the deputy thought the chase was over when the woman turned down a dead-end road near Brier Creek, but instead she tried to run over him, according to the police report.”
“The case was resolved when she admitted she made a mistake, paid restitution and served probation and some jail time.”
In the article, her former defense attorney says some nice things about her.
The answer to your last question, I believe, Indy, would be a sense of entitlement in this country based on wealth, gender, and athletic ability, and sometimes amplified by youth and (dominant) race.
Please insert that hypothesis somewhere in your indentity theory study if it hasn’t already raised its head. And if it hasn’t raised its head, please ask yourself why.
Have to concur w/Barbara and others here: it’d be nice to think so, Ginger, but I’m just not seeing any evidence for that spin.
And, it goes with the territory, the jokiness and “team” rush.
I keep coming back to this as a parallel, but: “Our Guys,” the excellent if grim chronicle of the case in New Jersey where another group of disgusting little overprivileged asshole jocks, high school this time, gang raped a mildly retarded girl, using a baseball bat and a dirty stick in the process. You have to read the whole thing to really get a full sense of just how fucked up not just “our guys” but the whole damn town and zeitgeist is. Which, it’d pretty much have to be.
anyway, Lefkowitz (the author) spends some time talking about the other jaunts and exploits of these high-spirited lads. One of the favorite group activities was really destructive partying. There’s one anecdote of a girl, Mary Ryan, who wanted to be popular, so she invited “everybody” to come to her house for a party when her parents were out of town for the weekend. Big mistake. It turns into an orgy of hate and destruction: they chop up furniture, kill the goldfish (and try to kill the cat at one point), deliberately break everything that could possibly be breakable…it goes on and on. Ryan at one point got so overwhelmed that she stood on a balcony and threatened to jump if they didn’t stop it; apparently a bunch of the kids started chanting “Jump, Jump, Jump.” (she didn’t). Finally *someone* called the cops, which, according to Lefkowitz, broke the code (as always) of silence. No one likes a narc, you see.
so, to tie this back to the email business: no one was sorry for this, and no one was punished, except Ryan, who got sent to boarding school or suchlike. The genearl sense was that she somehow “deserved it,” because she wasn’t popular. But in the yearbook that year, there were a lot of fond tributes to “Ryan’s Wreck” among “best memories.”
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Of course it has. You couldn’t know this, of course, but I’ve been a feminist since I was a kid in the 70s, I’ve been studying feminist theories in depth for well over a decade now, and I was a double minor in women’s studies and philosophy in college.
I was also raped of my virginity by my jock boyfriend when I was 15, and I’ve always sought to understand the precise mechanism by which this otherwise seemingly “nice” boy nonetheless managed to rape me and then rationalize having done so. And part of it was about jock culture, constructions of masculinity, youth, and entitlement, but part of it was about his individual psychology — not all the boys on his team were rapists, and the young man who helped to cover up that rape for him was not a part of the jock culture at my school.
So, part of the identity study is very personal to me, as it is to many women who’ve been victimized by rape. My particular defense mechanism against lots of things that terrify me is learning how to understand the nuances of how they function, and when you combine that with my interest in theory, I tend to pick things apart down past the level where most other people do.
I think most well-read feminists, such as myself, are all overly familiar with the general themes in jock culture, and the intersecting identity issues in both jock culture and society at large such as race, class, age, gender, and entitlement that you mention. But I think there are still lingering unresolved questions about identities that are worth further study. I think we understand rape generally very well, but I don’t think we yet understand very well the dynamics on a more individual, each-to-each level. In other words, I think we understand fairly well why men as a class rape; but I don’t think we frequently understand very well why a particular man rapes. And I think further explication on that level will help us better understand how to effect the kind of structural social changes that will, at least, lower the frequency of rape.
Polymath wrote concerning the report of the email sent from McFadyen’s personal email address:
Why would he be feeling persecuted? There had been no charges made at the time the email was sent which was just a couple of hours after the event allegedly occurred. However if he was “worried” as you say, that does point to the assault actually occurring, because otherwise why would he need to be worried?
Fantasizing about killing and skinning a woman for sexual pleasure is common among the more deranged serial killers, although I imagine this thug is too stupid to be a serial killer.
College students often get pulled into crimes because of desire for peer approval. Your good buddy who wants to rob soda machones for tuition can talk you into a lot of things. Or perhapse one of these guys needed to prove himself sexually, so he would be part of the group & n0t the butt of jokes. The evedince in this case will probably lie in the relationships of the accused with their friends & psycological make up. If a rape did occure, there will be evidence in the friendships, or background of the students.
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The Duke student who authored the offensive email was simply parodying “American Pyscho,” a novel taught in Duke literature courses. It should not be taken as an indication that he’s the type of person who would enjoy committing such crimes. That the school should punish him for it is absurd. It had nothing to do with the alleged rapes.
Y’all kinda look foolish now.
Criticizing a guy for ranting about “killing the bitches” looks foolish, when, ever?
No, Mythago, trying to falsely compare some dopey comment to being falsely accused of rape and having your name dragged through the mud – like you are trying to do by highlighting the far lesser evil – looks foolish.
Trying to milk a dopey comment for all it’s worth looks foolish. Ya’ wanna see some feminist comments, Mythago, even your own damn comments? I’ll bet you can downplay them.
@Varusz, your mind-reading skills need polishing.
It’s hard to appreciate without the context. The Duke case was famously fictitious and fell apart, the defendants were declared innocent and the prosecutor ended up in jail. The email was an American Psycho reference, which no one picked up on (perhaps because feminists successfully banned and suppressed it in places, a great book BTW).
The people in this thread were basically immersed in an elaborate collective rape fantasy. They’re criticising a dude for making a deliberately over the top literary reference “sick thoughts”; while they themselves desperately trying to reconstruct and go over all the details of what they think was an actual rape. It’s horrific and fucked up.