Start Defending the Victims
By: Emily Arreola Prado
Tags: Language, Sexual Assault, Culture, Victim Blaming, Law

The statement “innocent until proven guilty” is a statement that is clearly implemented in the linguistic logic behind rape cases. In all sexual assault, and especially rape cases, I believe the perpetrator should always be guilty until proven innocent because the word of the victim should always be valued first. The court of law is constantly trying to dismiss the words of the victims and trying to find a way to discredit the event that occurred so it will not put the perpetrator behind bars — especially if it was a male perpetrator. The current culture that the United States law emphasizes shows that this is a man’s world, and women can try to change it, but they will ultimately lose.

Using the word “respondent” instead of “perpetrator” is one of the main ways that the law shows that it favors males. They use such words like “respondent” to undermine the credibility of the victim instead of having the defendant take responsibility for their actions. As Sharon Marcus states in “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention,” “one of feminism’s most powerful contentions about rape — that rape is a question of language, interpretation, and subjectivity.” The current language that is present in California law states that to prove a case of sexual battery, “the defendant touched the victim’s intimate parts while the victim was restrained by the defendant or another person.” This statement alone shows that when a woman is raped, there are implications that she will be physically dominated, and in any case where she is not, then the case will be dismissed. There are many loopholes in the system’s words where it makes it easy for the male perpetrator to be set free and have the capability to claim another victim. Rape follows a script — it is a script — ultimately showing the same story with the same inexcusable results.

The language that is used in rape cases to defend the criminal shows the true effort that the law has to protect women. There is never a time in court where the court does not try to dismiss the account of the victim and try to find any minor detail to make it seem like they are lying about what happened to them. Marcus states, “‘the standards of evidence, criteria of relevance, paradigms of explanation and norms of truth’ which, she holds, one can and must use to determine the truth value of rape accounts” — while this should be true, it is far from the truth. There could be an abundance of evidence that proves the assailant to be guilty, but if the account of the survivor does not match the words that make it a true “case of sexual battery” — like “restrained” and phrases like “against victim’s will” or “touching for the purpose of sexual gratification” –then the court will happily grant them their freedom. The culture the law promotes is one that the man is never wrong; the language that is implemented in the laws of rape show that there is always something faulty in women’s words and because of that, there is a motive to have the law lean towards the defense of a man. Such language reflects how today’s culture wants there to be a “difficult, uncomfortable, and confusing” interpretation of sexual assault, instead of trying to make it easier for the victim to receive some form of justice.

Because of the language that is currently implicated, the victim receives the full brunt of the blame for the event even occurring. There is never a time where people do not claim, “she asked for it because she was barely wearing any clothes” or “because of her sexual past, she probably led him on.” The victim should never be to blame, but the culture that we have allows for this to happen because the perpetrator is always initially innocent. By this culture always finding fault in the victim, it leads the victim to blame themselves for the event that happened, but “victims of sexual assault should not have to fight so hard for their birthright as human beings, a birthright of freedom, equality and respect.” Victim blaming is a large issue that is rarely a subject that wants to prompt change, because there would then have to be change in the whole system — something that the law obviously does not want to do. Anything that will demise the word of a male, especially in the court system, will never face any real change, therefore, “we have to boldly challenge the beliefs and cultural norms that perpetuate a mindset of sexual assault, including anything that objectifies or devalues the life of a woman.” Rape is a battle itself to overcome, but with the added torment of victim blaming, these victims would rather stay in the dark — prompting for an even greater urgency to change the language and finally put some blame on the rapists, because it will “make us see the men behind the rapes and takes the burden of attention away from the victim.”

Blaming the victim instead of the perpetrator, allowing the court to change the word perpetrator to respondent when describing the defendant, and having language that indicates the leniency of protecting males, makes it easy to see why police can dismiss rape cases without any questions. Across the United States, there are high percentages of rape cases that are dismissed by law enforcement — the highest being in Oxnard, California with 54%. There are many disturbing excuses officials make to be able to dismiss such cases, one being that “they believed the women did not fight back hard enough.” Rape is underreported already, and by having this sort of misconduct, where some “detectives often don’t investigate them at all — even when the man had been arrested for rape before,” it gives an even greater incentive to victims to continue to hide and not report the heinous crime. The idea that “if there is no word for an act, you cannot name it, which means you cannot report it or legislate it” is the main problem associated with the language the system establishes. To prompt change when it comes to rape culture, police need to start showing insistence and care for the victims, instead of dropping the cases.

Having embedded language that clearly defends a criminal rather than the victim, shows clear favoritism towards men and therefore showing how the laws need to be rewritten so the language that comes across does otherwise. Women should receive justice for the traumatic experience they go through, but until there is change in the way that the court handles rape cases, the ones receiving justification for their actions are the perpetrators. Having a system where the perpetrator is set free is not a culture that should be permitted. There needs to be clear language established in our culture that does not allow for men to escape their responsibilities through loopholes but allows for the victims to no longer be blamed for being sexually assaulted and receive the validation that they are not at fault through the courts ruling.