Emma Sulkowicz's Alleged Attacker speaks again in new article

Parents Forum
321

@HarvestMoon1: I actually wasn’t referring to the mattress thing as something a lawyer would come up with.

I meant the strategy of putting potentially libelous information in a public filing (such as a police report or a court filing), and then suggesting the media might read the day’s filings as a way to lesson the risk of a libel suit.

Oh, and while we’re discussing statistics, based on my personal experience I’d worry about the mental health of the child of a psychiatrist. My math shows that having both your parents as psychiatrists means there’s a 99.4% chance of being certifiable at some point in your expected 82 year life span :wink:

322

What I find sad is that we have taught women to be ashamed when they are raped. What I find sad is the many years women have been silenced. Emma is a warrior.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/columbia-mattress-emma-sulkowicz_n_5811030.html

323

CF, post # 319 is a great post.

324

CF - Your post # 319 is powerful. I can’t argue with your facts. I can understand why some men will have sex with a willing but very intoxicated girl who isn’t incapacitated (not saying I agree, just that I understand). I don’t understand not reporting a gang rape. It makes no sense to me. It’s completely at variance with my experience.

I believe you have a husband and a son. What do they think (just a rhetorical question; no need to reply)? What do the men you know very well think? Based on that, what do you believe?

Besides just blaming a few sociopaths, the only thing I can say is that a group of young men can develop strange and powerful dynamics. You can get a group of 18 year old men to charge a machine gun nest (women are probably too smart, but that’s a different conversation). That gives us an idea of the power of these dynamics. Without guidance from older men that they respect, they turn into a scene from Lord of the Flies (or some blighted city centers, but that’s a different conversation as well). But participate in a gang rape or not report one in progress? No idea how it’s possible for that to become something that’s accepted behavior unless you were raised by a pack of jackals.

325

Society teaches them this is okay. That is why they take pictures and video and pass it around. Somehow our generation has taught them it is okay. We aren’t talking a few isolated cases. It is a pervasive problem. We have failed these young men and failed the young men and women they rape. All of us have got to start taking responsibility. Social change is inevitably frightening and threatening to those whose power is challenged. Moving forward, we are just all going to have to deal with the fact many our kids see the world more clearly than we do. All we really have to do is support them. Or maybe not. In my opinion they are already facilitating major shifts in accepted cultural norms. Maybe we just have to get out of their way.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/09/emma-sulkowicz-campus-sexual-assault-activism.html

326

Awful broad strokes there…I do not believe for one second that “society teaches these things.” I do not believe for one second that we have “failed our young people.” I don’t believe we have to support young people 100% of the time, we have after all, lived many more years and experienced many more things then they have. Life is not a media circus and the media circus has left far too many casualties.

http://nypost.com/2015/02/08/columbia-mattress-rape-case-is-not-justice-its-shaming-without-proof/

327

How do you explain the behavior described in Cardinal Fang’s post #319.

What happens to produce a young man capable of gang rape? What happens to produce young men who ignore rapes taking place in front of them? What makes men cover up for each other after these events? Why are all these men participating in rape, ignoring rape, covering up rape? What on earth is going on?

Al2simon has difficulty believing it. It is happening. over and over. Why?

adding: gang rape is not new. It happened at my college in the 70s. The electronics didn’t exist to record it. Nothing Cardinal Fang describes, except the recording, is new and recent behavior. It has always existed. Now we are just talking about it in a way we never did before. We are starting to believe in it.

328

Because it’s NOT happening over and over. Because for all time there has been a tiny percentage of any population anywhere that are murderers or commit violent crimes. There is no epidemic of bad behavior by the male population - it’s probably about the same as it always has been and i for one am not going to sit around thinking our culture has gone down the drain and we’re teaching our boys “wrong” because a bunch of advocate journalists have decided it has and we have. I will support efforts to improve our criminal justice system and I will support efforts to made colleges report real crimes to the police. I will support colleges to set up support centers and counseling centers for kids with issues although those services are probably available in every community and I know it’s going to cost the next bunch of parents more tuition money. `

I bookmarked this quote because I think it’s very applicable:

Emma needs to put the mattress down, not because the act was not a noble thing or an interesting albeit silly media game, but she’s sending the wrong messageand I’ve thought that since the day she picked the stupid mattress us. She’s sending a message that it’s OK to want our 15 minutes of fame and it’s OK to embellish the story to her liking and it’s OK to bully and it’s OK to defame someone else and it’s OK to call something rape, but decide it’s too much trouble to use our existing systems and it’s OK to turn her back on the system she DID chose because it didn’t give her a result to her liking.

329

We’ve already passed tiny percentage and moved up to social circle when we get to this:

Mark Vandenburg, rapist
Corey Batey, rapist
Jaborian McKenzie, awaiting trial for rape
Brandon Banks, awaiting trial for rape
Mark Prioleau, roommate who admits he was in the room during rape
Chris Boyd, teammate who coached Vandenburg on how to cover up the crime
Joseph Quinzio, received the videos and did nothing
Miles Finley, during rape texted Vandenburg “Dog, kick that [expletive] out or gang bang her”. Saw videos.
several dorm-mates who saw victim half-naked in hallway after rape and did nothing

And remember, this rape was only discovered by chance. Nobody reported it, and the perpetrators knew no one would report it. The college only suspected something was wrong by chance, when investigators were reviewing a security tape for another reason entirely. The rapists had every reason to believe they’d get away with their crime.

Somewhere, these rapists, and Audrie Potts’ rapists in Saratoga California, and the Steubenville rapists, and Savannah Dietrich’s assaulters, learned that they could treat girls and young women like sex toys and no one would call them on it. Where’d they learn that?

The assaults and rapes are not new. The justified feeling of impunity is not new. The shaming and blaming of the victims is not new. The coverups by older men in authority are not new. Some men rape and assault women, and this is not new. The only things that are new here are the pictures, and the brave girls and women who are now saying “We will not be silenced. We will not be shamed into silence.”

330

No, actually women can speak out, women can charge assaulters with crimes, women can stand up for their civil rights… women can do all those things thanks to our mothers and grandmothers. What women cannot do is falsely accuse, bully and redefine situations to support their narrative. That’s pretty basic.

It’s really faulty logic to apply a singular case or even three or four cases and point and say that “everyone” is this way - and that applies to both women and men. There are plenty of true survivors who deserve our support. And by the way if you missed it the majority of people you are citing in post 328 are under indictment or have been charged so not sure what that has to do with someone who has failed twice to prove her case and is carting a mattress around.

331

What if instead of Sulkowicz, it was the Florida State accuser, Erica Kinsman? Her alleged attacker was also cleared of responsibility, after a culpably negligent police “investigation” that didn’t involve actual prompt investigation, and a coverup by the FSU football program.

332

On a somewhat more positive note:

http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/02/06/mens-health-coordinator-backs-healthy-masculinity/

"“How men are sexualized plays into the type of violence that exists in college communities,” Peters said. “Men don’t have a lot of spaces to have open and honest conversations about the different things that they are dealing with, like how they grapple with emotions or deal with conflict,” he said.

One of Peters’ primary charges involves working with Greek organizations and men’s athletic teams to foster conversation around “healthy masculinity,” he said.

Grant Senne ’16 has worked with Peters both as president of Theta Delta Chi and as a member of the football team. Peters collaborated with Theta Delta Chi to ensure members “were all on the same page when it came to consent, interacting with men and women and preventing people from falling into a bad situation,” Senne said.

Peters helped facilitate conversations among members that otherwise would not have occurred and created an “openness” within the fraternity, Senne added.

“The thing I like about Marc is that he’s not a speaker brought in by the University who’s politically charged,” Senne said. “He’s talking about understanding health, emotions and your own perceptions and interactions with people.”

“He makes it a big self-reflection process,” he added.

Society tends to frame issues of sexual violence as solely “women’s issues,” Peters said, adding that the creation of his role shows the University is looking to change this misperception.

Students wanted this position to be created, Peters said. “Brown is emphasizing the role that men can play in preventing violence,” he added.“”

Maybe this will make a difference? I thought something key was the fact that he is not perceived as “politically charged” or someone who has an agenda, and this led to male students being more open to a dialogue on these subjects.

333

I don’t know anything about Florida State sorry. If he was cleared of charges then it wouldn’t be any different on surface.

334

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/24/jameis-winston-s-rape-accuser-tells-all-in-sundance-documentary-the-hunting-ground.html

335

Carrying the mattress around, to me, does not single out any particular man, and is a protest against the university and the problem of sexual assault in general.

Identifying the accused publicly is a whole 'nother ball of wax. I wish it had not happened. There isn’t any effective way to defend oneself in this situation, in the media or otherwise.

336

Let’s look at the logic here, and see whether it’s faulty.

We have several high profile cases where perpetrators were convicted of sex crimes: the Savannah Dietrich case, the Audrie Potts case, the Vanderbilt case, the Steubenville case.

We want to know whether there are many more of these cases that go undiscovered, or whether people who commit crimes like this usually get brought to justice. So:

Hypothesis A (Rape Culture): People who commit gang rapes like our four cases usually don’t get caught. It’s easy to get away with this kind of rape. Most of the gang rapes that occur are not detected by the criminal justice system. Gang rapists usually rape with impunity.

Hypothesis B (Rape is Rare) : People who commit gang rapes like our four cases usually get caught. It’s hard to get away with this crime. Most of the gang rapes that occur result in convictions.

If Rape is Rare, then these crimes were almost inevitably going to be exposed, because by hypothesis gang rapes are usually exposed. If there is a Rape Culture, then these crimes would probably not have been exposed, because most gang rapes are not exposed. Let’s look at the evidence.

  1. The rapists were brazen. They raped in front of other people. They took pictures. They sent texts. They clearly did not believe that what they were doing was something that was likely to result in criminal conviction.

  2. Nobody intervened. The witnesses, and there were many, did nothing. Clearly, the witnesses did not think what they were seeing merited police intervention.

  3. The people in their social circles, including trusted adults, did nothing when learning of the crimes afterwards. The criminals were right that accessories after the fact would not bring them to justice.

  4. The victims were mocked and shamed afterwards. Both before the crimes came to the justice system and afterwards, the victims were mocked, vilified and shamed, both in their personal lives and on social media. Not everyone abused them, but all of the victims got plenty of abuse, in person and online. Victims who report these crimes expect, and will receive, abuse, which acts to discourage victims from reporting.

  5. The criminals were convicted because of video or photo evidence. Without the photo/video evidence, they would have gone free.

So, if we believe the Rape is Rare Hypothesis B, we have to believe that when gang rapes occur, they are reported and prosecuted. But how can we believe that? Witnesses don’t report, people who find out afterwards don’t report, victims have every reason to avoid abuse and vilification by not reporting, and rapists don’t get convicted unless there’s video/photo evidence. If some men gang raped a young woman last night and didn’t take pictures, how is that going to come to light? If the victim accuses, how would she be treated? Will the police believe her without photo evidence? Will a prosecutor even prosecute? The only thing we can be sure of is that she’ll endure abuse and humiliation.

337

“women can charge assaulters with crimes, women can stand up for their civil rights… women can do all those things thanks to our mothers and grandmothers”

Women can charge assaulters with crimes, but statistically most sexual assaults against women go unreported so whether women “can” is perhaps not the right question. What can we do as a society to make it so that: 1) women are less frequently the subject of sexual assault; and 2) if a woman is assaulted, she feels comfortable coming forward.

Momofthreeboys, why do you assume that Emma Sulkowiczs and others who claim that they were assaulted by men that they know are not “true survivors”? Are the only rape victims that you will acknowledge those that get accosted by strangers or that have undeniable proof? The nature of the crime is such that in the absence of physical evidence (which is often the case given that many women delay reporting the crime, if at all, until they are emotionally ready and that means that the collection of physical evidence is no longer viable), these are crimes that will be hard to prove. They happen behind closed doors and usually (although we have those horrific gang rapes and sometimes pics on social media) without witnesses. That does not mean that these incidents don’t occur all too frequently. There is very little incentive for a young woman to put herself through the public, and often demeaning, process of a criminal or college complaint process if she is not, in fact, the victim of a real sexual assault.

338

I think the sticking point here is that Emma says that she didn’t realize the encounters were nonconsensual until months later, which could be read to mean that she thought they were consensual at the time.

339

@Hanna, you are conflating Emma Sulkowicz with a different accuser. Emma says she was anally raped and was screaming at the time. Another accuser says she was Nungesser’s girlfriend, but she realized months later that some of their sexual encounters were nonconsensual.

340

She may very well be a victim of something, but the term survivor eludes me. What has she survived other than a bad relationship? I have friends that are survivors, they have survived breast cancer and are surviving in spite of the odds ovarian cancer, they have survived car crashes that should have killed them and I’m sure if I thought for a second I could think of other horrendous things friends and people I know of have survived. Once again the advocates can try and change the language and perhaps in a decade the word “survivor” will have it’s meaning changed - after all I supposed we do say sometimes “TGIF…I survived the week.”