I've said this before, but I'm only going to say it once more. And I'll go slow so the mouth-breathers in cyberspace can understand.

The remaining charges against the Duke lacrosse players were dropped earlier this week. There they've been on all the broadcast news stations exhorting their innocence and derailing a system that persecuted them. Poor little rich boys.

There's only one problem with their spin: just because the charges were dropped does not mean they are innocent. More precisely, they have not been exonerated. There was just not enough evidence to prosecute. That happens all the time in rape investigations.

To the extent that there was prosecutorial misconduct, former DA Mike Nifong should be held accountable for botching a rape prosecution. Those poor little rich boys gamed the system but good and their victim is still paying the price. They're getting the equivalent of ticker tape parades and book deals; the woman they allegedly assaulted is stuck with the trauma they inflicted upon her.

This also brings to mind Kobe Bryant, whose name is being thrown about for all kinds of MVP awards this year. I remember a few short years ago, before charges against him were dismissed in a similar rape case, how his supporters were whining about how the accusations would ruin his career and how they decimated his reputation. Guess that didn't pan out for the rape apologists either.

The underlying message being sent by this media orgy is that women who say they are raped by athletes must be lying and that the athletes are the real victims. Of course there's not research to back up that assertion. In fact, what scant research there is in the field generally points to the fact that hardly anyone ever makes up a rape accusation. If reported rapes were investigated with the same ferocity used to discredit victims, maybe our communities would be safer places.

So let me be clear again: dropped charges are not the same as being found not-guilty. Given the hell that people who report being raped get put through by the criminal justice system, with no perceivable benefit beyond the long shot of achieving some measure of justice, why on earth would someone fabricate an accusation? If the media would actually, I don't know, do some actual investigative journalism, the general public might finally understand the arduous process of reporting and investigating rape and come to the same conclusions: there is nothing to be gained from false reports, and therefore it's highly unlikely that many people actually file false reports.

I'm incredibly pissed right now at the media for falling all over themselves to lavish praise on these punks, while working on the assumption that the accuser is lying (even though there will be no false reporting charges against her).

There's some kind of weird irony here too in the timing of Duke announcement this week and the firestorm surrounding Don Imus' disgusting racist and sexist remarks. Rich white men denigrating black women. Some intrepid journalist should do a piece about racism and sexism that relates to the classism we're seeing played out in the media.

But I won't hold my breath.

Labels: classism, criminal justice system, Duke, guilt, Imus, innocence, racism, rape, sexism