The Revictimization of a Transgender, Disabled, Immigrant: Oppressions Intersect

Content Note: Rape, Abuse, Violence

Intersectionality is often used in very positive ways - to affirm multiple identities, to demand voice for the multiply marginalized, and so forth. This is valid and vital, but I read the source material (Crenshaw's work) as saying something less pleasant. To me, the core message of intersectionality is that oppressive forces intersect, endangering people whose identity incorporates multiply marginalized categories.

Today, Tina Vasquez (writing for Rewire) has a piece on a disabled, trans, immigrant and the many ways her rights have been disregarded. As always, please read the whole piece.

The story discusses M, who has mental health issues, cognitive disabilities, and a seizure disorder. She is the survivor of trauma. She is transgender. She is, of course, an immigrant. She is (I assume) not white.

She's done everything right, but the system has failed her. Some quotes:

While there, Ramos said M was subjected to verbal abuse from officers who mocked her transgender identity, with one officer passing her cell and saying, “What’s the story with this one,” according to M’s attorney. Eventually, M was transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody at San Diego’s Otay Mesa Detention Center, where M says the trauma continued, explained Ramos.
M was held in a cell with men for 12 hours as she was processed into Otay Mesa, with one detainee staring at her aggressively for the entire 12 hours, according to her attorney. After processing, M was placed in medical isolation for reasons Ramos said she could not share out of respect for M’s privacy. Later, M was brought into the shower area with men. Though she was given her own private stall, male detainees showered nearby, Ramos said.
“She began experiencing flashbacks and felt like she was going to be raped again,” Ramos said. “She felt helpless because the officers were not taking her concerns seriously. It was incredibly traumatizing.”

And:

Ebadolahi told Rewire current U.S. immigration policies only subject traumatized, vulnerable asylum seekers to more trauma—and M is one of the more “fortunate” ones. After successfully passing her credible fear interview, M was released from detention on April 11.

“We’re talking about a transgender woman who is a survivor of multiple rapes, who has post-traumatic stress disorder, who has disabilities, including a seizure disorder, who has gone through a lifetime of hurt, and for who the simple act of appearing at the port of entry and applying for asylum took an enormous effort—and despite all of these things, she is considered one of the fortunate ones because she has a pro-bono lawyer working on her behalf,” Ebadolahi said.

“How M and her attorney were treated at the port of entry and … in detention, is unconstitutional, unethical, and outrageous. We shouldn’t tolerate it. This treatment serves absolutely no legitimate, government purpose and only serves to further traumatize and marginalize very vulnerable people. No one should be subject to this kind of abuse. This has to stop.”

Our system to protect asylum seekers only magnifies trauma. We need to do better.

Rape Culture and Down Syndrome

Content Note: This post does not describe rape, but does describe the way our justice system embodies rape culture. 

In March, 2013 - I wrote about a rape case involving a woman with Down syndrome. Her rapist was convicted, but the judge threw out the case because "she didn't act enough like a victim." The Down syndrome community reacted as if this was an attack on disability rights, which it was, but it's also a standard manifestation of rape culture in our society.

Her rapist was re-convicted yesterday. This time the conviction was upheld.

Here's my piece. I'm going to quote it at length. But you can just click over.

The Georgia appeals court judge, Christopher McFadden, argued that the verdict went "strongly against the weight of the evidence" because, in his judgment, the woman in question -- I'll join other writers in calling her Jane -- didn't act like a victim and the man didn't act like a rapist.
Jane has Down syndrome and the growing national outrage to this case has focused, with reason, on her disability. But Down syndrome is only part of the story.
The outrage is not only because this judge didn't understand Down syndrome, but that judges frequently impose their perceptions on cases of sexual assault, reducing sentences even for convicted rapists on the grounds that the victim didn't act "correctly." Jane's troubling case reveals the intersections between rape culture and the way we strip agency from people with disabilities.

So in the first place the judge didn't think Jane acted correctly. He doesn't know anything about Down syndrome. But the problem is so much bigger.

Down syndrome may be a reason this judge decided that Jane's words carried less weight when measured against his perception, but many nondisabled women, women of all social classes, races, sexual orientations, and levels of ability, have experienced precisely the same kind of dismissal.

Here are a few examples that do not involve disability.

Last year in Montana, a judge reduced a former teacher's rape conviction to 31 days because the victim, a 14-year-old girl, was "as much in control of the situation" as her rapist and, in his opinion, "older than her chronological age."

In California, a judge reduced a sentence of a convicted rapist because the woman didn't fight hard enough. The judge said, "If someone doesn't want to have sexual intercourse, the body shuts down. The body will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage is inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case. That tells me that the victim in this case, although she wasn't necessarily willing, she didn't put up a fight."

In Arizona, a judge reduced a sentence of a police officer convicted of sexual abuse to community service and probation, instead blaming the victim for being in a bar. The judge said, "If you wouldn't have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you. ... When you blame others, you give up your power to change."

In Alabama, a judge structured a 40-year sentence for rape so the rapist would serve two years in a community program for nonviolent criminals and three years of probation at home. The judge, much like McFadden, argued that the victim just didn't behave correctly. He said, "You didn't hear the evidence. The original allegation was that both of these crimes were forcible. But then you have to believe that although she was forcibly raped twice, she continued to come back and have a social relationship (with the rapist)."

Other women have been prosecuted for false reporting of rape because they didn't "act traumatized." Rape convictions have been vacated entirely because the victim didn't fight back, such as in Connecticut, when the state supreme court freed a rapist because his victim, a woman with cerebral palsy and a mental age of 3, with no ability to speak, didn't bite, kick, or scratch her attacker.

As disability blogger Sarah Levis has commented, all of these stories should push our attention to this aspect of rape culture in the courtroom. Rape culture creates the myth that victims of rape must react within a predictable set of norms or raise doubts about the legitimacy of the rape. All of these women, including Jane, behaved in a way that judges didn't understand, so they overturned convictions or reduced sentences.

And here is where disability comes back into play. Because of her Down syndrome, Jane is relatively immune to the kinds of victim-blaming endured by other women who are assaulted or abused...All of the myths about false reporting of rape don't apply to Jane because of her disability, and for that at least we can be thankful. Jane's experience points to the offensive way women's behaviors are interrogated when they seek justice.

Finally, I said:

Do not focus on Jane because she is a woman with Down syndrome. Focus on Jane because she is a woman who says that she was raped. Focus on Jane because she's joined the ranks of other women, women of all races, classes, sexual orientations, and levels of ability who have said that they were raped and then had their testimony disregarded by a judge on the basis of not acting enough like a victim.

There is no one correct way to respond to being violated, but there are so many ways that our justice system can make it worse.

I'm glad Dumas is convicted. But there's so much more work to do on our justice system and to fight rape culture.

Rape Culture and Disability - New Jersey Edition

According to a report from NBC New York (also covered in Jezebel, and thanks to my friend K. for the story tip), a woman with Multiple Sclerosis was gang raped in a warehouse in New Jersey. 

She fell asleep on the bus (she is on a narcotic for pain), woke up in Trenton, left the bus, got disoriented, and was gang raped. The details of the assault are upsetting. Her medical care was allegedly sub-standard. And as happens far too often, things got worse when she went to the police.

She told [the police] that she was a multiple sclerosis patient on a medical pain patch prescribed by her doctor in part for a spine injury she suffered from an MS-related seizure. Her longtime doctor confirmed to NBC 4 New York he'd prescribed a narcotics patch, Fentanyl, due to the injury.

Kris says she gave a detailed account of what she remembered about the rape, but says the detectives began a hostile form of questioning and that they treated it like "it was a big joke and a waste of time."

“When he asked his partner if there was one question they would like to ask, the one and only question he could come up with, out of everything in the book, was: ‘Did you voluntarily pull down the man’s pants before he raped you?’" said Kris.

“They tag-teamed," said Kris. "'Was I out there soliciting? Was I out there buying drugs? Why did I get off the bus at that spot?'"

Kris’s mom said the detectives kept pressing her about her daughter’s illness.

“'You sure about her MS?' That’s all they kept asking me," said Kris' mother. "'Are you sure she didn’t fall and this isn’t MS?' They wanted to turn everything around, make her the victim all over again, and it was crap. Plain and simple crap. They didn’t want to do their job.”
Records show Kris has no criminal history for drugs or prostitution. She had one past shoplifting case where charges were later dismissed.

Let's parse this. First, of course this is only the victim's side of the story. I find it credible because it falls into the same patterns of experience as so many other women. The police feel that they have to work hard to make sure that the victim isn't to blame for her assault, and then they are reasonably likely to eventually process the evidence and try and find the rapists, although rape kits often sit in evidence lockers, ignored, as serial rapists continue their crimes.

Rape culture is, among other things, police who start with the assumption of doubt in rape cases, despite at least 50% of all rapes going unreported, and false rape claims falling between 1%-6% of all reported cases.

But here's my real point - this case is only news because of the victim's disability. Because she has MS, the media has a neatly packaged explanation for why her story is credible and why she's likely to be sympathetic to their readers. It's the same kind of story as my piece for CNN on Jane, a woman with Down syndrome who was raped. I wrote (and commented on this quote here, pointing out people with disabilities DO have sexual agency):

And here is where disability comes back into play. Because of her Down syndrome, Jane is relatively immune to the kinds of victim-blaming endured by other women who are assaulted or abused. 

We know she wasn't asking for it. We can't blame her for staying in the house while Dumas got drunk. We know she didn't encourage him, then change her mind the next day. All of the myths about false reporting of rape don't apply to Jane because of her disability, and for that at least we can be thankful. Jane's experience points to the offensive way women's behaviors are interrogated when they seek justice.

But as the next trial unfolds, do not focus on Jane because she is a woman with Down syndrome. Focus on Jane because she is a woman who says that she was raped. Focus on Jane because she's joined the ranks of other women, women of all races, classes, sexual orientations, and levels of ability who have said that they were raped and then had their testimony disregarded by a judge on the basis of not acting enough like a victim.

The same goes for Kris. She needs justice. The forensic evidence needs to be processed and the rapists arrested. But deserves justice because she was raped, not because she was a woman with a disability who was raped.

The story here is about rape culture. Disability intensifies the story and provides a tool with which to cut aside the usual excuses, defenses, and denials that rape culture generates, because Kris' experience with the police gets played again and again in police stations across the country.

The Trial of William Jeffrey Dumas

I'd like to clear up some details about Georgia vs William Jeffrey Dumas, the case involving the alleged multiple rape of a woman with Down syndrome (I call her Jane).

• You can read the judge's decision (redacted to protect the identity of the alleged victim) here. 
•  You can read District Attorney Ballard's appeal (redacted to protect the identity of the alleged victim) of that decision here. 

Listen, folks, serious trigger warnings apply. I got pretty upset reading these documents. I ate a lot of chocolate, then went back to writing. You have been warned.

Here are a few thoughts, in part based on an email conversation with DA Ballard, who was good enough to answer some questions (he can't talk about evidence). I'd also like to thank Steve Visser of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who sent me some documents and was helpful both over email and with his reporting.

1. A lot of the chatter about the case, especially in the comment thread of my CNN piece and a rape-defender on a list I used to frequent, has been about consent. First, don't read the comments. Second, I read the comments so you have to. Third, the trial was not about consent.

In this case, the defendant denied to the detective that sex had occurred, so that was the basis of the trial, not whether or not it was consensual. In that circumstance, the physical evidence and Jane's testimony proved persuasive to the jury.

2. Judges are supposed to overrule jury verdicts only when the evidence is vastly divergent from the evidence. In this case, the judge said that the evidence was sufficient for the verdict, but overruled anyway. It's not unreasonable to give judges that power, so long as they wield it extremely sparingly. This case, however, doesn't fit the bill.

In his decision, McFadden noted a discrepancy of time with the first attack. However, the victim explained this and, moreover, responded, "He had his hand over my mouth" when the defense asked why she didn't cry out. McFadden, though, found the fact that she didn't make an "outcry" until the next day too strange to believe, and I still find that at the core of the decision. He thought if she had really been raped, she would have said something sooner. I dealt with that in my CNN piece, but say it again - it is a myth that women who are raped act in predictable "correct" ways.

McFadden, also, showed a tell when he criticized the prosecution's decision to make sure they went last and to use emotion to sway the jury. DA Ballard tells me that this is totally normal. He wrote, "The law gives us the right to argue last since we have the burden of proof and it is a rare prosecutor that does otherwise."  But in McFadden's mind, the emotional argument at the end of the trial somehow was unfair, swayed the jury, and resulted in a conviction.

3. I find it interesting the defendant's early argument that this was a false rape claim and that he heard that Jane had accused someone else similarly (to the detective, I believe. The defendant didn't testify in court). But since Dumas couldn't identify when that had happened, he dropped it. Whether or not Dumas is a rapist (I believe he is, but...), it's clear that rapists in general believe they can escape punishment by leaning on the myth of false-rape reporting.

So once again. About 50% of all rapes are not reported. About 3% of all reported rapes are false. Do the math. Stop this myth. I just ran into it again, yesterday, on a Down syndrome "support" list-serv, and perhaps I'll write about that in a few days. People believe false rape is an epidemic on a scale with real rape, whereas they are orders of magnitude apart.

Read the document, ask questions, I'll answer as best I can.