Today's blog post will be about how powerful people accused of sexual assault, or otherwise similarly predatory behavior, dealt with by the legal system.
First off, I would like to address the topic of sexual assault and sexual violence itself. This is a very sensitive topic that is unfortunately personal for almost everyone and cannot be taken lightly. I will address this more in another blog post for rape culture, so, for now, please do not read further if this topic is going to be uncomfortable for you.
This topic is an important one because too often crimes of this nature are mishandled and victims are often criticized or blamed for not preventing the situation. Again, this is something I will cover individually and separately under the topic of 'victim-blaming'.
In this post, I will be referencing the #metoo movement so I would like to go over what that is. According to their website, the #metoo movement "...was founded in 2006 to help survivors of sexual violence," and it "supports survivors of sexual violence and their allies by connecting survivors to resources, offering community organizing resources, pursuing a ‘me too’ policy platform, and gathering sexual violence researchers and research."
The #metoo movement has empowered many women to speak out about their experiences with sexual misconduct, which is important because it relates to why I chose this topic in the first place. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, for the period of 1995 to 2013, 80% of rape and sexual assault victimization of students went unreported to the police. 26% of student victims believed the incident "was a personal matter, and 1 in 5 (20% each) stated a fear of reprisal.". 12% of student victims stated that the incident was not important enough to report. Since I just threw three statistics at you, let me put the last statistic down again so you can reread it: 12% of student victims stated that the incident was not important enough to report. I'll say it again, the #metoo movement is empowering women to speak out about their experiences with sexual misconduct and it is truly a step in the right direction. Despite efforts like this, sexual misconduct is often in one way or another mishandled. For more information on that topic here are some links to stories about how authorities mishandled cases of sexual assault.
Here is what finally brings us to the topic that I promised in the beginning. How are powerful people accused of sexual assault, or otherwise similarly predatory behavior, dealt with by the legal system? With so many cases being mishandled, how are cases against powerful and wealthy figures being done? Well, since around 2017, when allegations against Weinstein were put out, the #metoo movement has succeeded in convicting 6 other big named people such as Bill Cosby, Jean-Claude Arnault, Larry Nassar, William Strampel, Keith Raniere, and Allison Mack. Raniere and Mack, both related to the same 'sex cult' 'Nxivm' have yet to receive sentences as their cases are fairly current. Here is the source for this information, as well as famous people who were charged: #metoo movement impact on celebrities.
According to that website, "The #MeToo movement focused global attention on previously unchecked sexual misconduct, leading at least 201 powerful men to lose jobs or major positions.". Despite this, the number of people who have received legal ramifications is rather small. Not everyone is a sexual predator of course so it is hard to tell whether the movement has been successful or not without knowing the number of people still out there unpunished for their crimes. As far as convictions go for the individuals mentioned, the most notable in my opinion is disgraced former USA gymnastics national team doctor Larry Nassar. According to the Washington Post, "Several victims said they raised complaints about Nassar to coaches and trainers at Michigan State as far back as 1997. A 2004 investigation by a local police force in Michigan cleared Nassar, as did a 2014 investigation by Michigan State police and the university's Title IX office. An FBI investigation started in 2015 with a complaint from USA Gymnastics, languished for more than a year. Nassar continued to treat, and assault, patients at a Michigan State clinic until August 2016, when another victim filed a complaint with Michigan State Police and told her story to the Indianapolis Star.". It took more than 260 women and a social media movement for any progress to be made on this ma's case. Personally, this was the most unacceptable response out of all of the ones I had researched and the testimonies of the women were incredibly hard to hear.
If there is one thing I would like the reader to take from this it would be the inefficiency and inadequacy of legal response to crimes of sexual nature. I specifically wanted to focus on famous people because they are a lot harder to convict and punish due to their wealth and status. Whether they use intimidation, bribery, or even both, influential people have ways of making their victim's process much more difficult. After such a huge movement, 7 bigwigs were convicted and only Nasser, who had been accused of sexual abuse by over 260 women, received a life sentence. Whether the length of the sentence for each individual convict was appropriate or not is subjective, the response to the allegations against these people is not. The Sixth Amendment grants criminal defendants the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury consisting of jurors from the state and district in which the crime was alleged to have been committed. Hearing that is almost laughable considering the years it takes to convict some people. But not just the trial, the response of law enforcement itself is simply unacceptable.