In the article the say that they assume only about 20% are reported, so about fifty thousand all told.
Fuck, that’s a big number.
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Except we know that to the extent that’s anything more than just a fucking posture adopted to impress authoritarian morons, it’s code for throwing black folks into the maw of the prison-industrial complex, or perhaps eroding civil liberties more generality, with the aid of terrist or pedo bugaboos.
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On the white ribbon: Si Quæris Peninsulam Amœnam Circumspice, “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you,” which is the official state motto. It was adopted in 1835 and said to have been suggested by the tribute to architect Christopher Wren at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, which reads Si monumentum requiris, circumspice (Latin “If you seek [his] monument, look around you”).
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Nah, most people aren’t horrible. Most people are, within their lights, considerate and decent.
The problem is, you don’t need many horrible people to fuck things up for many, many others; and that one of the main ways they do this is creating institutional cultures (consciously or not), where the decent folks will also end up acting in terrible ways without ever really meaning to do that.
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The numbers don’t pass the smell check. Virtually all the rape kits were from the serial rapists and they all committed a similar number of rapes?
To get a full measure of the insanity of this, imagine that those were “murder kits”.
“Oh, yeah, we got a warehouse full of murder kits back there. Eleven thousand of them, give or take. Too bad we don’t have the funds to process them. Why, there could be murderers out there who’ve killed ten or eleven people, easy, but until we open up those murder kits we’ve just no way of knowing. Sad, really. Oh well, that’s just how it goes.”
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I don’t think the summary is correct. Per the Free Press link in the article, they identified 817 serial rapists and “over 50 of them have 10 to 15 hits apiece.” So not all 817.
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Ugh, just when you think our/the U.S. criminal justice system can’t get any worse a new bit of information comes to light. This article has me wondering when will things be corrected and set right in our society’s institutions? Stories like this makes one realize how far we still have to go in changing the hearts and minds of our neighbors to embrace liberal philosophies of equality, fairness, justice, and recognizing objective truths (amongst other things).
Thank you for those who have processed those kits thus far, and thank you JLW for this sobering bit of information.
I hope(?) most do get processed and these are the 10% that fell through the cracks. If that’s the case, there have been 100,000 alleged rapes in that one county since the 1980s? And that’s just the number that made it that far in the process. If there was any doubt before now we know there’s a ton more that don’t get reported. How can I resist the urge to walk up to every woman I see on the street and not give her a big, “I’m so sorry hug?”
Detroit had more than a million residents in the city proper until the 2000 census, the number of rapes over the time frame don’t strike me as outrageous once you realize 1 in 5 American women will be raped at least once in their lifetimes. Truly, most rapes do not get reported as there are next to no consequences for the perpetrator in the vast majority of cases (thus, serial rapists can flourish). And these aren’t kits that “fell through the cracks.” These kits were deliberately tossed aside because the rape victims were black, “on drugs,” had prostitution arrests on their records, and/or appeared to have mental illnesses to the processing officers.
I think that your heart is probably in the right place here, but please don’t. That would be assault.
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Season 3 of Broadchurch on Netflix should be required viewing. It goes through ALL the reasons women don’t report, and all the reactions people have when they do. One woman doesn’t report because she was drunk and wearing a short skirt. Another one refuses to go to the police with her assault because if she does, her parents will know and then everyone will know. One of the junior officers on the case asks why a victim waited two days to report it and how do we know she’s not lying?
The only sour note was that David Tennant’s character gets a little “not all men”-y at the end, but it was really a well done season. And the rapist actually gets caught, with video evidence no less. Unlike oh, 99% of cases.
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