’Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’ Highlights Trayvon Martin Case For Upcoming Episode
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/law-and-order-svu-trayvon-martin_n_3790492.html
#trayvon_Martin #series #usa
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I Got Raped, Then My Problems Started | VICE Canada
▻http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/i-got-raped-then-my-problems-startedGina Tron, victime d’un viol, explique la longue procédure judiciaire qui a suivi, le rejet de ses amis, et son incompréhension face au système judiciaire américain.
I went to see the same detective at the Special Victims Unit (the division that deals with rape) a few days later to look through pictures of convicts on their database. I spent hours scanning photo after photo of criminals to see if I could spot my guy. The detective was extremely discouraging about it, saying that it was a waste of time. He kept commenting to his buddies about how I looked like so-and-so from some other police unit—I couldn’t tell if it was a compliment or an insult but my intuition was telling me it was the latter. I was probably being sensitive, but I really wasn’t happy about having my looks talked about, since I was literally searching for my rapist. I could barely take care of basic hygiene needs at the time, let alone look nice for the cops, and I told him to please stop talking about my looks. He replied that he was doing me a favor by humoring my iffy rape case, and that if I continued to give him attitude he would just drop it.
A few days later, I got a call from a much nicer detective who was taking over my case—it had become an investigation into multiple rape incidents. Through my description of my rapist’s tattoo, the SVU was able to not only figure out who he was, but also link him to two other women who had been sexually assaulted. Because each incident was months apart, my new detective was convinced that this man was a serial rapist. He seemed to have an m.o. that increased in viciousness and intensity each time. The perp was arrested, and I chose him in the police lineup. During this time, I talked a lot to one of the other girls, who looked like a dark-haired version of me. She even had the same mole above her lip as I do, and like me, she didn’t know his name, just knew that damn tattoo. She had a boyfriend at the time of her assault, and he broke up with her because he thought she had cheated and made up the whole rape claim out of guilt. That dark-haired girl and I testified before a grand jury, and they felt there was enough evidence to move forward with a trial. The third girl, who had filed a complaint months prior, just wanted to move on with her life and skipped the whole process.
Meanwhile I had to deal with the ramifications of my rape that didn’t have anything to do with the cops or the courts. I initially only told a few people I trusted about what happened—I wanted to keep the situation on the down-low, since I was worried people would react in all kinds of ways that would make me uncomfortable. Well, that didn’t work out. Within a few days 60 or 70 people knew, and nobody wanted to hang out with me, out of fear that as a “rape victim” I’d burst into tears unpredictably or whatever. One of my best friends at the time told me she couldn’t be my friend anymore and wouldn’t even listen to me when I told her details about the assault. She said it was too heavy to hear, and claimed that what happened to me had given her post-traumatic stress disorder.
A few family members told me that they were grieving over me, because rape is a “fate worse than death.” Another told me that they were not shocked this happened to me because I was a victim by nature. “Some people are victims and some are predators,” they said. “You are a victim.” Some people actually seemed straight-up jealous because apparently I now had a “valid reason” to be depressed. These were acquaintances who were generally unhappy and they probably felt insecure that they only had minor relationship hassles and shitty bosses to blame their ennui on.
